There Were Very Few Signs Of
Cultivation; The Banks Of The Hudson Are Barren In All But Beauty.
The
river is a succession of small wild lakes, connected by narrow reaches,
bound for ever between abrupt precipices.
There are lakes more beauteous
than Loch Katrine, softer in their features than Loch Achray, though like
both, or like the waters which glitter beneath the blue sky of Italy.
Along their margins the woods hung in scarlet and gold - high above towered
the purple peaks - the blue waters flashed back the rays of a sun shining
from an unclouded sky - the air was warm like June - and I think the
sunbeams of that day scarcely shone upon a fairer scene. At mid-day the
Highlands of Hudson were left behind - the mountains melted into hills - the
river expanded into a noble stream about a mile in width - the scarlet
woods, the silvery lakes, and the majestic Catsgills faded away in the
distance; and with a whoop, and a roar, and a clatter, the cars entered
into, and proceeded at slackened speed down, a long street called Tenth
Avenue, among carts, children, and pigs.
True enough, we were in New York, the western receptacle not only of the
traveller and the energetic merchant, but of the destitute, the
friendless, the vagabond, and in short of all the outpourings of Europe,
who here form a conglomerate mass of evil, making America responsible for
their vices and their crimes. Yet the usual signs of approach to an
enormous city were awanting - dwarfed trees, market-gardens, cockney
arbours, in which citizens smoke their pipes in the evening, and imagine
themselves in Arcadia, rows of small houses, and a murky canopy of smoke.
We had steamed down Tenth Avenue for two or three miles, when we came to a
standstill where several streets met. The train was taken to pieces, and
to each car four horses or mules were attached, which took us for some
distance into the very heart of the town, racing apparently with omnibuses
and carriages, till at last we were deposited in Chambers Street, not in a
station, or even under cover, be it observed. My baggage, or "plunder" as
it is termed, had been previously disposed of, but, while waiting with my
head disagreeably near to a horse's nose, I saw people making distracted
attempts, and futile ones as it appeared, to preserve their effects from
the clutches of numerous porters, many of them probably thieves. To judge
from appearances, many people would mourn the loss of their portmanteaus
that night.
New York deserves the name applied to Washington, "the city of magnificent
distances." I drove in a hack for three miles to my destination, along
crowded, handsome streets, but I believe that I only traversed a third
part of the city.
It possesses the features of many different lands, but it has
characteristics peculiarly its own; and as with its suburbs it may almost
bear the name of the "million-peopled city," and as its growing influence
and importance have earned it the name of the Empire City, I need not
apologise for dwelling at some length upon it in the succeeding chapter.
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