1068 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



nurse maids, of queer Little People, — fays, naiads, wood- 

 gnomes, who come out of their fern-hidden grottoes on 

 moonlighted nights to play pranks with the sleepy gar- 

 deners and ride the bacics of flying squirrels among the 

 shadow-haunted, limb-crossed sky spaces in the tree 

 tops. It is hard to believe that all this lovely wilderness 

 of brake, azalea, wild roses, ferns, mossy banks and 

 hidden dells isn't inhabited by some tribe of Little People 

 who stole their passage over in the cargo of the Half 

 Moon, and now keep the rotting stumps decorated with 

 bright-hued fungi and the gray stones painted with 

 lichens. - i j .1 



Sit down on the sloping bank of the Aqueduct by the 

 brook any moonlit summer night and up from the tangle 

 of blackberries, Benjaminbush, and black cap raspberries 

 in the ravine will come the music of orchestras of cicadas 

 and crickets, playing wild unearthly little tunes for the 

 nymphs of the brookside to dance to. And if you look 

 close enough, down by the flat rock where the smooth 

 black water pours over like melted glass, you will see — 

 but perhaps the smoke and dust of houses has dulled 

 your eyes, and you will not see anything! So what's 

 the use? 



As we go up the Aqueduct white-bibbed Peabody birds 

 entice us to inspect the hedgerows and trees, and a yellow- 

 hammer calls off somewhere down by the river. The 

 next place in 

 this neighbor- 

 hood where 

 Washington i s 

 said to have 

 made a more or 

 less protracted 

 stay is the old 

 Schuyler estate, 

 now the Inter- 

 national Garden 

 Club's country 

 house. If you 

 ride up Broad- 

 way from New 

 York you'll be 

 attracted about 

 here by a won- 

 derful row of great old sycamores lining one side of the 

 roadway, some of them nearly three feet thick at the 

 base, reaching up their gnarled, mottled brown, green, 

 gray and white trunks to massive ivory arms leaning 

 over the sidewalk. The estate was one of the i)r(ii)L'rties 

 of the family of General Philip John Schuyler, the father- 

 in-law of Alexander Hamilton. The imposing great 

 house down beyond the .'\queduct is surrounded by lawns 

 dotted with weeping-willows, English walnuts, white 

 pines, sycamores, locusts, horsechestnuts and a few 

 magnolias. On a lawn just beyond Irvington-on-TIudson 

 we come upon a Maidenhair tree, Salisbiiria adiantijolia, 

 the Ginko tree of Japan and China, which is to be seen 

 on many of the streets of Washington. 



The tree folk that most impress us on our walk, 

 though, are the sycamores, everywhere standing out in 



TUK AorKlJUCT, 



CROSSING 

 LANE 



SUNXVSIDE 



the landscape because of the snowy whiteness of the 

 massive arms, these early spring days, that they stretch 

 up to the skies as if to welcome their lover, the South 

 wind. These Occidental plane trees are the cousins of 

 the Oriental plane trees of Turkey and Greece, under 

 which the ancient philosophers used to gather their stu- 

 dents about them. There are beautiful specimens of the 

 Oriental plane tree on the Thames Embankment in Lon- 

 don and on Riverside Drive in New York, though the 

 latter are young. 



On the bank of the Aqueduct just before we come to 

 Sunnyside Lane, above Irvington, a shaded and shrub- 

 bordered roadway running down from Broadway to 

 the rambling old home of Washington Irving at the river. 

 we detect a faint fragrance beside the path. Stooping, 

 we find the grass roots closely interwoven with wild 

 thyme — and our hearts sing with Shakespeare : 



I know a bank 

 where the wild 

 thyme blows. 

 Where oxlips 

 and the knod- 

 ding violet 

 grows. 

 Quite overcan- 

 opied with lus- 

 cious w o o d- 

 bine. 

 With sweet 

 musk roses and 

 with eglantine. 

 T here sleeps 

 Titania some- 

 times of the 

 night. 



Lulled in these 

 flowers w i t h 

 dances and 

 delight." 

 The big yellow poplars, shagbark hickories, black 

 birches, and cherries of Sunnyside Lane are dotted here 

 and there with bird houses — the spirit of Irving, who 

 received Louis Napoleon as an exile at his cottage on the 

 Hudson, and who loved wild birds and speculated about 

 their habits, we may believe, fully as much as he did 

 about the spring the old Dutch woman brought over from 

 Holland in a churn, seeming still to linger about the 

 place. There is a cheerful little brook that babbles down 

 through the Irving estate from Broadway past a spring 

 near the Aqueduct, and, there being no taste of butter- 

 milk, we stop to drink. Then we keep on up the path 

 and come, just below Tarrytown, to where the Aqueduct 

 cuts straight across the lawns of "Lyndhurst," the mag- 

 nificent and beautiful estate of Mrs. Helen Gould Shepard 

 — soft velvety lawns these spring days, and a little later 

 we are entering the picturesque village of Tarrytown 

 where, on the hills above, is the home of John D. Rocke- 

 feller, and. to the north. Sleepy Hollow, the little valley 

 made famous by Washington Irving. 



LOOKI.NG DOWN SU.XNYSIDE LANE 

 TOWARD IRVINGS OLD HOME 



