University of Virginia Library

THE KELPIE ROCK, OR UNDERCLIFF;
A LEGEND OF THE HUDSON HIGHLANDS.

The Culprit Fay, Canto, VII.

—The History of
New York, by Dedrick Knickerbocker.

So long as we have the inspired poet who first
struck his woodland harp among the Hudson Highlands,
and sung of fairy land and the two vast labors
of the Culprit Fay — so long as we have that veritable
historian and authentic chronicler of great sublunary
events, the profound and erudite Deidrick Knickerbocker—be
his memory thrice honored!—to stand
by us in support of our legend, which is not a jot less
true than his own veracious history, we do not care a
whiff of tobacco-smoke, if the incredulous and the
critics believe not one word of it. We have fortified
ourself in the outset, like one when he putteth on his
armor for the battle, with a quotation from this sweet

poet of fairy land, and another from the pen, dipped
in Hybla, of this great man and learned historian, and
feel that confidence within, which inspireth courage,
and that will enable us to hold out stoutly to the last.

It was late one August day, after a fruitless hunt
for game through the wild ravines and along the
heights of “Bull Hill,” that emerging from a forest of
oak and larch, I found myself upon the summit of the
lofty cliff, which, with a sheer fall of a thousand feet
to the verdant plateau beneath, terminates the range
of eastern highlands above West Point, to the south.
The wide and glorious scenes that burst upon my
sight, fixed me like a statue. The Hudson lay at my
feet, completely land-locked—a lake sleeping among
mountains—looking like a mirror of polished steel.
Old Cro'nest lifted his “shaggy breast” from its
bosom, and hid his hoary head in a cloud which had
lazily rolled half-way down his sides. West Point,
with its lovely plain, its snowy tents, its charming
villas, seemed like a picture done by a lady's fingers,
so delicate was the pencilling of each outline, so exquisite
the play of lights and shadows. From the
height above, “Old Put,” looked down with a protecting
air—with his hoary front and war-worn look
—a fine feature in the far and varied scene. At my
feet lay the quiet and picturesque village of Cold
Spring. Its dusty streets, with a group of children at
play, a goodwife with an apron over her head, crossing
to a neighbor's; a wagon, with a solitary occupant
slowly wending toward his farm; a cow, lounging
homeward at her leisure, whisking her long tail,
and doubtless chewing her cud in peace and contentment;
its little cove sprinkled with boats; a single sloop
unloading at the wharf, where one or two little urchins
are fishing for cat-fish; its chapel, romantically
perched on a rock overhanging the water, all presenting
a lively contrast to the dark, solemn majesty of
the surrounding highlands.

At the very base of the cliff, and seemingly so near
that I could have dropped a St. Nicholas' bon bon
adown its chimneys, in the centre of a wide verdant
plateau, sloping to the water, lay, like a map open
upon my palm, Undercliff, the romantic seat o
General —, with its noble villa, its gardens, its
fountains, its pleasant groves and its winding avenues,
all exposed, as they would be to the eye of a bird in
its empyrean flight.

There was not a breath of air to fan a lady's cheek,
or stir a child's ringlets. The lake-like Hudson was
a mirror, and old Cro'nest threw his “huge, gray
form,”

A far-extended fleet of vessels was dispersed upon the
water—their idle sails furled to the slender yards, or
drooping gracefully from the masts—waiting the evening
breeze. So clear was the element on which they
were suspended, that beneath each, another was seen,
its ropes, spars, even the sailors moving about, so accurately
copied, that it could not be told from its fellows,
save that the wrong end was upwards. Occasionally,
a light skiff, with a single oarsman, would
shoot from the shore and dart along this mirror, leaving
a widening wake of tiny waves to sport and
glance their little minute in the sun-light. Just before
me, in a romantic inlet, called Kelpie Cove, with a
vast rock lying solitary on its curving beach, a family
of geese, whiter than snow, sailed gracefully along,
wheeling about at times, now facing the land, now the
open river, as if expecting an attack, and were prepared
to meet it.

