1360 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



ON THE LIP OF THE CHASM— FAINTLY 

 VISIBLE IS THE OPPOSITE SHORE LINE 

 AND A STEAMER WENDING ITS WAY UP 

 THE BEAUTIFUL HUDSON. 



preserve the great natural beauties and advantages which 

 God in His wisdom conferred upon the land over which 

 it has supervision." Here and there, lost in the tangles 

 of sumac, wild cherry, black haw, alspice, sassafras and 

 elderberry are 

 deserted, tum- 

 bled-in cellars 

 of colonial 

 houses that 

 were places of 

 i m p o r t a nee 

 when the Red 

 Coats were 

 chased across 

 the river by 

 Wa shington's 

 troopers, but 

 now overgrown 

 by woodbine 

 and wild 

 grapes. The 

 pink and white 

 roses of the 

 colonial wom- 

 en, planted to 

 celebrate the 



love of happy homes, have gone wild and bloom lux- 

 uriantly, running back to Nature. An hundred old 

 fashioned herbs and flowers that in the course of almost 

 three centuries have escaped from the gardens up over 

 the cliff tops have dropped their seeds over the dizzy edge 

 and taken root below. It is a bird, animal and tree 

 sanctuary, we find as we leave the path two hundred 

 feet up and turn along one of the new automobile roads 

 the Commission is cutting under the lower edge of the 

 cliffs. We 

 climb up over 

 the slides of 

 broken trap to 

 the top of the 

 age-old crags 

 at one of the 

 places where 

 ascent is pos- 

 sible and creep- 

 ing tremblingly 

 to the lip of 

 the chasm look 

 away south to 

 the great city 

 sweltering in 

 its heat and 

 noise, to the 

 ships dotting 

 the harbor and 

 river, down to the dock half a thousand feet below us ; 

 to Yonkers across the stream, to Graystone once the 

 home of Samuel Tilden, just above; to Hastings where 

 Farragut lived ; Dobbs Ferry where nestles on the hill- 

 side the home of the late Robert G. Ingersoll ; Irvington, 



LOOKING DOWN ON THE DOCKS. HALF A THOUSAND FEET BELOW. THIS SPOT AT THE 

 TOP OF THE PALISADES AFFORDS A MAGNIFICENT VIEW OF THE SURROUNDING COUNTRY. 



the home of Washington Irving, and Mystic Sleepy 

 Hollow lost in the blue haze beyond Tarrytown. Five 

 miles above us on the west side of the river, glancing 

 along the Palisades, rises Indian Head, the highest shelf 

 of the cliffs, the profile of the old savage, tossed there, 

 it is said, from a blanket in the hands of Hendrick Hud- 

 son's sailortnen, looking out of the crags in surprise at 

 the changes since his descendants sold their heritage to 

 the Dutch West India Company for a mess of pottage, 



or a blanket, or 

 something. 



It is all over- 

 p o w e r i n gly 

 beautiful and 

 inspiring, and 

 we know we 

 can never ade- 

 quately describe 

 it, but as we 

 look there 

 comes up from 

 a treetop grow- 

 ing out of the 

 rocks below us 

 the clear sweet 

 music of a 

 song - sparrow 

 saying, "tweet, 

 tweet - flitter," 

 which is non- 

 sense, but heav- 

 enly music nevertheless, and far more indescribable than 

 a marvelous landscape. Descending the crags to where 

 in a deep cool nook, among broken rocks as big as 

 hayracks, a spring pours out, cold and crystal, for our 



blessing. We 

 drink, and lying 

 on the mosses, 

 staring up at 

 the cliffs and 

 blue sky be- 

 yond, feel our 

 littleness. Here 

 in the silence 

 the spirit of the 

 place comes to 

 us like a quiet 

 caress. 



As the sun 

 sinks behind us 

 we go down 

 winding road- 

 ways and paths, 

 among deep 

 forests with 

 occasional glimpses of the river below caught through 

 openings in the dense mat of treetops where the 

 thrushes chant, to the landing— drifting home in 

 our boat on the broad silver river in the moon- 

 light. 



THE PATH WINDING ROUND THE CLIFFS, 

 FROM WHICH DELIGHTFUL GLIMPSES OF 

 THE RIVER FAR BELOW MAY BE HAD. 



