From a thousand miles of streets the aur? ')f its multitudinous life seems to rise, and the hum ■ traffic and the murmur of its striving never ceases On the river the scene changes ii oat not in character. The boats cross and recross t.^ch other's courses like mammoth shuttles, w^eaving a pattern of a marvellous ta]:)estry, and the e\-e is bewildered in tr\'ing to follow their intricate paths or wearies with their imresting procession. Hidden by this metropolis of to-day, of which the eye takes cognisance, there is a quaint little city, visible only to the imagination, contracted, unalterable, and peopled with ghosts.
20 The Hudson River
It is the city of the Knickerbockers, where the apocryphal burghers that Irving created were supposed to have puffed lazih* upon their long pipes till the smoke obscured Communipaw, on the opposite shore. It is the city that hid behind palisades for fear of Indian neighbours; that fretted and prospered under Dutch and English governors; that in j^lace of stock exchanges and produce exchanges raised live stock and farm produce: the little city that entertained the first representative Congress in the Colonies and inaugurated the first President of the new Republic. Fort Amsterdam, at first a very rude affair of logs, but no doubt a sufficient defence against the simple weapons of the savages, was remodelled and rebuilt almost as many times as the little city had new governors. For this reason the earlier descriptions and pict-
A BIT OF OLD NEW YORK