Rondout and Kingston 467
its incorporation and sixty-three after the great fire, the total population of Kingston and Rondout together did not much exceed fifty-five hundred souls. In the succeeding thirty years, however, the population had increased fourfold, while the population of Ulster Count}' in the same ]3eriod had doubled. This increase was in |)art due to the development of certain industries, ])articularly the trade in bluestone and flagging, which amounts to millions of dollars every year. The terminus of the Delaware and Hudson Canal, the city finds itself again possessed of the unique advantages that the creek presented at an earlier and more primiti\'e stage of its histor}'. Coal, lime, cement, stone and gravel, and agricultural products now make the business of its wharves and warehouses, where formerh' the skins of bear and beaver and the product of scattered mills formed the sta]:)les of trade.
The shipments of old ma\' ha\'e been calculated by thousands of ])ounds annually; those of to-day are estimated at millions of tons. The hills that face Rondout Creek are honeycombed with galleries from wliich cement is obtained. The ciuarries for bluestone and flagging extend for nearly ninety miles through the region of countr\' for which the canal furnishes the outlet. Besides this, several railroads either touch at this place or make it a terminal station, and a fleet of steamboats equal in number to a combination of all others that ply upon the upper river give the front of the city a metropolitan aspect. Of course, on the