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Heights rising beyond, while far away over these can be traced the spider-like threads that are interwoven to make the distant elevator standing out against the horizon at Coney Island. Such is the outlook given from our high perch on the southern point of New York over a harbor and commerce that are excelled nowhere in the world.

Then, turning about to get the northward view back over the great city, on either hand the two rivers can be traced, one wide, the other narrow, as they go away, one north, the other north-east. Within their watery embrace is the broadening surface of the town, while its populous suburbs stretch far back from the opposite shores. Thousands of buildings of all conceivable kinds are crowded together, a mass of curious roofs, through the centre of which is cut down the deep, straight fissure of Broadway. Far below, between its bordering rows of tall buildings, the street-cars and wagons and many busy people crowd along, and above rise the huge houses and spires, making the line of the famous street, some of them yet unfinished and having nimble workmen perilously climbing about them to push their structure still farther skyward. Off over the East River the graceful curving cables of the Brooklyn bridge are thrown across, high above all the surroundings, with the solid towers rising above and the vessels moving on the water in full view far below. Steeples, domes, chimneys, turrets, roofs, and steamjets are seen everywhere; and thus stretches northward the vast city until lost in the haze of the horizon, bordered away up the western bank of the Hudson by the distant wall of the Palisades. The elevated trains rattle upon their long lines of rails that can be traced for miles among the mazy labyrinths of houses. The deeply-cut and crooked, narrow streets curve off from our feet through the masses of buildings like trenches, down in the bottom of which the ant-like inhabitants are creeping. Thus, standing upon the highest elevation in lower New York, and with the whistling wind creaking and rattling the strong iron stays of the

tall little tower, yet having its foundations firmly built into the solid rock beneath the level of the river-bed, the varying noises of the traffic and the countless whistles of the river-craft come up to us from all sides to tell of the restless, tireless energy seething below. It is a superb outlook, never to be forgotten, over the greatest city and harbor of the New World.

SAILING DOWN THE BAY.

Let us descend and take a closer view of the harbor that has been thus grandly scanned. On one of the many steamers a brief and pleasant journey can be made down through the Narrows toward Sandy Hook. With a fresh wind blowing in our faces we head for that little opening between the hills making the harbor entrance, and apparently leading only to vacancy. The wake of the vessel is a line of bubbling foam among the watercraft as we pass away from the Battery and behind the lovely foliage of its park see Broadway stretching back through New York. Ahead of us the Narrows seem apparently filled by the yachts that spread their white wings across the distant expanse of the Lower Bay. Gaining speed, we pass upon the one hand the old castle and forts of Governor's Island, and upon the other grandly rises the colossal Statue of Liberty, gaining in grandeur upon the nearer view. Soon we cross below the entrance to East River, spanned above by the great bridge, and then skirt the lines of stores and shipping in front of Brooklyn, which stretches off into Gowanus Bay with its beautiful background of Greenwood Cemetery. We are gliding smoothly over the inner harbor, an irregular, oval-shaped body of water about five miles broad and eight miles long, and ahead of us the pretty hills of Staten Island gradually approach those of Long Island to make the Narrows, each bold shore being covered with villas. We pass the Quarantine Station at Clifton, where the yellow flag warns incoming vessels to

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anchor and await the inspection of the health authorities before they go up to the city. The landing is rather dilapidated, but it has a pleasant background in the garden-environed residence of the doctors, whose certificates give entrance to New York after their brimstone buckets have often gone aboard to provide fumigation as a partial recompense for their fees. The bold bluff stretching southward from the Quarantine rises to the frowning ramparts of Fort Wadsworth, overlooking the Narrows, where the Hudson River has forced a passage through the brokendown mountain-range to the sea. These same ramparts give a glorious view over both the lower and the inner bays that spread from the city down to the distant sandstreak of Sandy Hook. Fort Lafayette rears its deserted red brick walls upon an island in the Narrows, and behind it rise the batteries of Fort Hamilton on the Long Island shore. Thus the fortifications frown from the hill-slopes, and the guns expose their little black muzzles, and, were it not that everything is overrun with weeds and soldiers are scarce, one would suppose that the entrance was effectually guarded.

