The Oakley herald. [volume] (Oakley, Idaho) 1908-1961, 1917-11-02


\A commonplace thing of buy
" " ing a ticket for sail up
the Hudson, You are en-
barking on no commonplace thing at
all. For rest assured Of this: You are
about to travel the most beautiful wa
terway In all the civilized world, Zoe
Beckley writes in the New York Mail.
There are mighty rivers in Africa,
they say, that take the breath away
for sheer solitary grandeur. And the
Amazon. with vast and sinister forests.
And Florida streams, mystic and
weird Virginians point with pride to
the broad Potomac with its fine es-
tates and quiet reaches.
People in the Northwest challenge
the world with their olumbia-mighty
river Of commerce and industry-wind-
ing almost endlessly back from the
Puget sound through ranch lands and
lumber lands and towering, glowering
mountains.
Then, of course, the Rhine, glorified
with myth and legend, sung and
painted and made pilgrimage spot by
centuries of travellers, but presenting
In fact nothing save its moldering
castles that permit it to compare seen
icaily with the river that flows at our
door.
A Beauty All Its Own.
For the beauty Of river is like the
beauty of a woman; it doesn't depend
upon a single feature. There has got
to be certain aliveness to a river that
corresponds to intelligence in face.
Your mighty African river Of the
solitudes hasn't that. Nor has your
giant stream of the West the charm
thrown round the Hudson by centuries
Of human contact-adventure, strug-
gle, change, adversely, prosperity,
peace.
Come with me, will you, for little
voyage from Desbrosses street to AL
bany? And from the economical want
age point Of 50, nine-hour trip, let us
see some of the things that make this
Empire river so lordly-and so hui
man.
At the left hand, as we start north,
are the Hoboken docks, not pretty per-
haps, but touched with interest be-
cause of the huge interned German
ships that had almost taken root at
their piers.
The sweet green promontory of
Stevens Point, where the institute is
sticks out defiantly from between ter.
minals and warehouses that try tc
choke 1t. Yet the castlelike home
stead of the Stevens family manages
to keep Its look of aristrocratic sereni
ty, despite the crowdings of CONNER
ciallsm.
At Weehawken, where trolley car.
now zigzag SO nimbly up the heights
is the spot-then a picturesque ant
grassy ledge; now merely opposite
West Forty-second street'-wher,
Hamilton and Burr met on the "fielC
of honor" in 1904.
The boat goes SO fast that In /;
minute 1t seems we are passing River
side drive, which some day will b.
conceded the loveliest street in tn
world.
Now we pass the district of Gilt
dwellers-thousands of tall houses rls
ing out of the trees, as 1T seems, iron
the river. To me these apartment
houses, each one homing more fami
lies than some small villages, are
feature of thrills and beauty.
Cliffs Little Changed.
The real, unspoiled loneliness of tn
river begins here, where the still rura
looking Fort Washington point reache
out toward the magnificent rise of tn
Palisades at Fort Lee.
Barring the few homes that nov
peep out through the trees ut the TO
of these t00-fcot cliffs, there is no
auch a precious lot of difference be
tween how they look today and hoy
they looked when George Washingto
and his staff watched from them tn
destruction of Fort Washington on tn
eastern heights nearly century an
half ago and lined out a retrea
through the heart OF Jersey.
These two forts were supposed t
, guard barrier of sunken ships an
, logs planted In the river at this poir
to keep the British back.
The appeal of the Palisades !
| fresher each time you sail past then
As the steamer purrs along, you nee
only narrow your eyes little to shr
out things close at hand, and preten