On looking again toward old Cro'nest, I observed
the fleecy cloud which I had seen sluggishly rolling
down its sides, gradually to assume a darker hue, and
to shoot off from the mountain; and then it slowly

sailed through the air towards the cliff on which I
stood, and nearly on a level with my eye. Soon other
clouds from the hills to the north and west, also came
sweeping majestically along, at the same level, and in
a few moments the summit of the cliff was enveloped,
and the river, with the rich pictures painted on it, gradually
disappeared in a veil of mist, as the scenes on
a magic mirror fade before the waving wand of the
magician.

For a moment I was as bewildered as if sudden
blindness had come upon me. The union of the several
masses, which came trooping along as if to a storm-gathering,
momentarily increased the density of the
cloud, which at first was so rare, that I could see twice
the length of my gun, whereas I now could touch a
tree and not see it. The heavy moisture saturated my
garments, and run off the barrel off my fowling piece
in a trickling stream.

It occurred to me that I must be in the lowest stratum
of the clouds, which, on approaching, did not appear
to hang six feet lower than my position. I remembered
that, not far off, there was a cleft which
with a bold descent, obliquely approached a lower
shelf of the cliff. With some difficulty I found it, and
cautiously descended. I had advanced thirty feet,
and was still within the cloud, which, on touching the
mountain, had settled heavily about its summit, when,
all at once, it rolled up like a curtain, and the scene
below once more burst upon my sight. The under
surface of the clouds stretched away to the opposite
mountain, discolored with a dark, murky hue, and
were rolling and heaving like an inverted sea. They
cast over the landscape a sombre shade, giving a wild
and cheerless aspect to the face of Nature before so
smiling. Through an opening in their dark bosom,
there suddenly shot a bright, glorious beam of golden
sunshine. It fell upon the water where a vessel was
furling her canvass to encounter the brewing tempest,

and gave to the white sails, contrasted with the surrounding
gloom, a lustre as if overlaid with burnished
gold. Slowly passing off from this solitary object,
leaving it, to the eye, almost black from the sudden
contrast, it travelled across the water, gilded the roof
of the Chapel of the Rock, “Our Lady of Cold Spring,”
and then the envious clouds closing up, shut it in, and
it disappeared.

The spot on which I now stood was a shelf, about
thirty feet lower than the highest part of the cliff, and
had the appearance of an excavation made by the
falling of a detached fragment. There remained beneath,
however, no traces of a fragment one twentieth
part large enough to have filled the space. After giving
the subject a moment's thought, and saying, half
aloud, “By St. Nicholas, I should like to know how
this cavity was formed!” I turned to retrace my steps,
and gain the delightful shelter of Undercliff, which,
although it seemed as if I could lay my hand upon its
balconies, it would take a good mile's stout walking
to reach. The thunder already muttered audibly in
the distance, and the clouds threatened every moment
to break out into rain. My situation was one of sublimity,
and I was at one time tempted to remain and
outbreast the storm—companion of the lightning and
thunder; but there was no sublimity in a wet jacket,
and so I shouldered my gun, and turned to go. My
retreat was unexpectedly and strangely intercepted.

On a projecting lap of the rock, and directly in
the narrow path by which I had descended, was seated
a singular looking being, but evidently of flesh and
blood, from the rosy hue of his ample cheeks, and the
energy with which he ejected currents of tobacco-smoke,
now through either orifice of his carbuncled
nose, now through both, now from between his lips,
which quietly closed over the stem of a fair long
pipe, of the days of Peter the Headstrong. Voluminous
brown trunk-hose encased his capacious ribs, and

Flemish boots were rolled around his ample calves. A
green jerkin, of a queer, old-fashioned cut, covered his
upper man, and studiously left open in front, displayed
a broad Flemish ruff, soiled with tobacco-smoke. A
high, peaked hat, briskly cocked in front, and surmounted
by a rusty plume, he wore jauntly on one side of
his head. One hand rested upon an antiquated spy-glass,
which lay across his knees, and he had a cock
in his left eye, as if he was still spying. I should have
mentioned, also, that a brace of enormous pistols,
with rusty locks, and barrels, were stuck in his belt,
and a whinyard, half a fathom in length, hung by his
left thigh. Altogether he was a very formidable and
truculent-looking personage, especially, to be encountered
in so wild a spot.

