tion of old memories; but in spite of familiar shore lines and well-known contours, the aspect of the stream would be strange and new. He would perhaps be bewildered, while he could not fail to be impressed, by the spectacular display of steam craft of every description, from the smallest launch that darts shoreward from the side of some trim yacht or imposing war vessel, to the ocean liners that move majestically from their piers and succeed in preserving an imposing dignity of demeanour in spite of the hustling, bustling, rowdy tugs to whose escort they have been committed. The ubiquitous tug is the irreclaimable tough of rivers and harbours: a swaggering, swearing, cock-sure ruffian, who respects neither age nor rank. It will tackle an Olympia with Digitized by Microsoft® THE UBIQUITOUS TUG {From a draiving by the author) Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® The Passing of the White Wings 103 as little ceremony as it would take hold of a Yucatan tramp or a Duluth whaleback, and would swing out an ocean greyhound with a sang froid that smacks of Mse majesU. The tugboat acts upon the assumption that he has an unexpired lease upon all rivers, and to avoid "en- tangling alliances," other boats by common consent give him the widest possible berth. We say "he" ad- visedly. All vessels are feminine except this cockerel of the brackish waters. The ferryboats — floating towns that hurl themselves from side to side of the river, transporting populations — are the wonderful progeny of the little steam ferry- boat that Col. John Stevens set afloat between New York and Hoboken in 181 1. Now the huge arks pass and repass, some to the point most nearly opposite, others crossing their course dia- gonally, bound for a distant slip, and all engaged in what would seem to be a leviathan performance of Sir Roger de Coverley. The freighters find their way among the throng, some light and riding high, with the rusty red of their under hulls dropping sanguinary reflections on the waves; others ploughing deep. They carry a sordid, toil-worn air, as if to impress one with the fact that they have been buffeted by strange seas and moored beside unclean wharves imder the equator. Among them all is a barkentine, working her way through the press. One look is enough to identify her. Digitized by Microsoft® I04 The Hudson River The long wooden stock of the anchor that is catted at her bow proclaims that she is from Nova Scotia or some of its English neighbours. By her course she is- probably bound to Rockland Lake for ice. Beyond an overdecked river side-wheeler that sends a tidal wave to port and starboard as she goes, and sets all the river rocking, there is the trim, black hull of a foreign man-of-war at anchor. She has just arrived, and her spars for the present seem to be converted to laundry uses. A little farther upstream some private yachts glitter with clean paint and resplendent, brass. Everywhere there is life, motion, the expression of strength, — ^but where is the picture that memory re- calls of the old Hudson? Here is power, but at the expense of the romance, the poetry, may we say the beauty and grace of an earlier day. What naval spectacle or pageant can compare with the flight of the white wings that once were spread through all the sunlit reaches of the river, enchanted argosies that bore about them, if not the scent of san- dal wood and musky odour of spice islands, at least an undefined suggestion of remote wharves and unex- plored hamlets ? From Burnet's Key and the old Albany Wharf and the market dock and fifty points and piers along the river shore they put out with whatever wind Provi- dence might send, be it favourable or unfavourable,, for far-off villages along the Tappan Zee and Haver- Digitized by Microsoft® The Passing of the White Wings 105 straw Bay, and even beyond the Highlands as far as the navigable water flowed. The names of the old Hudson River captains of sail- ing craft are not all forgotten. Many an old resident will recall Thomas Brown, Charles and Isaac Depew, the Requas, the Lyons, James B. and John L. Travis, Vermilye, Storm, Conkling, Farrington, and others. Harvey P. Farrington is, at the time of this writing, a hale octogenarian, who graduated from a schooner into the steamboat ranks, from captain became owner, and is now, at a time of life when most men willingly retire from active business, to be found every day during business hours at one of the prominent city banks, of which he is a director. Samuel Requa, — "Captain Sam," — who with his father used to own