Rogers under a transparent French equivalent, wrote one of his most marvellous tales, the Mystery of Marie Roget. One by one he took up the clues ; with an astuteness that seemed almost inspired he worked out the history of the murder. Every one at that day read the story, and to the popular mind the Mystery of Marie Roget fully elucidated the grewsome fate of Mary Rogers. There was a story current, impossible now to verify, that fifteen or twenty years afterwards, a sailor, dying in a hospital, confessed to the murder, giving details which substantially agreed with Poe's narrative. All the river front has changed, almost beyond recog- nition. A large part of it at Weehawken is taken up with coal and oil depots and the West Shore terminals. A trolley line connects with the Forty-second Street Ferry and carries the passengers to the top of the bluff and beyond. But there are still, between this point and Fort Lee, unoccupied and wooded acres lying back of the shore along the heights that are still among the finest points of view in the neighbourhood of New York. More than half a century ago Fitz-Greene Halleck wrote, in praise of this locality: Weehawken ! In thy mountain scenery yet All we adore of nature in her wild Digitized by Microsoft® On the Jersey Shore 8i And frolic hour of infancy, is met; And never has a summer's morning smiled Upon a lovelier scene, than the full eye Of the enthusiast revels in, when high Amid thy forest solitudes, he climbs O'er crags, that proudly tower above the deep. And knows the sense of danger which sublimes The breathless moment — when his daring step Is on the verge of the cliff, and he can hear The low dash of the wave with startled ear. In such an hour he turns, and on his view. Ocean and earth and heaven burst before him, Clouds slumbering at his feet and the clear blue Of summer's sky in beauty bending o'er him — The city bright below: and far away, Sparkling in golden light, his own romantic bay. Stevens, as elsewhere noted, built and operated the first steam ferryboats that were ever used, and they ran between Manhattan Island and Hoboken. One cannot realise the primitive Hoboken of that day in the place of many wharves, where the ocean liners lie at their piers, or move majestically out into the stream. Among the principal steamers that make a landing at Hoboken are those of the North German Lloyd, Hamburg, and Wilson lines. The river front is uninviting — a region of coal-sheds, of depots, and elaborate complications of rails. Between Hoboken and Fort Lee are the points that Benson J. Lossing described as "the little villages of Pleasant Valley, Bull's Ferry, and Weehawk." Bull's Ferry, now Shadyside, is distant from Fort Lee about Digitized by Microsoft® 82 The Hudson River three miles. It was for many years a favourite resort for working-men from New York, and pictures made along that shore thirty years ago show an inviting pros- pect of green slopes and wooded cliffs. At present the favourite objective point of the crowds that cross the river to escape the rigours of -a " dry Sunday ' ' in the metropolis are the groves and public houses of Fort Lee. But Shadyside may claim a more romantic celebrity. There was in, 1 7 So a blockhouse near the ferry, and for a time it was garrisoned by a British picket, whose duty it was to protect the loyalists of the neighbourhood. A number of cattle and horses belonging to Americans had strayed on to Bergen's Neck, and offered a tempt- ing bait for Tory marauders from Paulus Hook. From his headquarters near the Ramapo Hills, Washington dispatched Wayne — "Mad Anthony," as his contemporaries sometimes called him — to attack the blockhouse and drive away the British garrison, and also to secure the cattle for their owners. Light- Horse Harry Lee was dispatched on the latter mission, while Wayne made the attack upon the blockhouse with three Pennsylvania companies and four light pieces of cannon. But the attack was unavailing, the post prov- ing too strong for the artillery of the besiegers, and the Americans were repulsed with a loss of sixty men. General Wayne succeeded in destroying some boats and capturing a number of cattle, with which •he„j:£- turned to the American lines. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® On the Jersey Shore 85 This affair might have been forgotten as one of the minor incidents of the war, without any particular significance or relation to other events, had not one of the accomplished young officers in his Majesty's serv- ice conceived the idea of making it