He permitted me to survey him from head to foot;
while, shutting one eye, he deliberately, with the
other, took the same liberty with me. He then distended
his cheeks with smoke till they were as round
and sleek as a pippin, then emitted it from either corner
of his mouth and both nostrils, and, as it seemed
to me, also from his ears and eye, so multitudinous
were the currents—so dense the volume of smoke that
rolled from him. It soon hid his head, and all but
the tip of his rusty plume, which I could see nodding
at me above it, the twinkling of his gray eye, and the
gleam of his fiery proboscis, which I could discern
glowing through it like the end of a stout, red-hot
poker. He at length spoke, and his voice seemed to
come from the mouth of a speaking-trumpet, though
it had a tone that was meant to be courteous.

“You vas vish, mynheer, how in der duyvil von
rock pe proke vrom de kliff, here, an no pe to de pottom,
dere?”

He then puffed away within his cloud, and seemed
to await my remarks. I was not altogether at my
ease, and was doubtful of my company; I nevertheless
spoke confidently:

“I merely expressed a passing wish,” I said, carelessly;
“but, nevertheless, should be glad to have my
curiosity gratified. You have the advantage of me
with your telescope,” I added, wishing to draw him
out, and to show him that I was nothing dashed at
his sudden appearance and fierce aspect. “I see you
are a judicious rambler. Distant scenery, after the
surprise of the first coup-d-œil, should always be
viewed in detail. For this a spy-glass is most essential.
A happy thought in you, sir.”

“By St. Nicholas, mynheer, I know every shtone
in de Highlants petter nor mine pipe. I hash not put
dish shpy-klass to mine eyes vor more dan two huntret
ant vivteen years.”

“Two hundred and fifteen years!” I repeated with
unmingled astonishment, and a slight degree of alarm,
casting, as I took a step backward, a suspicious glance
at each of his feet, which, much to my relief and gratification,
were, I observed, both well-shaped, and, save
being rather broad and large across the toes, as we
often see those of fat gentlemen, unexceptionable.

He made no reply to my exclamation, but puffed
away in composure and in silence. The sunset gun
from the military post, at this instant reverberated
among the Highlands, starting a thousand echoes,
which grew fainter and fainter as one answered to
the other, till they died away far to the north, like the
distant growling of thunder. Then the hoarse voice
of my companion was heard from the cloud of blue
vapor in which his upper man was enveloped.

“Tunder and blickzens! ven I vaked dese echoesh
de first time two huntret and venty years ago, mit de
guns of de Halve Mane, more nor ten tousant eaglish
vas scared vrom de kliffs! Dere is only dat one left
now!” he said, pointing with a jerk of his spy-glass
to a noble, white-headed eagle, sailing through the air
a hundred feet below us. “Dis gap vas not here den

neider. Dat creat rock dere vas den on dis kliff vere
ve stant.”

He extended the end of his telescope through the
smoke, in the direction of an inlet of the river, which
gracefully curved towards the foot of the cliff, in the
shape of a crescent. Its northern horn terminated in a
bold, rocky headland, extending far into the water; its
southern boundary was a low, verdant tongue of land,
with a shelving, sandy beach, and terminating in a
rude pier-head, crowned by the white parsonage of
the village pastor. On the smooth beach, conspicuous
and alone, reposed a vast rock, or boulder, of many
tons weight, the same I had before noticed. At lowtides
it was many yards from the water, at high-tide
the waves flowed around it. Its shape was irregular.
It lay far from any other rocks, and a third of a mile
from the cliff. Past it wound the road to Fishkill, and
the plateau, which here gently inclined to the beach,
was verdant. Its position there was evidently accidental.
I gazed upon the rocks several seconds, took
its shape in my eye, and turned to apply it mentally
to the cavity in which we stood, yet I could arrive at
no satisfactory result. He saw my perplexity, and
said, coolly:—

“Dat rock was vonce in dis place, mynheer. Ash
you vish to know, I vill tell you de storish.”

