We
Found Hendricks Spring In The Edge Of A Swamp,
Cold, Shallow, About Five Feet In Diameter,
Shaded By Trees, Shrubbery, And Vines, And Fringed
With The Delicate Brake And Fern.
Its waters,
rising within half a mile of Long Lake, and upon
the same summit-level, flow southward to the
Atlantic more than three hundred miles; while
those of the latter flow to the St. Lawrence, and
reach the same Atlantic a thousand miles away
to the far northeast."
Since Dr. Lossing visited the western head of
the Hudson River, the true and highest source
of the stream has probably been settled by a
gentleman possessing scientific acquirements and
inflexible purpose. On the plateau south of
Mount Marcy, State-Surveyor Colvin found
the little Lake Tear-of-the-Clouds to be the
loftiest sheet of water in the state, - four
thousand three hundred and twenty-six feet above
the sea, - and proved it to be the lake-head of
the great river Hudson. A second little pond in
a marsh on a high plateau, at the foot of Mount
Redfield, was also discovered, - "margined and
embanked with luxuriant and deep sphagnous
moss," - which was named by the party Moss
Lake. It was found to flow into the Hudson.
A beautiful little bivalve shell, three-sixteenths
of an inch in diameter, of an undescribed species,
was found in the pellucid water, and thus a new
shell was handed over to conchology, and a new
river source to geography, in the same hour.
This pool is four thousand three hundred and
twelve feet above tide-water, and only a few feet
lower than its sister, Tear-of-the-Clouds - the
highest source of the Hudson.
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