It pleases like a mountain
lake. It has all the sweetness and placidity that go with such bodies
of water, on the one hand, and all their bold and rugged scenery on
the other. In summer, a passage up or down its course in one of the
day steamers is as near an idyl of travel as can be had, perhaps,
anywhere in the world. Then its permanent and uniform volume, its
fullness and equipoise at all seasons, and its gently-flowing currents
give it further the character of a lake, or of the sea itself. Of
the Hudson it may be said that it is a very large river for its
size,--that is for the quantity of water it discharges into the sea.
Its watershed is comparatively small--less, I think, than that of the
Connecticut. It is a huge trough with a very slight incline, through
which the current moves very slowly, and which would fill from the sea
were its supplies from the mountains cut off. Its fall from Albany to
the bay is only about five feet. Any object upon it, drifting with the
current, progresses southward no more than eight miles in twenty-four
hours. The ebb-tide will carry it about twelve miles and the flood set
it back from seven to nine.
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