Clinton Street leaves Fulton a little beyond Orange, and passes southward through Brooklyn Heights, being the chief street of the fashionable district. Embowered in trees, handsome churches and residences border it, and Pierrepont, Remsen, Montague and other noted streets extend at right angles from it to the edge of the bluff, where the Heights fall sharply off to the river. Here, at seventy feet elevation, and overlooking the lower level of buildings and piers at the water's edge, are the terraces where the finest residences are located, having a magnificent outlook upon the harbor and New York City beyond. The ships land their cargoes within almost a stone's throw of the palaces. In this district there are several large apartment-houses and various clubs, a statue of Alexander Hamilton adorning the front of the Hamilton Club at Remsen and Clinton Streets. Upon Remsen Street is another noted building, the Congregational "Church of the Pilgrims," a spacious graystone edifice with towers, its most prominent tower and spire being a commanding landmark for vessels sailing up New York Bay. There is let into the outer wall of this church, about six feet above the pavement, a small piece of the original "Plymouth Rock" whereon the Pilgrims in 1620 landed in Massachusetts Bay—a dark, rough-hewn fragment, projecting with irregular surface a few inches from the wall. As an author, lecturer and preacher, the veteran pastor for over a half-century, Dr. Richard Salter Storrs, acquired wide renown. Upon Clinton Street is the elegant Pointed Gothic brownstone St. Ann's Episcopal Church, famous for its choir, and on Montague Street the Holy Trinity Church, its spire rising two hundred and seventy-five feet. But almost everywhere are churches, there being about five hundred in Brooklyn. The noted Pratt Institute is one of the best known charities of the city, founded and endowed by Charles Pratt, an oil prince, as a technical school, its spacious and well-equipped buildings caring for thirty-four hundred students. The object of this noble institution is "to promote manual and industrial education, and to inculcate habits of industry and thrift."
GREENWOOD CEMETERY AND PROSPECT PARK.
A border of tombs almost surrounds Brooklyn, for in the suburbs are the great cemeteries which are the burial-places of both cities. In lovely situations upon the surrounding hills are Greenwood, Cypress Hills, Evergreen, Holy Cross, Calvary, Mount Olivet, The Citizens' Union, Washington and other cemeteries, occupying many hundreds of acres. Of these, the noted Greenwood is the chief, covering some four hundred acres on Gowanus Heights, south of the city. This is a high ridge dividing Brooklyn from the lowlands on the south side of Long Island, and it has elevations giving charming views. The route to it crosses various railroads leading to Coney Island, which is the ultimate objective point of most Brooklyn lines of transit. A neat lawn-bordered road leads up to the magnificent cemetery entrance on Fifth Avenue, an elaborate and much ornamental brownstone structure rising into a central pinnacle over a hundred feet high. This entrance covers two fine gateways, with representations of Gospel scenes, the principal being the Raising of Lazarus and the Resurrection. The grounds display great beauty, the ridgy, rounded hills spreading in all directions, the surface being an alternation of hills and vales, vaults terracing the hillsides, with elaborate mausoleums above and frequent little lakes nestling in the pleasant valleys. Vast sums have been expended on some of the grander tombs, which are upon a scale of great magnificence. The attractive rural names of the walks and avenues, the delicious flowers and foliage, the balmy air, the lakes, valleys and points of beautiful outlook giving grand views over New York Bay and the surrounding country, make Greenwood a park as well as a cemetery, and it is generally admitted to be without a peer. Many costly pantheons and chapels cover the remains of well-known people, and one mausoleum is a large marble church. A three-sided monument of peculiar construction standing on a knoll marks the resting-place of Samuel F. B. Morse, the telegrapher. Horace Greeley's tomb has his bust in bronze on a pedestal. A colossal statue surmounts the grave of the great De Witt Clinton, the Governor of New York who built the Erie Canal and thus secured the commercial supremacy of the city. The romantic career of Lola Montez ended in Greenwood. Commodore Garrison, who was at one time Vanderbilt's rival in steamship management, is interred in a mosque. The tomb of the Steinways is a large granite building. A magnificent marble canopy crowns the Scribner tomb, having beneath it an angel of mercy. There is an appropriate monument to Roger Williams. Here are also buried Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing-machine, Peter Cooper, Henry Ward Beecher, James Gordon Bennett, Henry George and others of fame. The Firemen, the Pilots and the New York Volunteers all have grand monuments, the statue sentinels of the latter overlooking the bay. Among these magnificent sepulchres, probably the most magnificent is that of Charlotte Canda, an heiress, who died in early youth, her fortune being expended upon her tomb.
