BOOK I. HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE. 1. WEST POINT. [Commercial Advertiser. New-York.j SHAKS. A TOUR from New-York up the Hudson river affords one of the most beautiful excursions, that can be made in any part of our country; but the writing traveller has to encounter the difficulty, if he attempts a sketch, of describing what has so often been described before, that he may almost despair of introducing a novel scene, or a new idea. Hundreds of writers,-not forgetting that almost inimitable painter of animated nature, Irving,-have told of the "verdant pastures and green fields," the towering cliffs and lofty mountains, which alternately attract the admiration, the wonder, and the amazement of the beholder, almost from the confluence of that noble stream with the ocean to its source. "The theme," says a late tourist, "is measureless ; such as Byron, with all his kindred sublimity, would delight to dwell upon, and conjure up a spirit in every breeze of its mountains, or that moved on the face of its waters, Its serpentine windings; its deep recesses; the little cottage under the rocky heights, and isolated, as it were, from the rest of the world; the splendid mansion in the distance, surrounded by dark foliage and B towering elms, imparting to it an air of romance; its deep and apparently impenetrable forests, where, to the stranger, the foot of man would seem never to have trod; these are things which would call forth the finest strains of poetic inspiration, which would induce Byron again to say, "Pass not unblest the Genius of the place! With Nature's baptism,-'tis to him ye must The most imposing scene presented to the eye of the spectator, before entering the Highlands, and that, which most attracts the admiration of the naturalist, and excites the attention of the geologist, is, the huge buttress of rocks, which, for miles, lift their tall heads from the western edge of the river, resembling what, in fairy land, might well be taken for the proud battlements of a races of giants. These rocks are called the palisadoes. They are basaltic, standing like massive gothic pillars, three or four hundred feet high, upon horizontal strata of sand-stone. This singular and unusual formation is a sore puzzle to the wise heads of geologists and theoretical world-makers, who can account for the position upon no other principle, than that, in some wonderful convulsion of the earth, the pillars have been pressed up through its surface. At a distance of about forty miles from the city, we enter the Highlands, between Stony Point, on the north, and Verplanck's Point on the south. This magnificent region of country not only attracts attention from the grandeur and sublimity of the scenery, but from being closely associated with an important portion of our revolutionary history. The Highlands for a long period formed the main link in the chain of communication between the republicans of the east and south; and it was with a view of cutting off this communication, that Burgoyne attempted to march down from the north, |