HUDSON HONORED IN NEW YORK 321 



When the Half Moon and the Clermont reached the United States ship 

 Newport, which marked the southern end of the line of warships at Forty- 

 fourth street, they moved up on the New York side of the river, while the other 

 vessels kept on between the men o' war and the New Jersey shore. As the 

 two little craft went by the warships started firing the royal salute, making 

 one continual roll of powder fed thunder. 



The Half Moon and Clermont went only as far as One Hundred and 

 Tenth street, where the land ceremonies of the day occurred at 4 o'clock, with 

 speeches by Gov. Hughes and others. While these were in progress the other 

 vessels rounded the head of the warship line at Two Hundred and Twenty- 

 second street, and returned along the Manhattan shore, back to buoy to await 

 the night, when, with scarcely time enough for the crews to get dinner, the 

 participants of the day parade went over the same route, while the river 

 was gorgeously illuminated. 



The weather was as perfect as the preparations. Four days of rain had 

 washed all the gray out of the skies, and through the atmosphere, clear and 

 sparkling, ran the first brisk breath of autumn, the first feel of Indian sum- 

 mer. Under the flawless sunshine the water danced, all white and blue, the 

 wheels and screws of the scurrying craft churning the top of the swells into a 

 creamy smother. 



Where all the crowd came from and how it got settled into place is a 

 marvel past telling. The sun, climbing into the sky, looked down upon a me- 

 tropolis that rippled and eddied with red, white and blue, with orange, blue 

 and white, and with every other color that can be woven into a flag or printed 

 into bunting; it looked down also upon two rivers, a harbor, and bay fairly 

 dancing with vessels of every sort, from ocean liners, excursion boats, trim 

 private yachts, fat ferry boats, waddling like mallards, and tugs as brisk as the 

 blue teal, down to motor boats and skiffs, playing over the surface like schools 

 of sunfish in a pond. It also looked upon the picked war craft of our own 

 nation and other nations ; all metal and menace and might. 



Besides the pleasure craft there was waiting the greatest gathering of war 

 vessels ever seen. It was a fleet of seventy war vessels, fifty-three American, 

 four English, four German, three French, two Italian, One Dutch, one 

 Argentine, one Mexican, and one Cuban, with guns enough, if fired in one 

 broadside, to wipe out a city or sink a nation's navy — enough potential de- 

 struction in a row to stagger the imagination. There were 27,000 officers 

 and men and nearly 500 big guns. 



