Turning to New York's land communication with the interior, we find the following railroads radiating from the metropolitan centre.
1. A Railroad to Philadelphia.
2. A Railroad to the Pennsylvania Coal Region.
3. A Railroad to Piermont on the Hudson.
4. A Railroad to Bloomfield in New Jersey.
5. A Railroad to Morristown in New Jersey.
6. A Railroad to Hackensack in New Jersey.
7. A Railroad to Buffalo.
8. A Railroad to Albany, running along the Hudson.
9. Another Railroad to Albany, by an interior route.
10. A Railroad to New Haven.
11. A Railroad to the chief eastern port of Long Island.
12. The Delaware and Raritan Road to Philadelphia, connecting with New York by daily transports from pier.
13. The Camden and Amboy Railroad, connecting similarly.
14. The Railroad to Elizabeth, New Jersey.
The chief eastern radius throws out ramifications to the principal cities of New England, thus affording liberal choice of routes to Boston, New Bedford, Providence, and Portland, as well as an entrance to New Hampshire and Vermont. To all of these towns, except the more southerly, the Hudson River Road leads as well, connecting besides with railroads in every direction to the northern and western parts of the State, and with the Far West by a number of routes. The main avenue to the Far West is, however, the Atlantic and Great Western Road, with its twelve hundred miles of uniform broad-gauge. Along this line the whole riches of the interior may reasonably be expected to flow eastward as in a trough; for its position is axial, and its connection perfect. All the chief New Jersey railroads open avenues to the richest mineral region of the Atlantic States,—to the Far South and the Far West of the country. Two or three may be styled commuters' roads, running chiefly for the accommodation of city business-men with suburban residences. The Long Island Road is a road without important branches; but the majority of all the roads subsidiary to New York are avenues to some broad and typical tract of the interior.
Let us turn to consider how New York has provided for the people as well as the goods that enter her precincts by all the ways we have rehearsed. She draws them up Broadway in twenty thousand horse-vehicles per day, on an average, and from that magnificent avenue, crowded for nearly five miles with elegant commercial structures, over two hundred miles more of paved street, in all directions. She lights them at night with eight hundred miles of gas-pipe; she washes them and slakes their thirst from two hundred and ninety-one miles of Croton main; she has constructed for their drainage one hundred and seventy-six miles of sewer. She victimizes them with nearly two thousand licensed hackmen; she licenses twenty-two hundred car- and omnibus-drivers to carry them over twenty-nine different stage-routes and ten horse-railroads, in six hundred and seventy-one omnibuses and nearly as many cars, connecting intimately with every part of the city, and averaging ten up-and-down trips per day. She connects them with the adjoining cities of the main-land and with Staten and Long Island by twenty ferries, running, on the average, one boat each way every ten minutes during the twenty-four hours. She offers for her guests' luxurious accommodation at least a score of hotels, where good living is made as much the subject of high art as in the Hôtel du Louvre, besides minor houses of rest and entertainment, to the number of more than five thousand. She attends to their religion in about four hundred places of public worship. She gives them breathing-room in a dozen civic parks, the largest of which both Nature and Art destine to be the noblest popular pleasure-ground of the civilized world, as it is the amplest of all save the Bois de Boulogne. Central Park covers an area of 843 acres, and, though only in the fifth year of its existence, already contains twelve miles of beautifully planned and scientifically constructed carriage-road, seven miles of similar bridle-path, four sub-ways for the passage of trade-vehicles across the Park, with an aggregate length of two miles, and twenty-one miles of walk. As an item of city property, Central Park is at present valued at six million dollars; but this, of course, is quite a nominal and unstable valuation. The worth of the Park to New York property in general is altogether beyond calculation.
New York feeds her people with about two million slaughter-animals per annum. How these are classified, and what periodical changes their supply undergoes, may be conveniently seen by the following tabular view of the New York butchers' receiving-yards during the twelve months of the year 1863. I am indebted for it to the experience and courtesy of Mr. Solon Robinson, agricultural editor of the "New York Tribune."
Receipts of Butchers' Animals in New York during 1863.
| Month. | Beeves. | Cows. | Calves. | Sheep. | Swine. |
| Jan. | 16,349 | 393 | 1,318 | 25,352 | 138,413 |
| Feb. | 19,930 | 474 | 1,207 | 24,877 | 98,099 |
| March | 22,187 | 843 | 2,594 | 29,645 | 79,320 |
| April | 18,921 | 636 | 3,182 | 18,311 | 56,516 |
| May | 16,739 | 440 | 3,510 | 20,338 | 39,305 |
| June | 23,785 | 718 | 5,516 | 44,808 | 56,612 |
| July | 20,224 | 396 | 2,993 | 41,614 | 40,716 |
| August | 20,347 | 496 | 3,040 | 49,900 | 36,725 |
| Sept. | 30,847 | 524 | 3,654 | 79,078 | 68,646 |
| Oct. | 24,397 | 475 | 3,283 | 64,144 | 112,265 |
| Nov. | 23,991 | 557 | 3,378 | 61,082 | 183,359 |
| Dec. | 26,374 | 518 | 2,034 | 60,167 | 191,641 |
| Total of each kind, | 264,091 | 6,470 | 35,709 | 519,316 | 1,101,617 |
| Total of all kinds, | 1,927,203. | ||||
Of the total number of beeves which came into the New York market in 1863, those whose origin could be ascertained were furnished from their several States in the following proportions:—
| Illinois | contributed | 118,692 |
| New York | " | 28,985 |
| Ohio | " | 19,369 |
| Indiana | " | 14,232 |
| Michigan | " | 9,074 |
| Kentucky | " | 6,782 |
Averaging the weight of the cattle which came to New York market in 1863 at the moderate estimate of 700 lbs., the metropolitan supply of beef for that year amounted to 189,392,700 lbs. This, at the average price of nine and a quarter cents per pound, was worth $17,518,825. Proportionably with these estimates, the average weekly expenditure by butchers at the New York yards during the year 1863 was $328,865.