Long prior to that, New York was growing with giant vitality. She possesses, as every great city must possess preëminent advantages for the support of a vast population and the employment of immense industries. If she could not feed a million of men better than Norfolk, Norfolk would be New York and New York Norfolk. If the products of the world were not more economically exchanged across her counter than over that of Baltimore, Baltimore would need to set about building shelter for half a million more heads than sleep there to-night. Perth Amboy was at one time a prominent rival of New York in the struggle for the position of the American Metropolis, and is not New York only because Nature said No!
Let us invite the map to help us in our investigation of New York's claim to the metropolitan rank. There are three chief requisites for the chief city of every nation. It must be the city in easiest communication with other countries,—on the sea-coast, if there be a good harbor there, or on some stream debouching into the best harbor that there is. It must be the city in easiest communication with the interior, either by navigable streams, or valleys and mountain-passes, and thus the most convenient rendezvous for the largest number of national interests,—the place where Capital and Brains, Import and Export, Buyer and Seller, Doers and Things to be Done, shall most naturally make their appointments to meet for exchange. Last, (and least, too,—for even cautious England will people jungles for money's sake,) the metropolis must enjoy at least a moderate sanitary reputation; otherwise men who love Fortune well enough to die for her will not be reinforced by another large class who care to die on no account whatever.
New York answers all these requisites better than any metropolis in the world. She has a harbor capable of accommodating all the fleets of Christendom, both commercial and belligerent. That harbor has a western ramification, extending from the Battery to the mouth of Spuyten Duyvil Creek,—a distance of fifteen miles; an eastern ramification, reaching from the Battery to the mouth of Haarlem River,—seven miles; and a main trunk, interrupted by three small islands, extending from the Battery to the Narrows,—a distance of about eight miles more. It is rather under-estimating the capacity of the East River branch to average its available width as low as eighty rods; a mile and a half will be a proportionately moderate estimate for the Hudson River branch; the greatest available width of the Upper Bay is about four miles, in a line from the Long Island to the Staten Island side. If we add to these combined areas the closely adjacent waters in hourly communication with New York by her tugs and lighters, her harbor will further include a portion of the channel running west of Staten Island, and of the rivers emptying into Newark Bay, with the whole magnificent and sheltered roadstead of the Lower Bay, the mouth of Shrewsbury Inlet, and a portion of Raritan Bay.
As this paper must deal to a sufficient extent with statistics in matters of practical necessity, we will at this stage leave the reader to complete for himself the calculation of such a harbor's capacity. In this respect, in that of shelter, of contour of water-front, of accessibility from the high seas, New York Harbor has no rival on the continent. The Bay of San Francisco more nearly equals it than any other; but that is on the Pacific side, for the present much farther from the axis of national civilization, and backed by a much narrower agricultural tract. We will not refer to disadvantages of commercial exchange, since San Francisco may at any time be relieved of these by a Pacific Railroad. On our Atlantic side there is certainly no harbor which will compare for area and convenience with that of New York.
It is not only the best harbor on our coast, but that in easiest communication with other parts of the country. To the other portions of the coast it is as nearly central as it could be without losing fatally in other respects. Delaware and Chesapeake Bays afford fine roadsteads; but the low sand barrens and wet alluvial flats which form their shores compelled Philadelphia and Baltimore to retire their population such a distance up the chief communicating rivers as to deprive them of many important advantages proper to a seaport. Under the influence of free ideas may be expected a wonderful development of the advantages of Chesapeake Bay. Good husbandry and unshackled enterprise throughout Maryland and Virginia will astonish Baltimore by an increase of her population and commerce beyond the brightest speculative dreams. The full resources of Delaware Bay are far from being developed. Yet Philadelphia and Baltimore are forever precluded from competing with New York, both by their greater distance from open water and the comparative inferiority of the interior tracts with which they have ready communication. Below Chesapeake Bay the coast system of great river-estuaries gives way to the Sea-Island system, in which the main-land is flanked by a series of bars or sandbanks, separated from it by tortuous and difficult lagoons. The rivers which empty into this network of channels are comparatively difficult of entrance, and but imperfectly navigable. The isolation of the Sea Islands is enough to make them still more inconvenient situations than any on the main-land for the foundation of a metropolis. Before we have gone far down this system, we have passed the centre where, on mathematical principles, a metropolis should stand.
Considered with regard to the tributary interior, New York occupies a position no less central than with respect to the coast. It is impossible to study a map of our country without momently increasing surprise at the multiplicity of natural avenues which converge in New York from the richest producing districts of the world. The entire result of the country's labor seems to seek New York by inevitable channels. Products run down to the managing, disbursing, and balancing hand of New York as naturally as the thoughts of a man run down to the hand which must embody them. From the north it takes tribute through the Hudson River. This magnificent water-course, permitting the ascent of the largest ships for a hundred miles, and of river-craft for fifty miles farther, has upon its eastern side a country averaging about thirty miles in width to the Taconic range, consisting chiefly of the richest grazing, grain, and orchard land in the Atlantic States. Above the Highlands, the west side of the river becomes a fertile, though narrower and more broken agricultural tract; and at the head of navigation, the Hudson opens into another valley of exhaustless fertility,—that of the Mohawk,—coming eastward from the centre of the State.
Thus, independent of her system of railroads, New York City possesses uninterrupted natural connection with the interior of the State, whence a new system of communications is given off by the Lakes to the extreme west and north of our whole territory.
To the northeast, New York extends her relations by the sheltered avenue of Long Island Sound,—alluring through a strait of comparatively smooth water not only the agricultural products which seek export along a double water-front of two hundred miles, but the larger results of that colossal manufacturing system on which is based the prosperity of New England. To a great part of this class of values Long Island Sound stands like a weir emptying into the net of New York.
The maritime position of New York makes her as easy an entrepôt for Southern as for foreign products; and in any case her share in our Northern national commerce gives her the control of all trade which must pay the North a balance of exchange.
The Hudson, the Sound, and the line of Southern coasting traffic are the three main radii of supply which meet in New York. Another important district paying its chief subsidy to New York is drained by the Delaware River, and this great avenue is reached with ease from the metropolis by a direct natural route across the Jersey level. Though unavailable to New York as a navigable conduit, it still offers a means of penetrating to the southern counties of the State, and a passage to the Far West, of which New York capital has been prompt to avail itself by the Erie Railroad, with its Atlantic and Great Western continuation to St. Louis. This uniform broad-gauge of twelve hundred miles, which has just been opened by the energy and talents of Messrs. McHenry and Kennard, apparently decides the main channel by which the West is to discharge her riches into New York.—But we are trenching on the subject the capital's artificial advantages.