FISHING IN THE HUDSON'S GORGE 8G7 



be seen from an airplane as a dark streak beyond 

 Sandy Hook. For a distance of forty-five miles 

 beyond what is now dry land, the Hudson flowed 

 rapidly but evenly through a fairly deep bed, be- 

 tween the level banks of the wide, sloping coastal 

 plain. Then, without warning, its waters plunged 

 into the maw of a canyon mightier than man has 

 ever seen. At the head it was less than a mile wide 

 and rapidly reached a depth of sixteen hundred 

 feet. Today our sounding line touches bottom 

 four hundred feet down on the surface of the an- 

 cient plain, while a few hundred yards away the 

 plummet sinks into the gorge to a depth of twenty- 

 eight hundred feet. Four miles farther down the 

 canyon, where the land of the ancient coast is now 

 a thousand feet under water, to reach the bottom 

 of the gorge requires forty-eight hundred feet or 

 almost a mile of wire. Here the entire volume of 

 the Hudson, plus the lake water and the tribu- 

 tary rivers dropped almost sheer over a precipice 

 of more than eighteen hundred feet — more than a 

 quarter of a mile. The only thing on the earth 

 today to compare with this is Kaieteur Falls in 

 British Guiana. This has a maximum drop of 

 over eight hundred feet, the highest waterfall, 

 worthy of the name, in the world today. To the 

 chosen few who have seen this, the mind is able 

 dimly to repicture the incomparable gorge of the 

 Hudson as it once was. The thrill which came up 

 over the vibrating piano wire when we touched the 

 very bottom, brought to the imagination what the 

 most marvellous piece of music conveys to the 



I a D A a V 