“By all means,” I said, forgetting the gathering
storm, the thickening twilight, and the mystery hanging
about my companion, in my curiosity to hear a
veritable legend, from a source seemingly so well entitled
to do it justice. Moreover, if I had desired to
beat a retreat, the antiquated stranger had so completely
monopolised the only avenue of escape with
his bulky form, and seemed so quietly to enjoy his
seat, that I doubt, if I had made the attempt, it would
have succeeded, even if it had been safe, of which I
also have my own opinion. I therefore seated myself
opposite to him, on a fragment of the rock, and prepared

to listen. The elements favored a story of diablerie,
as I anticipated this to be. The lightning
vividly illuminated the vast fields of clouds, and the
thunder bellowed among the opposite mountains, and
rumbled through the long ranges of hills in ceaseless
reverberations. After one or two prefatory whiffs, he
took his pipe from his lips, whereupon the cloud of
smoke slowly ascended from below his face, and mingled
with the cloud a few feet above our heads, displaying
a good-humored physiognomy, with the roysterring,
devil-me-care look of a merry Dutch skipper,
who loves to smoke his pipe, drink schiedam, and tell
a long story. Settling himself more at ease on his
seat, he then commenced his narration, which I give
word for word as he related it, saving here and there
the substitution of the king's English for his peculiar
phraseology.

“That vast and rugged boulder you see in Kelpie
Cove, looking so lonely and so out of place, the fair,
smooth beach, and springing grass around it, goes by
the name of KELPIE ROCK, and, within my memory
was a portion of this cliff. You doubtless may
have heard that from the oldest time, these highlands
were the abode of ogres, kelpies, and other superhuman,
yet earthly beings;—that when they dwelt among
these mountains, a lake, and not, as now, a river,
reflected their huge sides. The lake and highlands,
which shut it in, were also the prison-house of evil
demons, and the dark spirits, who, from time to time,
had rebelled against their master. Here were they
penned up until the time approached that this new
world was to become the inheritance of the children
of the old. Then were they all unbound, for the good
spirit had designed their vast abodes for mortals; but
they murmuring and rebelling at this decree, he bound
them in eternal chains, and confined them in horrid
dungeons, in that adamantine prison, now called the
Palisadoes. They are there walled up to the light of

heaven, and although above the earth are unable to
behold it. There are they doomed to pass their painful
years in hideous clamors and howl and yell away
their dreadful bondage. The giants, ogres, gnomes,
and kelpies, he suffered to remain, yet bound them by
certain laws; then opening the hills that walled it in
toward the south, he let the waters of the lake seek
the distant sea. Fearful was the roar, and loud the
clamor of the imprisoned demons, when, from their
gloomy cells, they heard the roar of its wild waters,
as in one vast flood the unchained lake rolled thundering
past their dark abodes, washing their foundations
for many a league. Now it was that the titans,
the gnomes, the kelpies, the giants, and the ogres, became
greatly enraged at the destruction of their secluded
lake, and this opening of their fearful haunts to
the intrusion of daring mortals. Besides, these malevolent
and awful beings, perhaps you may have
heard that in the mountain opposite, the queen of fairies
holds her elfin court. Fairies, who are beings of
a gentle nature, and favor mortals, and the genii, who
are stern, implacable, and fierce, and hate mankind,
are always hostile toward one another, and let no
chance escape of showing their ill-will. Now, it was,
that after the lake was changed into a river, wide and
vast, as now it rolls, the Europeans had laid their
hands upon this continent as a new and bounteous
gift from nature, and their ships had entered this
river's mouth, that a young fay, called Erlin, a favorite
page of the fairy queen, was swiftly flying through
the air, his wings glittering like silver, for it was a
moonlight night, when he espied a little vessel gliding
along between the river shores, with all its canvass
spread to the favoring breeze. His curiosity at the
novel sight was instantly aroused, for he had never
seen a vessel, and thought, at first, it was a large white
bird. After surveying it curiously for a time, he
folded up his purple wings, and descended like an
arrow. He hovered long above it, with mingled wonder,
fear, and admiration. At length, having gratified
his curiosity, he was about to mount again to the
upper regions of the air, when there appeared upon
the deck a beauteous virgin, her fair head rich with
clustering ringlets of glossy brown; a mouth, dimpled
over with the play of merry smiles; a cheek, in which
the lily and the rose exquisitely were blended; and a
form, for sylph-like symmetry and female grace, he
thought was every whit as perfect as that of fairy
queen. Altogether, he was convinced that she was
the most radiant being he had ever seen, and forthwith
became enamored of her. He hovered around
her, invisible, till he began to fear he should be called
to answer for his prolonged stay, for he was bound on
diplomatic business to an elfin court, far distant, when
the barque of Hendrick Hudson arrested him in his
arrowy flight.”

