“A sloop was at length chosen; but she had yet to complete her freight and secure a sufficient number of passengers.  Days were consumed in drumming up a cargo.  This was a tormenting delay to me, who was about to make my first voyage, and who, boy-like, had packed my trunk on the first mention of the expedition.  How often that trunk had to be unpacked and repacked before we sailed!

“At length the sloop actually got under way.  As she worked slowly out of the dock into the stream, there was a great exchange of last words between friends on board and friends on shore, and much waving of handkerchiefs when the sloop was out of hearing.

“...  What a time of intense delight was that first sail through the Highlands!  I sat on the deck as we slowly tided along at the foot of those stern mountains, and gazed with wonder and admiration at cliffs impending far above me, crowned with forests, with eagles sailing and screaming around them; or listened to the unseen stream dashing down precipices; or beheld rock, and tree, and cloud, and sky reflected in the glassy stream of the river....

“But of all the scenery of the Hudson, the Kaatskill Mountains had the most witching effect on my boyish imagination.  Never shall I forget the effect upon me of the first view of them predominating over a wide extent of country, part wild, woody, and rugged; part softened away into all the graces of cultivation.  As we slowly floated along, I lay on the deck and watched them through a long summer’s day, undergoing a thousand mutations under the magical effects of atmosphere; sometimes seeming to approach, at other times to recede; now almost melting into hazy distance, now burnished by the hazy sun, until, in the evening, they printed themselves against the glowing sky in the deep purple of an Italian landscape.”

CHAPTER III

A TRIP TO MONTREAL

Soon after returning from this trip, Irving became a clerk in the law office of a Mr. Hoffman.  There was a warm friendship between him and Mr. Hoffman’s family.  Mrs. Hoffman was his lifelong friend and, as he afterwards said, like a sister to him; and he finally fell in love with Matilda, one of Mr. Hoffman’s daughters, and was engaged to be married to her.  Her sad death at the age of seventeen was perhaps the greatest unhappiness of his life.  He never married, but held her memory sacred as long as he lived.

In 1803 he was invited by Mr. Hoffman to go with him to Montreal and Quebec.  Irving kept a journal during this expedition, and it shows what a rough time travelers had in those days.

Part of the way they sailed in a scow on Black River.  They were partially sheltered from the rain by sheets stretched over hoops.  At night they went ashore and slept in a log cabin.

One morning after a rainy night they awoke to find the sky clear and the sun shining brightly.  Setting out again in their boat, they were soon surprised by meeting three canoes in pursuit of a deer.