This ignorance, for it is ignorance rather than prejudice, results from the mania for European travel, which was formerly a characteristic of the Atlantic States, but which of recent years has, like civilization, traveled West.  The Eastern man who has made money is much more likely to take his family on a European tour than on a trip through his native country.  He incurs more expense by crossing the Atlantic, and although he adds to his store of knowledge by traveling, he does not learn matter of equal importance to him as if he had crossed the American continent and enlightened himself as to the men and manners in its different sections and States.

Nor is this sectional ignorance confined, by any means, to the East.  People in the West are apt to form an entirely erroneous impression of Eastern States.  The word, “East,” to them conveys an impression of dense population, overcrowding, and manufacturing activity.  That there are thousands and thousands of acres of scenic grandeur, as well as farm lands, in some of the most crowded States, is not realized, and that this is the case will be news to many.  Last year a party of Western people were traveling to New York, and, on their way, ran through Pennsylvania, around the picturesque Horse Shoe Curve in the Alleghenies, and along the banks of the romantic and historic Susquehanna.  A member of the party was seen to be wrapped in thought for a long time.  He was finally asked what was worrying him.

“I was thinking,” was his reply, “how singular it is that the Republican party ran up a majority of something like a hundred thousand at the election, and I was wondering where all the folks came from who did the voting.  I haven’t seen a dozen houses in the last hour.”

Our friend was only putting into expression the thought which was indulged in pretty generally by the entire crowd.  Those who were making the transcontinental trip for the first time marveled at the expanse of open country, and the exquisite scenery through which they passed; and they were wondering how they ever came to think that the noise of the hammer and the smoke of the factory chimney were part and parcel of the East, where they knew the money, as well as the “wise men,” came from.  The object of this book being to present some of the prominent features of all sections of the United States, it is necessary to remove, as far as possible, this false impression; and in order to do so, we propose to give a brief description of the romantic and historic River Hudson.  This river runs through the great State of New York, concerning which the greatest ignorance prevails.  The State itself is dwarfed, in common estimation, by the magnitude of its metropolis, and if the Greater New York project is carried into execution, and the limits of New York City extended so as to take in Brooklyn and other adjoining cities, this feeling will be intensified, rather than otherwise.

But “above the Harlem,” to use an expression so commonly used when a political contest is on, there are thousands of square miles of what may be called “country,” including picturesque mountains, pine lands which are not susceptible of cultivation, and are preserved for recreation and pleasure purposes, and fertile valleys, divided up into homesteads and farms.