“Hendrick Hudson!” I exclaimed; “it was then
the vessel of this great navigator?”

“It vas, mynheer,” he answered complacently, and
nodding with the gratified air of a man who has received
a flattering compliment, putting the long stem
of his pipe in his mouth, and taking half a dozen
quick, short whiffs, to keep the fire in the bowl from
going out, “ant te young laty vas hish taughter.”

“I have often heard of Henry Hudson's lovely
daughter,” said I.

“When the Fay Erlin returned to his mistress,” he
continued, after having slowly emitted from one corner
of his mouth a slender thread of smoke, which
curled gracefully upward like a wreath of mist, and
mingled with the cloud, “the queen sharply inquired
why he had lingered on the way. He invented a
ready lie, as pages are used to do, and so for the present,
escaped; for you must know either fay or fairy
who glances on mortal with an eye of love, breaks its
elfin bond, and is, in a manner, guilty of high treason

The penalty of an offence so dire is weighty, and proportioned
to its enormity; the culprit's lamp is extinguished,
which is the same thing as the breaking of
the criminal's sword by a mortal king; and its purple
and silver wings are stained with dark unsightly hues,
which is equivalent to the blotting out of the escutcheon
of an attainted noble. Besides these marks of
degradation, they are also punished by the imposition
of severe and ponderous tasks.

“The little vessel continued slowly to ascend, anchoring
each night with cautious fear, for it was entering
a gloomy region, wild and vast, and all unknown.
The Fay Erlin, impatient to behold once more the fair
and beauteous mortal, who from his faith and sworn
allegiance to his queen, had seduced him, stole from
the court, spread his purple wings, and glancing
through the moonlight like an arrow shot by Dian,
lighted in an instant after on this cliff. From it, as
you can see, the eye in looking south, takes in the
river for many a mile. The white sails of the approaching
vessel glimmering in the distance as the
moon shone down upon them, caught his eager sight.
His little heart bounded wildly with the joy he felt, and
opening wide his plumes, he was about to fly towards
it, when a low, deep muttering, mingled with horrid
sounds, fell upon his ears. He balanced himself on
his half-spread wings and listened to the uproar, which
seemed to come from the bowels of the cliff. This
cliff is hollow, and was then the council chamber
where the fearful beings I have before made mention
of, held their dark and direful consultations, and planned
and plotted mischief against the human race.
Erlin bent his ear an instant to the ground, and boding
danger from their secret councils to the lovely mortal,
he stole softly along, and entering the cave with
noiseless step and wing, beheld them to his wonder, all
in full assembly.

