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=The Palisades, or Great Chip Rock=, as they were known by the old
Dutch settlers, present the same bold front to the river that the
Giant's Causeway does to the ocean. Their height at Fort Lee, where
the bold cliffs first assert themselves, is three hundred feet, and
they extend about seventeen or eighteen miles to the hills of Rockland
County. A stroll along the summit reveals the fact that they are
almost as broken and fantastic in form as the great rocks along the
Elbe in Saxon-Switzerland.
* * *
The Palisades in sterner pride
Tower as the gloom steals o'er the tide,
For the great stream a bulwark meet
That laves its rock-encumbered feet.
_Robert C. Sands._
* * *
As the basaltic trap-rock is one of the oldest geological formations,
we might still appropriately style the Palisades "a chip of the old
block." They separate the valley of the Hudson from the valley of the
Hackensack. The Hackensack rises in Rockland Lake opposite Sing Sing,
within two or three hundred yards of the Hudson, and the rivers flow
thirty miles side by side.


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