VIII.
AROUND THE HARBOR OF NEW YORK.
Hendrick Hudson—The Ship "Half Moon"—Manhattan Island—New Amsterdam—Hudson River—Fire Island—Navesink Highlands—Sandy Hook—Liberty Statue—Governor's Island—Jersey City—Hoboken—Weehawken—The Kills—Perth Amboy—Staten Island—New Dorp—Commodore Vanderbilt—Hackensack River—Passaic River—Paterson—Newark—Elizabeth—Rahway—Raritan River—New Brunswick—Battle of Monmouth—Molly Pitcher—Greater New York—Battery Park—Bowling Green—Broadway—Trinity Church—Famous and Sky-Scraping Buildings—Wall Street—National City Bank—St. Paul's Church—City Hall Park—Chemical Bank—Dry Goods District—Cooper Institute—Peter Stuyvesant—Union Square—Tammany Hall—Madison Square—Fifth Avenue—Washington Square—Little Church Around the Corner—Murray Hill—John Jacob Astor—Alexander T. Stewart—Fifth Avenue Architecture—The Vanderbilts—New York Public Library—Famous Churches—Jay Gould—Metropolitan Museum—Central Park—Museum of Natural History—Morningside Park—Riverside Park—Spuyten Duyvel Creek—Battle of Harlem Heights—Fort Washington—Morrisania—Croton Aqueducts—High Bridge—The Bronx—Van Cortlandt Park—Bronx Park—Pelham Bay Park—Hunter's Island—East River and its Islands—Hell Gate—Brooklyn Bridge—City of Churches—Brooklyn Development—Fulton Street—Brooklyn Heights—Plymouth Church—The Beecher Family—Church of the Pilgrims—Pratt Institute—Greenwood Cemetery—Its Famous Tombs—Ocean Parkway—Prospect Park—Coney Island—Its Constant Festival—Brighton and Manhattan Beaches—View from the Observatory.
HENDRICK HUDSON.
The redoubtable navigator for the Dutch East India Company, Hendrick Hudson, after exploring Delaware Bay, sailed along the New Jersey coast and entered Sandy Hook, discovering, on September 11, 1609, the Hudson River. There is a vague tradition that the first European who saw the magnificent harbor of New York was the Florentine, Verrazani, who came as early as 1524. Hudson was searching for the "Northwest Passage," and when he steered his little ship, the "Half Moon," into the great river, with its swelling tide of salt water, was sure he had found the long-sought route to the Indies. He explored it as far up as the present site of Albany, creating a sensation among the Indians, who flocked to the shores to see the "great white bird," as they called the "Half Moon," because of its wide-spreading sails. He traded with them for tobacco and furs, finding the Lenni Lenapes on the western bank and the Mohicans on the eastern side, and to impress them with his prowess, put them in a great fright by shooting off his cannon. Upon returning from Albany, the Indians gave him a feast on an island, breaking their arrows in token that they meant no treachery. Hudson had a goodly store of seductive "schnapps," and offered them some in return for their hospitality. They examined it closely, smelt it, but passed it along without tasting. Finally one, somewhat bolder, partook, and drinking a good deal, fell in a drunken stupor for several hours. When finally aroused he said the Dutchmen had the strongest water he had ever tasted, and the other Indians then became eager to try the fire-water too, and soon they were all under its influence, and thus became firm friends of the Dutch.
