the Civil War, " once the seat of the Apthorpe family." The Apthorpe mansion stood at the corner of 9 1 st Street and Columbus Avenue. Wash- ington had his headquarters here for a very brief time. The de Lancey house, the property of General Oliver de Lancey, stood at about 86th Street. In the winter of 1777, while the owner was absent, a party of young men came down from Tarrytown, bent on retaliation for the burning of the Van Tassel house, not far from there. They were led by Martlings and others, and succeeded in passing the British lines and setting fire to the de Lancey mansion. The ladies escaped in their night dresses, as those of the Van Tassel farmhouse had done a short time before. Riverside looks down at one point into the hollow that was known in the old times as Marritje David's Vly, now 127th Street. It keeps its watch above the turmoil of the waters and the travel upon their bosom, Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Riverside to Inwood 143 and wears proudly its own record of Revolutionary- happenings. The trees that crown this ridge and sentinel its slopes give an impression of venerable antiquity, and it is difficult to receive without a grain of allowance the record that tells how, during the severe winter of 1779- 80, when the island was under martial law. General Robertson stripped the land of its trees for fuel. At the north end of Riverside is the restaurant where Jones's Claremont Hotel stood, half a century ago. The older dwelling that it replaced was the residence of Doctor Post, who gave it the name of Claremont. Viscount Courtenay, afterwards Earl of Devon, lived there at one time, previous to the War of 181 2. Joseph Buonaparte, ex-king of Spain, when in exile, also made Claremont his residence for a while, and Francis Jones Jackson, the British minister, lived there during his term of office. The spot has many historic associations to enhance its natural attractiveness, but a far deeper significance was added when, in the immediate neigh- bourhood of Claremont was selected the site for the Grant mausoleum, that, apart from its pretensions to architectural excellence, attracts attention by its magnetic appeal to one of the noblest of human senti- ments. The- tomb of General Grant is on Riverside Drive at 123d Street, and is a conspicuous landmark, as seen from the river. With a superficial area of 8100 square feet and an extreme height of 150 feet, fashioned in Digitized by Microsoft® 144 The Hudson River white granite from Maine, this mausoleum takes rank among the most celebrated commemorative buildings in the world. The circular cupola, surrounded by columns and surmounted by a conical cap or dome, rests upon a massive cube of masonry, relieved by entablature, frieze, and columns of pure Ionic design and entered through a portico of noble proportions. This is not the place to describe the interior of this remarkable tomb, with its impressive chamber and the crypt wherein lies the dust of General Grant in a sar- cophagus of red porphyry. The tomb was built with the contributions of 90,000 subscriptions to a fund that aggregated $600,000, and the comer-stone was laid by President Harrison in April, 1892. The late Chinese statesman, Li Hung Chang, was an early subscriber to the monument fund and presented a gingko tree, which is growing at the north side of the tomb. Upon it a bronze tablet bears this inscription: This tree is planted at the side of the tomb of General U. S. Grant, ex-President of the United States of America, for the purpose of commemorating his greatness, by Li Hung Chang, Guardian of the Prince, Grand Secretary of State, Earl of the First Order Yang Hu, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Pleni- potentiary of China, Vice-President of the Board of Censors. Kwang Hsu, 23d year, 4th moon, May, 1897. Some distance to the south of Grant's tomb, at 89th- 90th Streets is the new soldiers' and sailors' monu- ment. Back of Riverside, upon the ridge now known as Cathedral Heights, the magnificent cathedral of St. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Riverside to Inwood 147 John the Divine is now (1902) being erected, on a site covering three city blocks, from iioth to 113th Streets. The corner-stone was laid in 1892, and possibly most of the present generation of men will have passed away before the entire work is completed. The cost will ap- proximate six millions of dollars. Cathedral Heights is at the southern end of Morn- ingside Heights, a region that has been fitly charac- terised by Mr. Seth Low as " the Acropolis of the New World." Crowning the Heights, among the most con-