The Colony of Chinese Farmers, Near the Geographical Centre of New York City.
But the best of these rural parts of town cannot be spied from car-windows, or the beaten paths of travel.
II
Make a journey out through the open country to the southeast of Flushing, past the Oakland Golf Club, and over toward the Creedmoor Rifle Range, after a while turn north and follow a twisting road that leads down into the ravine at the head of Little Neck Bay, where a few of the many Little Neck clams come from. All of these places are well within the eastern boundary of the city, and this little journey will furnish a very good example of a certain kind of rural New York, but only one kind, for it is only one small corner of a very big place.
Working as industrially as the peasants of Europe, blue skirts, red handkerchiefs about their heads....
As soon as you have ridden, or walked—it is better to walk if there is plenty of time—beyond the fine elms of the ancient Flushing streets, you will be in as peaceful looking farming country as can be found anywhere. But the interesting thing about it is that here are seen not merely a few incongruous green patches that happen to be left between rapidly devouring suburban towns—like the fields near Woodside where the German women work—out here one rides through acre after acre of it, farm after farm, mile after mile, up hill, down hill, corn-fields, wheat-fields, stone fences, rail fences, no fences, and never a town in sight, much less anything to suggest the city, except the procession of market-wagons at certain hours, to or from College Point Ferry, and they aren't so conspicuously urban after all.
Remains of a windmill in New York City, Between Astoria and Steinway.