The Illuminations on Water and Land.
For the rest of those afloat it was a sail nearly to Yonkers before the last of the United States battleships was passed, and the turning point reached. By this time the evening was falling rapidly in a glory of crimson sunset that made the river glow as paven with red gold, the Palisades rising black as ebony against the west, and the lingering rays falling in warm ivory and pale pink on the white house-line of New York on its hills farther down the stream. But as the light paled, and the shadows filled with purple and presently when a misty greyness was coming over all on land and water, another glory began which was to gladden and grow until it made a great picture that perhaps the world had never seen and certainly the world of Columbus and Hudson and Fulton had never witnessed before—the festal lighting on water and on land.
Lucky were those in that day procession up the river whose craft could linger in the upper reaches until all the glory of night was ablaze. The warships outlined in strings of electric lamps, the lights on the moving craft, the monuments on shore brilliantly set off with skeleton tracing of light, building after building on both sides of the river glowing with electric lights in every fantasy of device and color, the houses one and all lit up at every window, the tower of Madison Square one mighty shaft of light. Farther South the sky-piercing tower of the Singer building like a glowing mural crown dominated the vast field of the twenty-story office buildings, all illuminated to their roofs. In the harbor the Liberty Statue shone in an island of light. Up the East River a special glory was seen with its three great bridges spanning the stream in glittering cobwebs of light that hung between the water and the sky. All the buildings on the New York and Brooklyn shores swam in a shimmering golden haze. The avenues were long lines of diamonds strung from pillar to pillar, and then to the north a wonderful aurora of fan-spread search-lights, and from a dozen points over the island and the rivers spouted, great fountains of fireworks storming the heavens with jets of colored fire. It was fascinating, intoxicating, and the millions watched it in a daze from nightfall until midnight when at last the city and the river were left to the stars.