=Trophy Point=, on the north side of the plain, overlooking the river and commanding a majestic view of the Hudson and the city of Newburgh, has been likened by European travelers to a view on Lake Geneva.  Here are the “swivel clevies” and 16 links of the old chain that was stretched across the river at this point.  The whole chain, 1,700 feet long, weighing 186 tons, was forged at the Sterling Iron Works, transported to New Windsor and there attached to log booms and floated down the river to this point.

=Old Fort Putnam= was erected in 1778 by the 5th Massachusetts Regiment under the direction of Col.  Rufus Putnam.  It was originally constructed of logs and trees with stone walls on two sides to defend Fort Clinton on the plain below.  It was garrisoned by 450 men, and had 14 guns mounted.  In 1787 it was dismantled, and the guns sold as old iron.  Its brick arch casements overgrown with moss, vines, and shrubbery are crumbling away, but are well worth a visit.  It is 495 feet above the Hudson.  A winding picturesque carriage road leads up from the plain, and the pedestrian can reach the summit in 20 minutes.  On clear days the Catskill Mountains are visible.

=Fort Clinton=, in the northeast angle of the plain, was built in 1778 under the direction of the Polish soldier, Kosciusko.  Sea Coast Battery is located on the north waterfront, Siege Battery on the slope of the hill below the Battle Monument.  Targets for the guns on both batteries are on the hillside about a mile distant.  Battery Knox, which overlooks the river, was rebuilt in 1874 on the site of an old revolutionary redoubt.

* * *

  Bright are the moments link’d with thee,
    Boast of a glory-hallowed land! 
  Hope of the valiant and the free,
    Home of our youthful soldier band!

  Anonymous.

* * *

While Fort Putnam was being built Washington was advised that Dubois’s regiment was unfit to be ordered on duty, there being “not one blanket in the regiment.  Very few have either a shoe or a shirt, and most of them have neither stockings, breeches, or overalls.  Several companies of inlisted artificers are in the same situation, and unable to work in the field.”

What privations were here endured to establish our priceless liberty!  It makes better Americans of us all to turn and re-turn the pages of the real Hudson, the most picturesque volume of the world’s history.

West Point during the Revolution was the Gibraltar of the Hudson and her forts were regarded almost impregnable.  Fort Putnam will be rebuilt as an enduring monument to the bravery of American soldiers.

The best way to study West Point, however, is not in voluminous histories or in the condensed pages of a guide book, but to visit it and see its real life, to wander amid its old associations, and ask, when necessary, intelligent questions, which are everywhere courteously answered.  The view north seen in a summer evening, is one long to be remembered.  In such an hour the writer’s idea of the Hudson as an open book with granite pages and crystal book-mark is most completely realized as indicated in the Highland section of his poem, “The Hudson”: