It takes the Rhine steamers from seven to eight hours (as
will be seen in Baedeker's Guide to that river) going up the stream,
and from four and a half to five hours returning with the current. The
Hudson by Daylight steamers en route to Albany make the run from New
York to Newburgh in three hours; to Poughkeepsie in four hours, making
stops at Yonkers, West Point and Newburgh. Probably no train on the
best equipped railroad in our country reaches its stations with
greater regularity than these steamers make their various landing.
It astonishes a Mississippi or Missouri traveler to see the captain
standing like a train-conductor, with watch in hand, to let off the
gang-plank and pull the bell, at the very moment of the advertised
schedule.
* * *
Southward the river gleams--a snowy sail
Now gliding o'er the mirror--now a track
Tossing with foam displaying on its course
The graceful steamer with its flag of smoke.
_Alfred B. Street._
* * *
One of the most humorous incidents of the writer's journeying up and
down the Hudson, was the "John-Gilpin-experience" of a western man who
got off at West Point a few years ago.
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