There is a high lookout upon the eastern border of this attractive place, where the flat land at the base of the ridge spreads for miles away to the sea. The Coney Island hotels, by the ocean side, are dim in the distance, and far over the water the Navesink Highlands close the view beyond Sandy Hook. The many railroads leading to Coney Island can be traced out, as on a map, across the level land. Over on the western side of the cemetery is another lookout, having a broad view of Brooklyn and the harbor, extending to the hills of Staten Island and the distant Jersey lowlands beyond. This is the verge of Gowanus Heights, with the busy commerce of the port spread at its base. It is this magnificent scene which the marble sentinels overlook who are guarding the Volunteers' Monument erected by the city of New York.
Between Greenwood Cemetery and Prospect Park there are various railways, all going to Coney Island, and also the Ocean Parkway, leading thither, a splendid boulevard, two hundred feet wide, and planted with six rows of trees, being flanked on either side by a broad cycle-path. It is laid in a straight line from the southwestern corner of the Park for three miles to the great seaside resort. Prospect Park covers nearly a square mile on an elevated ridge on the edge of Brooklyn, and it has great natural attractions which did not need much change to improve the landscape, while the fine old trees that have been there for centuries are in magnificent maturity. Its woods and meadows, winding roads, lakes and views, combine many charms. On Lookout Hill, rising two hundred feet, the most commanding point, with a view almost entirely around the compass, there is a monument on the slope in memory of the Maryland troops who fell in the Revolutionary battle of Long Island, fought in August, 1776, on these heights. The Park is ornamented with several statues, including one of Abraham Lincoln, and there is a bust of John Howard Payne, the author of Home, Sweet Home. It has an extensive lake, a deer preserve, children's playgrounds, and a concert grove and promenade. The main entrance is a fine elliptical plaza with a splendid fountain, and adorned by a Memorial Arch to the Soldiers and Sailors of the Civil War, and a statue of James Stranahan, a venerable citizen of Brooklyn, foremost in all its good works, who died in 1898. The Brooklyn Institute, an academy of art and science with a large membership, has a large building in the Park.
CONEY ISLAND.
Pretty much all routes through Brooklyn, as already indicated, lead to Coney Island, the barren strip of white sand, clinging to the southern edge of Long Island, about ten miles from New York, which is the objective point of the populace when in sweltering summer weather they crave a breath of sea air. The antiquarians of the island insist that it was the earliest portion of these adjacent coasts discovered, and tell how Verrazani came along about 1529 and found this sand-strip, and how Hudson, nearly a century later, held conferences with the Indians on the island. But however that may be, its wonderful development as a summer resort has only come since the Civil War. It has a hard and gently-sloping beach facing the Atlantic, and can be so easily and cheaply reached, by so many routes on land and water, that it is no wonder, on hot afternoons and holidays, the people of New York and Brooklyn go down there by the hundreds of thousands. Coney Island is about five miles long, and from a quarter-mile to a mile in width, being separated from the adjacent low-lying mainland only by a little crooked creek and some lagoons. It has two bays deeply indented behind it, Gravesend Bay on the west and Sheepshead Bay on the east. The name is derived from Cooney Island, meaning the "Rabbit Island," rabbits having been the chief inhabitants in earlier days. The Coney Island season of about a hundred days, from June until September, is an almost uninterrupted festival, and nothing can exceed the jollity on these beaches, when a hot summer sun drives the people down to the shore to seek relief and have a good time. They spread over the miles of sand-strip, with scores of bands of music of varying merit in full blast, minstrel shows, miniature theatres, Punch and Judy, merry-go-rounds and carrousels, big snakes, fat women, giant, dwarf, midget and pugilistic exhibitions, shooting-galleries, concerts, circuses, fortune-tellers, swings, toboggan slides, scenic railways, and myriads of other attractions; lakes of beer on tap, with ample liquids of greater strength; and everywhere a good-humoured crowd, sight-seeing and enjoying themselves, eating, drinking, and very numerously consuming the great Coney Island delicacy, "clam-chowder." To the clam, which is universal and popular, the visitors pay special tribute. This famous bivalve is the Mya Arenaria of the New England coast, said to have been for years the chief food of the Pilgrim fathers. Being found in abundance in all the neighboring waters, it is served in every style, according to taste. As the Coney Island "Song of the Clam" has it:
"Who better than I? in chowder or pie,
Baked, roasted, raw or fried?
I hold the key to society,