31 - Light House, near Caldwell Landing

Summary

This picturesque object is seen to great effect by the passenger in the evening boat from New York to Newburgh. Leaving the city at five in the summer afternoon, she makes the intervening forty miles between that hour and twilight; and while the last tints of the sunset are still in the sky, the stars just beginning to twinkle through the glow of the west, the bright light of this lofty beacon rises up over the prow of the boat, shining apparently on the very face of the new-starred heaven. As he approaches, across the smooth and still purpled mirror of the silent river is drawn a long and slender line of light, broken at the foot of the beacon by the mild shrubbery of the rock on which it stands; and as he rounds the point, and passes it, the light brightens and looks clearer against the darker sky of the east, while the same cheering line of reflection follows him on his way, and is lost to sight as he disappears among the mountains.

The waters of the river at this point were the scene of the brief and tragic drama enacted so fatally by poor André. Four or five miles below stands Smith's house, where he had his principal interview with Arnold, and where the latter communicated to him his plans for the delivery of West Point into the hands of the English, and gave him the fatal papers which proved his ruin.