The scene of this great carousal is said to have been the island where is now the city of New York. The Indian word Man-a-tey means "the island," and from this they named the place Man-a-hat-ta-nink, the "island of general intoxication." Ticknor, in his guide-book, gravely tells us that "from the scene of wassail and merriment which followed the meeting of the sailors and the Indians, the latter called the island Manhattan, "the place where they all got drunk." Thus, at the beginning, this noted locality acquired a reputation which many attest as existing with undiminished lustre in maturer years. By way of variety in this connection, it may be related that Washington Irving, in Knickerbocker's veritable history of New York, has this to say: "The name most current at the present day, and which is likewise countenanced by the great historian Vander-Donck, is Manhattan, which is said to have originated in a custom among the squaws, in the early settlement, of wearing men's hats, as is still done among many tribes. 'Hence,' as we are told by an old Governor, who was somewhat of a wag, and flourished almost a century since, and had paid a visit to the wits of Philadelphia, 'hence arose the appellation of man-hat-on, first given to the Indians, and afterwards to the island'—a stupid joke, but well enough for a Governor." Irving continues: "There is another, founded on still more ancient and indisputable authority, which I particularly delight in, seeing it is at once poetical, melodious and significant, and this is recorded in the before-mentioned voyage of the great Hudson, written by Master Juet, who clearly and correctly calls it Manna-hatta, that is to say, the island of Manna, or, in other words, 'a land flowing with milk and honey.'"
NEW AMSTERDAM AND ITS HARBOR.
About five years elapsed after Hudson's discovery before a colony was firmly fixed on Manhattan Island, which, when fairly started in 1614, was a little palisade fort and four small log houses. The Dutch called their possessions the Niew Netherlands, named the colony Nieu Amsterdam, and the land across the East River was known as Nassau, the earliest name of Long Island. Hudson was so impressed with the Highlands and the Catskills, which he passed in exploring the river, that he named it the "River of the Mountains," but this was changed by the Dutch to Mauritius, in honor of Prince Maurice of Nassau. The Indians along the banks called the river Shatemuc and Cahohatatea. The English, shortly after the discovery, began calling it the Hudson River, but later, it was generally styled the North River to distinguish it from the Delaware or South River; and North River is the name now generally used in New York. The Manhattan colony was of slow growth, and the first Dutch Governor sent out was a Westphalian, Peter Minuit, a thrifty old fellow, who, by again making good use of "schnapps," bought the whole of Manhattan Island in 1626 from the Indians for beads and trinkets valued at sixty guilders, about $25. There were a thousand people there in 1644, making the original Dutch aristocracy of the "Knickerbockers," this name being adapted later from Irving, and they impressed their peculiarities upon the early city; but their descendants have largely given place to a newer aristocracy of wealth and an army of immigrants from all races. The last Dutch Governor, Peter Stuyvesant, arrived in 1647, and for protection the colonists had then built a fence across the island along what is now the line of Wall Street. An Indian scare a few years later caused this to be replaced with a wall of cedar palisades, and it ultimately developed into the city wall. Thus enclosed, the Mayor of New Amsterdam was required to walk around the walls every morning at sunrise, unlock the gates and give the keys to the commander of the fort down at the Battery. When the Duke of York's English expedition came over in 1664 and overturned the government of old Stuyvesant, surnamed "Peter the Headstrong," and his Knickerbockers, at the same time changing the city's name to New York, it had three hundred and eighty-four houses, and in 1700 the population had increased to about six thousand. The first English Governor was Sir Edmund Andros.
The remote sources of the Hudson River are in Hamilton and Essex Counties, in the Adirondacks, in northeastern New York State, the highest at four thousand feet elevation above the sea, the head streams being outlets for a large number of highland lakes. The river flows over three hundred miles to the sea, and has few tributaries, the largest being the Hoosac and the Mohawk. Its lower course is a long tidal estuary, the tidal head being at Troy, from whence the fall in level to the ocean is only about five feet. The estuary below Manhattan Island expands into the noble New York harbor, enclosed between Long Island on the east and Staten Island on the west, the latter being the Indian Aquehonga, meaning the "high sandy banks." The harbor entrance from the sea, at Sandy Hook, is eighteen miles below the city. Inside Sandy Hook is the lower bay, of triangular form, extending nine to twelve miles on each side, the Narrows, a deep channel about a mile wide at the northeastern angle, opening into the upper bay, which is an irregular oval, about eight by five miles. This extends northward into the Hudson River, westward into Newark Bay, and has the tidal strait of East River leading north to Long Island Sound, on the eastern side of Manhattan. Within the bays and rivers around New York there are over a hundred miles of available anchorage ground, and the Government is now making a channel to the sea through Sandy Hook bar, forty feet deep at low water.