No signs of human thrift appeared to check the delicious wildness of Nature, who here reveled in all her luxuriant variety.

Those hills, now bristled like the fretful porcupine, with rows of poplars (vain upstart plants! minions of wealth and fashion!), were then adorned with the vigorous natives of the soil--the lordly oak, the generous chestnut, the graceful elm--while here and there the tulip-tree reared its majestic head, the giant of the forest.

Where now are seen the gay retreats of luxury--villas half buried in twilight bowers, whence the amorous flute oft breathes the sighings of some city swain--there the fish-hawk built his solitary nest, on some dry tree that overlooked his watery domain.

The timid deer fed undisturbed along those shores now hallowed by the lover's moonlight walk, and printed by the slender foot of beauty; and a savage solitude extended over those happy regions, where now are reared the stately towers of the Joneses, the Schermerhornes, and the Rhinelanders.
Thus gliding in silent wonder through these new and unknown scenes, the gallant squadron of Pavonia swept by the foot of a promontory, which strutted forth boldly into the waves, and seemed to frown upon them as they brawled against its base.

This is the bluff well known to modern mariners by the name of Gracie's Point, from the fair castle which, like an elephant, it carries upon its back.