THE LOWER NEW YORK BAY.

From the Battery down through the Narrows to Sandy Hook is about eighteen miles. With accelerated speed the vessel goes through the attractive pass and enters the Lower Bay. This is a grand harbor-a triangular sheet of water measuring nine to twelve miles on each side and almost completely landlocked. The New Jersey shore makes its southern boundary, stretching westward into Raritan Bay, thrust up into the land between Jersey and Staten Island. The green hills of the island, crowned with villas, make the north-western boundary of the bay. Long Island and the ocean, with the projection of Sandy Hook, are on the eastern side. This magnificent Lower Bay has an anchorage-ground covering eighty-eight square miles. With the

inner harbor and the rivers about one hundred and fifteen square miles of available anchorage are provided-a most admirable roadstead. As we move along, Coney Island gradually unfolds across the waters of Gravesend Bay, outside the Narrows, its huge hotels and elevator and mammoth elephant being in full view. This long strip of sand, with its curious hooked end, is a guard to the Lower Bay, and we approach it from behind. On both sides as the bay broadens the shores recede, and amid the fleets of yachts and vessels of all kinds the steamer heads for Sandy Hook. The freshening wind gives a foretaste of Old Ocean as lingering looks go back toward the receding Narrows. Quickly passing the jutting end of Coney Island and moving out in front of it, the panorama enlarges as the shore spreads away past Brighton and Manhattan Beaches, with their great hotels, and Far Rockaway, which looms in the distance. The elephant, with his surmounting howdah, as we get out in front shows his enormous head in ponderous majesty. But soon Coney Island gradually fades as the route is followed southward toward the Hook.

The Navesink Highlands that come up from the westward partly cross the view ahead, and seem to be suddenly cut down as the land falls away to make the low point running out to form the Hook. The steamers that have gone down ahead of us one after another as they get in behind Sandy Hook turn sharply around with the channel, as its red bordering buoys guide them from the south to the east, and then they begin the long journey over the ocean, each leaving a streak of black smoke carried off before the wind. Looking back beyond the vessel's wake, the dim outline of Coney Island can be traced, with the distant Narrows seeming almost closed and apparently alongside. We have reached the Hook, and find that, though noted, it in reality is not much of a place. A green fringe borders the yellow sandbank, as the end hooks around backward and makes a little harbor, while beyond are the white light

house and the lower beacon-light on the point. There are a few houses and the ruins of an extensive though abandoned fort, partially built upon a plan that was costly, but is now obsolete. The sandy surface is strewn with bursted guns that have been tried at the Government testing-station, which has for many years been located here. Far southward from the Hook the Navesink Highlands stand boldly up, bearing their twin lighthouses that are the first guide to the distant mariner seeking the harbor entrance. The low shores of Long Island are dimly seen as they recede to the north-east. Beyond is the broad Atlantic.

XIII.

STATEN ISLAND.

THE fair island of Aquahonga, as our aboriginal ancestors, the Mohicans, called Staten Island, is always admired by the voyager on New York harbor, but is rarely visited. Its pleasant hill-slopes border the Upper and Lower Bays upon their western side. It has long been a land of seclusion, of sylvan homes, and of lovely views. Recently, however, the restless spirit of Erastus Wiman broke through the bucolic fetters that had bound up its burghers for a century, and, capturing its railways and ferries from the Vanderbilts, he is opening it to the world, and by bringing in the Baltimore and Ohio and Lehigh Valley railroads he intends to develop a vast terminal trade from the West that will fringe its harbor shores with docks and storehouses. They say that, by rights, this ancient island of Aquahonga belongs to New Jersey, but that it was captured by New York. The narrow "kills," stretching for nearly twenty miles from St. George down to Perth Amboy, make the boundary, and that robust Jerseyman, Mr. Cortlandt