_E.A. Lente._

* * *

The principal streams which flow into the Hudson between Albany and
New York are the Norman's Kill, on west bank, two miles south of
Albany; the Mourdener's Kill, at Castleton, eight miles below Albany,
on the east bank; Coxsackie Creek, on west bank, seventeen miles below
Albany; Kinderhook Creek, six miles north of Hudson; Catskill Creek,
six miles south of Hudson; Roeliffe Jansen's Creek, on east bank,
seven miles south of Hudson; the Esopus Creek, which empties at
Saugerties; the Rondout Creek, at Rondout; the Wappingers, at New
Hamburgh; the Fishkill, at Matteawan, opposite Newburgh; the Peekskill
Creek, and Croton River. The course of the river is nearly north and
south, and drains a comparatively narrow valley.

It is emphatically the "River of the Mountains," as it rises in the
Adirondacks, flows seaward east of the Helderbergs, the Catskills, the
Shawangunks, through twenty miles of the Highlands and along the base
of the Palisades. More than any other river it preserves the character
of its origin, and the following apostrophe from the writer's poem,
"The Hudson," condenses its continuous "mountain-and-lake-like"
quality:

O Hudson, mountain-born and free,
Thy youth a deep impression takes,
For, mountain-guarded to the sea,
Thy course is but a chain of lakes.