“There was an ogre with a flaming eye, a horrid

aspect, and hideous form, who, in a vast, black cavern
under Old Cro'nest made his abode, growling and
grumbling if the thunder chanced to break his after-dinner
nap, and shake his house. There was a gnome,
to mortal eyes invisible, but whom Erlin saw in all
her fearful power; in whose awful form beauty and
hideousness were strangely blended, whose eyes were
lamps, whose limbs were writhing serpents, whose
wings were like a bat's, whose face and bosom surpassed
in loveliness the loveliest of mortals. There
is a single grotto beneath the cliff in Kosciusco's garden,
now hid from human eye; that was her abode.
There was a kelpie, with a human head, and breast,
shaggy and hideous, and clothed with hair; in size he
was a leviathan. He haunted the rocks and beach of
Kelpie Cove, and lived in caves beneath the water.

“There was a giant, of enormous stature; a long
black beard and a fierce mustache, made his wild aspect
still more fierce. He leaned upon a sapling, torn
up by the roots, which served him both for staff and
weapon. There were besides, whom also Erlin saw,
beings still more wonderful and monstrous both in
shape and size. He gathered from their speech and
clamors, that the rumor of the coming ship had reached
their ears, and that they now were met in council to
devise some present means of averting from their
heads the impending evil.

“`If,' said the ogre, rolling as he spoke, his only
eye, which, set in the middle of his forehead, glared
strangely, all over the assembly, and making most hideous
grimaces, while his voice rumbled like an earth-quake,
`if we permit these blue-eyed mortals to enter
our abodes, our power is gone. The fairies opposite
are troublesome enough to us. I cannot sleep of
moonlight nights for their dancing and capering over
my head. There is the queen's page, Erlin, a mere
hop-o-my-thumb, who loves mischief as he does moon-shine,
shoots his sharp steel arrows into my eye when

I sleep after sun-up, as if he could find no better
mark.'

“`So, ho! grim ogre!' said Erlin to himself; `I owe
you one for that!'

“The gnome then rose, and gleaming with her
lamp-like eyes round upon each one, rested them
upon the ogre as he took his seat, and then spoke in
tones half hissing, like a serpent, and half articulate,
like a sweet female voice.

“`The ogre is right. These mortals must not pass
the old barrier which confined the river when a lake.
The ogre is again right. The fairies are troublesome;
they are always fickle. They may aid the mortals to
spite us whom they hate. There is also an old tradition,

“The giant then rose, shook himself, and in a voice
of thunder delivered the following speech:

“`It is my opinion we destroy these mortals without
delay, lest the fairies put their finger in, and spoil
the pie.'

“The kelpie, in a shrill voice, which sounded like a
horse's neigh, save that it was shriller, also rose to say
that he acquiesced in the general sentiments of his
friends, the honorable members of the council. Just
at this moment, a huge, lazy titan, lounging in the entrance
of the cavern, said that a strange white bird
had lit upon the water. `The Mortals! the mortals!'
was the cry. The council broke up in hurry and confusion,
and the members made for the outlet, so hastily,
that Erlin just escaped, through his great alertness,
from being drawn into the vortex of the ogre's mouth

as he inhaled an immense draught of fresh air, while
rushing from the cave.

“When they gained the summit of the cliff, the adventurous
vessel appeared in open view, bravely
rounding the west point of yonder headland, It was
a fair and novel sight to these gaping, wondering monsters,
to see her glide along like a living creature with
snow-white wings, flinging the foam about her prow,
and leaving a boiling wake stretching far behind.
Erlin, impatient to light upon her deck, did nevertheless
restrain the impulse, and waited unobserved the
motions of the group, himself concealed in the velvet
folds of a mullen leaf.

“The gnome proposed flying from the cliff, lifting
the vessel in mid-air, and dashing it on the rocks.
This was approved unanimously. Erlin gained the
bark before her and balanced himself upon the truck.
The gnome could not raise it an inch, and defeated
flew back again enraged. The ogre was for creating
a storm. The waves began to roar and the winds to
whistle around the lonely bark; but it sailed on unharmed,
for the elf was there perched upon the yard, protecting
his lovely mistress. The giant tore up a vast tree to
hurl at it, but could not lift it from the earth, for Erlin
sat upon it. Great was their rage at these repeated defeats.
They knew their foes, the fairies were at work;
and the prophetic rhymes the gnome had spoken, made
them quake with fear that their time had come. The
kelpie, in his fierce and boundless wrath, struck the
cliff with a violent blow of his hoof and loosened a
huge fragment covered with earth and trees. It was
falling, to be dashed in atoms at the base, when the
titan seized it with both his hands, whirled it round
about his head, with a roar like a hurricane, and hurled
it through the air with deadliest aim toward the
fated vessel now abreast the cliff. Erlin was not prepared
for this, and as he saw the missile fly, roaring
through the air, he uttered a cry of agony. The next

