INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS XXXI 



anxiously peering down the Solent to catch sight of the 

 yachts coming in view, asked the signal-master standing 

 with the glass at his eye, "What yacht is that first?" 

 "The America." "What is second?" "Ah, Your Majesty, 

 there is no second." 



Even in this generation the late Kohert L. Stevens, of 

 Westbury, was considered one of the best sportsmen on 

 Long Island, a splendid man to hounds, a keen breeder of 

 blood horses and a director of the Meadow Brook Hunt 

 C^lub. 



Coming back to Forester's narrative, we read that 

 Herbert and Archer with Tim up behind drove the crack- 

 ing pair the first six miles in twenty-nine minutes pulling 

 up at a low tavern for a milk punch, and later, at Hacken- 

 sack stopped for breakfast. Here our motor route began 

 to run with theirs, for on account of the present-day fer- 

 ries and roads we could not take the full course to and 

 from the Jersey shore, and a few miles further on we 

 found true the words of Forester which featured the 

 landscape : 



"The country became undulating, with many 

 and bright streams of water; * * * and the 

 bold chain of mountains, which under many 

 names, but always beautiful and wild, sweeps 

 from the Highlands to the Hudson, west and 

 southwardly, quite through New Jersey." 



A few miles beyond we crossed the Ramapo, which, in 

 Herbert's time "was one of the loveliest of streams eye 

 ever looked upon", now forming part of the great water 

 system of Manhattan. Now and then an old house would 

 be seen, made of huge brick, either formed from the red 

 sand of the soil or cut from sandstone, and in several 

 towns fire alarms are even now given by striking a huge 

 metal liorse shoe which is hung by a chain from a wood- 

 en frame, fully four feet across, with a great striking 

 hammer hanging on one post, on each frame being painted 

 the number of strokes that designate the locality. 



Speeding by an inn "The Hermitage" founded in 1700, 

 we were going through Suffern and drawing on towards 

 Tuxedo, named no doubt from the pond called Truxedo*, 



♦Truxedo is apparently a corruption of Truxillo. while the surname 

 "Duckcedar" (often used by Tom Draw) is a misnomer — History of 

 Oraniie County, Ruttenber and Clark, 1881. 



