The surprise and dismay excited among the crews of these
vessels by the appearance of the steamer was extreme. These simple
people, the majority of whom had heard nothing of Fulton's experiments,
beheld what they supposed to be a huge monster, vomiting fire and smoke
from its throat, lashing the water with its fins, and shaking the river
with its roar, approaching rapidly in the very face of both wind and
tide. Some threw themselves flat on the deck of their vessels, where
they remained in an agony of terror until the monster had passed, while
others took to their boats and made for the shore in dismay, leaving
their vessels to drift helplessly down the stream. Nor was this terror
confined to the sailors. The people dwelling along the shore crowded the
banks to gaze upon the steamer as she passed by. A former resident of
the neighborhood of Poughkeepsie thus describes the scene at that place,
which will serve as a specimen of the conduct of the people along the
entire river below Albany:
"It was in the early autumn of the year 1807 that a knot of villagers
was gathered on a high bluff just opposite Poughkeepsie, on the west
bank of the Hudson, attracted by the appearance of a strange,
dark-looking craft, which was slowly making its way up the river.
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