154 POLLIPELL'S ISLAND. 



been taken with the improved instruments of that institution 

 determine the latitude and longitude of the island to be very 

 nearly if not exactly the same as we find it laid down in the 

 earliest charts of the river. But — and moreover — though the 

 island is always found, by those who actually land upon it — 

 yes we may say invariably found to be near the Eastern shore 

 of the Hudson, and (to the natural vision) almost upon a 

 direct imaginary line that might be drawn between the bases 

 of Break-Neck Hill and the mouth of the Mateawan, yet, 

 viewed at a distance it often presents itself as dividing the 

 channel of the river into two equal parts ; seeming then to 

 lift its crest from the very centre of the broad waters of 

 Newhurgh Bay ! While, again, when the last rays of sun-set 

 are streaming against the sides of the Fishkill mountains it 

 will appear to have passed across the jaws of the Highlands 

 and lie so closely under the shadowy western shore — springing, 

 as it were from the very base of Butter Hill, that a geologist 

 would swear it was only some huge boulder detached from the 

 well seamed sides of that craggy mountain. 



Now to suppose that the granite rock of Pollipell thus 

 changes its position from being lifted or moved indeed in any 

 way by the tides, which rush so forcibly through the narrow 

 pass below it, to make this supposition we say seems prepos- 

 terous in the extreme ; and none but the most ignorant and 

 credulous can for a moment admit such an hypothesis. Yet 

 the phenomenon of a floating island is by no means unknown 

 among the myriad lakes and countless streams of the state of 

 New York. " Adams' Pond," or Cawaynoot, in Washington 



