in the literary associations of the Hudson, for his work was mainly the result of thirty years of sojourn and study among the redskins upon the frontier. John Romeyn Brodhead, the patient compiler of the ten great tomes that contain transcripts of all discov- erable documents relating to the early history of New York, was born in Saugerties. He ransacked the lib- raries of The Hague and of London, scenting an old Digitized by Microsoft® 2 74 The Hudson River document with the unerring sense of a true bookworm, and coming home at last laden with wonderful spoil. To his stupendous work we have been indebted for many of the facts contained in the early pages of this volume. When a great impulse was given to botanical study by the group of scientists, of which Linnasus was the most distinguished raember, the New World became a fruitful field for original research. John Bartram of Philadelphia, Mark Catesby in the Carolinas, John Claytoii in Virginia, John Logan in Pennsylvania, and near a dozen others dug the fields, delved among the rocks, and explored the forests in search of the un- classed flora of America. At the same time, New York presented her champion in the person of the dis- tinguished citizen, Cadwallader Golden. He lived near Newburgh in the early half of the eighteenth century, devoting himself assiduously to the study of botany. At his place, which he .named Coldenham, he spent the delightful leisure years of a life that had known, and was destined to know, many activities. There he col- lected, cultivated, and classified plants, assisted by his daughter, of whom Peter CoUinson wrote to Linnasus that she was " perhaps the first lady who has so per- fectly studied your system. She deserves to be cele- brated." : Cadwallader Golden, whose full name was afterwards shared by his no less famous grandson, was a success- ful physician of Philadelphia from 1708 to 17 18, when Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Literary Associations of the Hudson 277 he removed to New York. After filling several public offices, among them that of Surveyor-General, he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor in 1761, and, as the political lives of his immediate superiors were usually brief, he became, by virtue of his experience and great ability, practically the chief executive of the State for fifteen years. He was the author of several books, the most important one being a History of the Five Nations of Canada. He did not survive the Revolution, his death occurring a short time after the battle of Har- lem Heights. He died in Long Island at the age of seventy-eight years. A century later, another celebrity among nature students lived near the shore of the river, not many miles from Coldenham. Many an elderly man will remember with pleasure and no small degree of grati- tude America's first landscape-gardener, — first in emi- nence if not in time, — Andrew Jackson Downing. He had two qualities that are not always combined in one individual, namely, artistic sensibility and practical sense. The latter enabled him to make the former effective. Before his day we are led to believe that in the laying out of rural estates, grotesque and chaotic arrangement of natural material was the rule rather than the exception. Mr. Downing not only possessed taste and sense, but he managed to impart them to others, and in the exercise of his chosen profession became widely and favourably known, especially to residents of the Hudson River towns. Digitized by Microsoft® 278 The Hudson River His books were A Treatise on the Theory and Prac- tice of Landscape Gardening and Fruit and Fruit Trees of America, both of them widely read. He was for some time the editor of The Horticulturalist, pubHshed in Albany. Mr. Downing was one of those who met death on the steamer Henry Clay, that was burned at Riverdale in 1852. From 1830 to 1842, while the Knickerbocker au- thors were still many of them in the hey-day of their powers, and a new generation of writers were just com- mencing to be heard, Dr. George W. Bethune was the pastor of the Reformed Church at Rhinebeck. He will be remembered as a scholarly man of sweet, rare character. His contributions to Christian hymnology possibly constitute his chief claim to remembrance, though he devoted nearly twenty years of his life to public speaking and writing. While James K. Polk was President, Doctor Bethune was offered the ap- pointment to the chair of Moral Philosophy at West Point, which he felt obliged to decline, as he also did the chancellorship of New York University, to which he was chosen as the successor of Mr. Frelinghuysen. He lived just long enough to make a stirring address