CHAPTER VII
GLIMPSES ALONG THE HUDSON
NEW YORK CITY
You might as well leave France without seeing Paris as to travel through the East and not make a visit to New York. But there is so much to see in this great city that if you have not decided before coming what you wish to see you will miss many places of interest.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art should be visited, for it contains the greatest art collection in America. It is located within the borders of Central Park, its principal entrance being on Fifth Avenue, between Eighty-second and Eighty-third streets. A trip to Bronx park, where the beautiful botanical and zoological gardens are located, should not be missed. It is watered throughout its length by the Bronx river and is one of the most beautiful parks in existence.
As we crossed the ferry over to this wonderful city we thought how scarcely more than three centuries ago, when Paris and London had been great for a thousand years, New York City with its wonderful buildings rising before us was only a little wooded island with here and there scattered tepees, and in place of magnificent avenues and boulevards were found morasses crossed by streams and presided over by wild beasts.
Civilization was old in Europe before Henry Hudson appeared on this beautiful river.
Some one has described New York as a chaotic city, where huge masses of masonry and iron rise mountain high with no relationship existing between any of the structures. One views their stupendous forms as he does the mountains along the Hudson. "They are serrated, presenting ragged, irregular outlines, which are lost in the accidental sky-line, giving one at once the impression of power, wealth, and aggressiveness." The vast, impenetrable wall of solid masonry along the river is almost as wonderful as the Palisades.
The magnetic attraction of such an enormous amount of steel concentrated in so small a space is said to be so great that it frequently varies the points of the compass on boats in the harbor as much as seven degrees. Here rises the Woolworth building, towering seven hundred fifty feet above the level of the street. It is the highest inhabited structure ever built by man.
How the ceaseless activity and seemingly untiring energy of this great city thrills you! Here the sound of traffic rises continually, not unlike the booming breakers of the ocean. Here ebb and flow those vast throngs of humanity, drawn irresistibly by some compelling force like the tides of the ocean. Think of the lonely hearts among such a throng of people. Think, too, how many hunger while the wharves may be choked with food. "What lives and fates are foreshadowed here." What great souls have toiled and striven and perhaps died unknown to the world.