AN AFTERNOON GATHERING ON THE MALL.
Asia, and especially Japan, have contributed some valuable additions to Central Park’s woods and shrubbery. The most conspicuous of these is the Rose of Sharon, whose pink and white blossoms are the park’s chief floral ornament in the latter days of summer—for it is in spring that most of the other shrubs and creepers flower.
In the spring, indeed, Central Park reaches its acme of natural beauty and artificial attraction. In the spring its drives are thronged by the equipages of the Four Hundred who later in the year are scattered over two or three continents. In the spring the trees and meadows are clothed with a fresh garb of green, and the Park policeman in a new suit of gray, the cynosure of admiring nursemaids. In the spring the wistaria, the honeysuckle, the jasmine, and the guelder rose make the landscape gay with color. In the spring the dogwood, the most beautiful and characteristic of our lesser trees, sends down its falling petals in a snow white shower. In the spring the New Yorker may be pardoned if for once he feels positively poetical as he witnesses in Central Park the annual miracle of nature’s rejuvenation.
THE BRIDGE ACROSS THE STRAIT BETWEEN THE UPPER AND LOWER LAKES.
But more observers’ eyes, probably, are turned upon the driveways and their wonderful parade of vehicles than upon the panorama of wood and meadow. Such a sight as the wheeled procession that pours through the entrance at Fifty Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue cannot be found elsewhere in America, and is indeed only matched by the displays of Rotten Row and the Champs Elysées. Other American cities admittedly look to New York as their leader and mentor in the matter of fine horseflesh and smart equipages. The very latest and handsomest products of the carriage builders’ skill are here to be seen whirling along behind teams whose value represents a small fortune. There comes the banker’s victoria, drawn by a pair of horses whose clock-like gait and well fed aspect of sleekness show that they appreciate their position in the establishment to which they belong. Behind this comes a trim, light phaeton; then a family party in a barouche; these predominating types of vehicle being interspersed with the tall and ostentatious four in hand, the more unconventional buckboard, the natty dogcart, and the democratic park coach, whose passengers take in all the beauties of the scene at twenty five cents a trip.
The bridle path, too, on a sunny afternoon in May, is a spectacle to be remembered. Its pictures come and pass more swiftly than those of the drive, where moderation of speed is a necessity, and is promptly enforced, in the rare cases of its infraction, by the mounted policemen. And, by the way, these sublimated graycoats are themselves worthy of a second glance. Their animals are a really beautiful and well groomed set—most of them bays—and the riders’ horsemanship is of such uniform excellence that a stranger in the park can hardly distinguish one member of the mounted force from another. And in their patrol over fourteen miles of driveway and bridle path their duty is by no means a sinecure. Their courage and promptitude have often been tried by the accidents caused from time to time by untrained horses or reckless or inexperienced drivers and riders. At the season and the hour when it is most frequented, the bridle path is no place for the careless or unskilled horseman. As much space has been given to it as can well be spared, but its width is so comparatively small that at some of the bends serious accidents might easily occur. The rule against riding more than two abreast is a highly necessary one.
The separation of the drives and the bridle paths is a point in which convenience has been subordinated to other considerations. If they lay close together throughout their length, instead of winding through the park on wholly divergent lines, the enjoyment of both riders and drivers would be increased. A radical alteration in the plan of the park, however, would be necessary to effect such a change.
Nearly a quarter of Central Park is occupied by its various bodies of water. These have their ornamental and their practical side. The latter is of course represented by the reservoirs that receive the principal portion of the water supply brought down by the Croton aqueduct. There is a smaller double basin (now being deepened) in the center of the park opposite Eightieth Street, overlooked by the Belvedere, and the main reservoir that fills nearly the whole of the space between Eighty Sixth and Ninety Sixth Streets, and forms the division between the North Park and the South Park. That this big pond, pretty nearly half a mile in length and in width, adds nothing to the attractions of the park, few who have walked or ridden along its border will maintain.