The sailor ashore in New York—and how many, many thousands visit it every year!—will find much to note. The public buildings of the great city are not remarkable; but the one great street, Broadway, which is about eight miles long, and almost straight, is a very special feature. Unceasing throngs of busy men and women, loungers and idlers, vehicles of all kinds, street cars, omnibuses, and carriages—there are no cabs hardly in New York—pass and re-pass from early morn to dewy eve, while the shops, always called “stores,” rival those of the Boulevards or Regent Street. Some of the older streets were, no doubt, as Washington Irving tells us, laid out after the old cow-paths, as they are as narrow and tortuous as those of any European city. The crowded state of Broadway at certain points rivals Cheapside. The writer saw in 1867 a light bridge, which spanned the street, and was intended for the use of ladies and timid pedestrians. When, in 1869, he re-passed through the city it had disappeared, and on inquiry he learnt the reason. Unprincipled roughs had stationed themselves at either end, and levied black-mail toll on old ladies and unsophisticated country-people.
So extreme is the difference between the intense heat of summer and the equally intense cold of winter in New York, that the residents regularly get thin in the former and stout in the latter. And what a sight are the two rivers at that time! Huge masses of ice, crashing among themselves, and making navigation perilous and sometimes impossible, descending the stream at a rapid rate; docks and slips frozen in; the riggings and shrouds of great ships covered with icicles, and the decks ready for immediate use as skating-rinks. The writer crossed in the ferry-boat from Jersey City to New York, in January, 1875, and acquired a sincere respect for the pilot, who wriggled and zig-zagged his vessel through masses of ice, against which a sharp collision would not have been a joke. When, on the following morning, he left for Liverpool, the steamship herself was a good model for a twelfth-night cake ornament, and had quite enough to do to get out from the wharf. Five days after, in mid-Atlantic, he was sitting on deck in the open air, reading a book, so much milder at such times is it on the open ocean.
BROOKLYN BRIDGE.
But our leave is over, and although it would be pleasant to travel in imaginative company up the beautiful Hudson, and visit one of the wonders of the world—Niagara, to-day a mere holiday excursion from New York—we must away, merely briefly noting before we go another of the wonders of the world, a triumph of engineering skill: the great Brooklyn bridge, which connects that city with New York. Its span is about three-quarters of a mile; large ships can pass under it, while vehicles and pedestrians cross in mid-air over their mast tops, between two great cities, making them one. Brooklyn is a great place for the residences of well-to-do New Yorkers, and the view from its “Heights”—an elevation covered with villas and mansions—is grand and extensive. Apart from this, Brooklyn is a considerable city, with numerous churches and chapels, public buildings, and places of amusement.
FERRY-BOAT, NEW YORK HARBOUR.
Halifax is the northernmost depôt of the whole West India and North American Station, and is often a great rendezvous of the Royal Navy. It is situated on a peninsula on the south-east coast of Nova Scotia, of which it is the capital. Its situation is very picturesque. The town stands on the declivity of a hill about 250 feet high, rising from one of the finest harbours in the world. The city front is lined with handsome wharfs, while merchants’ houses, dwellings, and public edifices arrange themselves on tiers, stretching along and up the sides of the hill. It has fine wide streets; the principal one, which runs round the edge of the harbour, is capitally paved. The harbour opposite the town, where ships usually anchor, is rather more than a mile wide, and after narrowing to a quarter of a mile above the upper end of the town, expands into Bedford Basin, a completely land-locked sheet of water. This grand sea-lake has an area of ten square miles, and is capable of containing any number of navies. Halifax possesses another advantage not common to every harbour of North America: it is accessible at all seasons, and navigation is rarely impeded by ice. There are two fine lighthouses at Halifax; that on an island off Sambro Head is 210 feet high. The port possesses many large ships of its own, generally employed in the South Sea whale and seal fishery. It is a very prosperous fishing town in other respects.
The town of Halifax was founded in 1749. The settlers, to the number of 3,500, largely composed of naval and military men, whose expenses out had been paid by the [pg 199]British Government to assist in the formation of the station, soon cleared the ground from stumps, &c., and having erected a wooden government house and suitable warehouses for stores and provisions, the town was laid out so as to form a number of straight and handsome streets. Planks, doors, window-frames, and other portions of houses, were imported from the New England settlements, and the more laborious portion of the work, which the settlers executed themselves, was performed with great dispatch. At the approach of winter they found themselves comfortably settled, having completed a number of houses and huts, and covered others in a manner which served to protect them from the rigour of the weather, there very severe. There were now assembled at Halifax about 5,000 people, whose labours were suddenly suspended by the intensity of the frost, and there was in consequence considerable enforced idleness. Haliburton[116] mentions the difficulty that the governor had to employ the settlers by sending them out on various expeditions, in palisading the town, and in other public works.
In addition to £40,000 granted by the British Government for the embarkation and other expenses of the first settlers, Parliament continued to make annual grants for the same purpose, which, in 1755, amounted to the considerable sum of £416,000.