2-752-345 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Ramapo River', 1874. View of the Ramapo, a tributary of the Pompton River, northern New Jersey, USA. '...the Ramapo offers many attractions. The stream, in its numerous curves, constantly presents fresh points of view. The hills - sometimes abrupt, sometimes rolling - here and there recede from the river's edge, leaving grassy fields or rocky plateaus, on either of which it is a pleasure to stroll...The sails on the river add to the variety of the scene; the fisherman's row-boat imparts to it notable life and vivacity; and the wreathed smoke of the locomotive does not seem wholly inharmonious. In fact, the railroad-train has become quite a prominent incident in our river-scenery. Railroads naturally follow the river-courses, and they give to the wildest and most unfrequented valleys a touch of human life and interest which greatly adds to the effect of mountain solitudes'. From "Picturesque America; or, The Land We Live In, A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of the Mountains, Rivers, Lakes...with Illustrations on Steel and Wood by Eminent American Artists" Vol. II, edited by William Cullen Bryant. [D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1874]