The City Of New York Is Built Almost Close To The Water's Edge, With A Broad Levee Or Wharf Running Round A Great Portion Of It.

Its general appearance gives to a stranger an impression of its extent and importance.

It has been aptly and accurately described as a dense pack of buildings, comprising every imaginable variety, and of all known orders of modernized architecture. The tide flows close up to the wharves which run outside of the city, and differs so little in height at ebb or flow, that vessels of the largest class ride, I believe, at all times as safely as in the West India docks in London, or the imperial docks of Liverpool. Here was assembled an incalculable number of vessels of all sizes and all nations, forming a beautiful and picturesque view of commercial enterprise and grandeur, perhaps outvying every other port in the world, not excepting Liverpool itself.

As our vessel could not at once be accommodated with a berth, owing to the crowded state of the harbour, she was moored in the middle of the stream, and being anxious to go on shore, I availed myself of the captain's offer to take me to the landing-place in his gig. We went on shore in an alcove, at the foot of Wall-street, and I experienced the most delightful sensation on once more setting foot on _terra firma_, after our dreary voyage. The day, notwithstanding it was now October, was intensely hot (although a severe frost for two or three days before gave indications of approaching winter), and the streets being unmacadamized, had that arid look we read of in accounts of the plains of Arabia, the dust being quite deep, and exceeding in quantity anything of the kind I had ever seen in European cities: clouds of it impregnated the air, and rendered respiration and sight difficult.

Hundreds of rudely-constructed drays were passing to and fro, heavily laden with merchandize, many of them drawn by mules, and the remainder by very light horses of Arabian build; the heavy English dray horse was nowhere to be seen, the breed as I afterwards learned not being cultivated, from a dislike to its ponderousness.

The lower part of Wall-street presented a busy mart-like appearance, every description of goods being piled heterogeneously before the warehouse-doors of their respective owners in the open thoroughfare, which is at this part very wide. Auctioneers were here busily engaged in the disposal of their merchandise, which comprised every variety of produce and manufacture, home and foreign, from a yard of linsey-woolsey, "hum spun" as they termed it, to a bale of Manchester long cloth, or their own Sea-Island cotton. The auctioneer in America is a curious specimen of the biped creation. He is usually a swaggering, consequential sort of fellow, and drives away at his calling with wondrous impudence and pertinacity, dispensing, all the while he is selling, the most fulsome flattery or the grossest abuse on those who stand around.

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