moment, ere it had flown one-half the distance between
the cliff and vessel, he lighted upon it. Instantly
it was arrested in its onward course, and with the
swiftness of a lightning-bolt it descended to the earth,
and buried itself deep in the sand, just on the water's
edge.

“Loud bellowings and wailings filled the air.
Hurled back into their cave by some power invisible,
the hideous monsters who had met in council, were
bound down in chains of adamant and shut up for
ever in the cliff's dark womb. Their howlings are
distinctly heard when the storm against their prison
loudly beats. The thunder never fails to stir their
fierce wrath up, and long and direful are their yells
and groans when thus disturbed in the eternal dungeons
to which the victiories of the fay have doomed
their monstrous race.”

Having finished this wild legend of diablerie, the
narrator rose to his feet, placed his spy-glass beneath
his arm, refilled his waning pipe, from an antiquated
silver tobacco-box, which he drew from a deep pouch
by his left hip, and seemed about to go from whence
he came. I thanked him for his narrative, warmly
expressing my gratification, and then courteously asked
him to whom I was so greatly indebted. He took
his pipe, which he had resumed, from his mouth, and
thus answered me:

“Mortals, after death, do hover over these terrestrial
scenes, pursue those pleasures or those labors, and
mingle in with all those affairs which occupied them
while alive. Departed poets have a region of their
own, inhabiting romantic solitudes, wandering by the
banks of rivulets, and roaming amid sublime scenery,
delighting their souls with the essence of that beauty,
the grosser parts of which were only enjoyed by them
as mortals. Philosophers, statesmen, authors, and all
others have each his own spiritual region, which is, in
a manner, the soul of the sublunary, for it is to the

globe what the soul of man is to his body. It is in
this vast soul, which envelopes the earth, that they pass
their spiritual existence. Nothing is now dark or obscure
to their intellects, nothing beyond the grasp of
their comprehension. All things before hid in mystery
are now clear as the sun, to their spiritual vision.
Navigators, who discover continents, islands, lakes,
and rivers, do, in an especial manner, haunt the scenes
of their earthly fame, and are more immediately their
presiding and protecting genii. All these essences or
spirits, whatever the variety of their several pursuits,
however elevated their rank, are bound to obey the
call of mortals, appear before them in their earthly
form, and answer to all questions when rightly and
sincerely applied to. I am the presiding spirit of this
vast river. You wished for me, and I am here.”

“You are then —”

“Hendrick Hudson.”

A loud clap of thunder at this instant broke above
our heads, while the lightning, which accompanied
rather than preceded it, blinded me for several seconds.
When I recovered the use of my eyes, I looked around
and found myself alone.

Twilight was rapidly breaking into night, the clouds
began to hang down the sides of the mountain as if
heavy with water. Embracing the little of daylight
that yet remained, I succeeded in regaining the villa
of Undercliff, amid tempest of wind and rain, accompanied
by wild flashes of lightning, and appalling
thunder, which rattled among the hills, awakening, as
I now understood the apparent echoes, the howlings
of the troubled spirits confined in their cavernous
bowels.

The next morning the sky being without a cloud,
the atmosphere soft and transparent, the sun bright
and cheerful, and all nature smiling and gay, I sought
the Kelpie Rock. On the south side I discovered to
my entire satisfaction, the deep points of a gigantic

hoof six times the size of a horse's and as plainly to
be seen as the nose on a man's face, which at once
testified to the veracity of the ancient Schipper, and
the genuineness of his wonderful legend.[1]