New Orleans boasts a semi-tropical climate, being situated in latitude 29° 58´ north. The summers are oppressively hot, but the winters are mild and pleasant, with just sufficient frost to kill any germs of disease engendered by her unhealthful situation. Semi-tropical fruits, such as the orange, banana, fig and pine-apple, grow readily in her gardens, where are also cultivated many of the productions of the temperate zone. The neighboring country is clothed with a rich and luxuriant semi-tropical vegetation, and forests of perennial green, in which the cypress and live-oak predominate.
New Orleans had a population, in 1820, of 27,000. In 1850 it had increased to 116,375, and in 1860 to 168,675. In common with other cities of the South, New Orleans suffered in her business interests severely during the war of the Rebellion. Louisiana having seceded from the Union in 1861, New Orleans was closely blockaded by the Federal fleet, and on April twenty-fourth, 1862, the defences near the mouth of the river were forced by Commodore Farragut, in command of an expedition of gunboats. On the surrender of the city General B. F. Butler was appointed its military Governor, and held possession of it until the close of the war. Its commerce was entirely destroyed during that period, its business interests crushed, and many of its leading men impoverished, and, in addition, the State was disturbed by intestine troubles, which kept affairs in an unsettled condition. New Orleans did not rally as quickly as St. Louis from the effects of the war. Nevertheless, in 1870 its population had increased to 191,418, and in 1874 the value of its exports, including rice, flour, pork, tobacco, sugar, etc., but excepting cotton, were estimated at $93,715,710. Its imports the same year were valued at more than $14,000,000. It is the chief cotton mart of the world, and its wharves are lined with ships which bear this commodity to every quarter of the globe. In the amount and value of its exports, it ranks second only to New York, though its imports are not in the same proportion, which always speaks well for the business prosperity of a city. The census of 1880 gave it a population of 216,140, showing that its progress still continues. No longer cursed by the presence of the "peculiar institution," its former slave marts turned into commercial depots or abolished altogether, and its population numbering to a greater degree every year the industrious class, New Orleans will do more in the future than maintain her present prosperity; she will build up new industries, and originate new schemes of advancement; so that she is certain to continue her present supremacy over her sister cities in the South.
CHAPTER XXI.
NEW YORK.
Early History of New York.—During the Revolution.—Evacuation Day.—Bowling Green.—Wall Street.—Stock Exchange.—Jacob Little.—Daniel Drew.—Jay Cooke.—Rufus Hatch.—The Vanderbilts.—Jay Gould.—Trinity Church.—John Jacob Astor.—Post-Office.—City Hall and Court House.—James Gordon Bennett.—Printing House Square.—Horace Greeley.—Broadway.—Union Square.—Washington Square.—Fifth Avenue.—Madison Square.—Cathedral.—Murray Hill.—Second Avenue.—Booth's Theatre and Grand Opera House.—The Bowery.—Peter Cooper.—Fourth Avenue.—Park Avenue.—Five Points and its Vicinity.—Chinese Quarter.—Tombs.—Central Park.—Water Front.—Blackwell's Island.—Hell Gate.—Suspension Bridge.—Opening Day.—Tragedy of Decoration Day.—New York of the Present and Future.
Less than three hundred years ago the narrow strip of territory now occupied by what its wide-awake and self-asserting citizens delight to term "The Metropolis of the New World," was a broken and rugged wilderness, which the foot of white man had never trod, not, at least, within the memory of its then oldest inhabitants, a few half-naked savages of the Manhattan tribe, from whom the island derives its name of Manhattan. In 1609 Henry Hudson, an English navigator in the service of the Dutch East India Company, landed near the present site of the Battery, securing, by right of discovery, the territory to the States of the Netherlands. Dutch traders soon followed, and in 1614 a small fort and four houses were erected in the neighborhood of what is now Bowling Green. The infant metropolis was christened New Amsterdam, and Peter Minuits sent out, in 1626, as its first Governor. He purchased the island from its native owners, for goods, about twenty-four dollars in value. Minuits was recalled in 1631, his successors being Wonter Von Twiller, 1633; William Krift, 1638; and Peter Stuyvesant, 1647. In 1644 a fence was built nearly along the line of what is now Wall street, and in 1653 palisades and breastworks, protected by a ditch, were added along this line. These palisades remained in existence until near the beginning of the present century.
Peter Stuyvesant was the last of the Dutch Governors. In 1664 Charles II, of England, gave the territory to his brother James, Duke of York, and an expedition was sent out under the command of Colonel Richard Nicholls, to take possession of it. The fort was easily captured, and the name of the settlement changed to New York. In 1673 the town was recaptured by the Dutch, who again changed its name to New Orange; but the following year it was restored to the English by treaty.
In 1689 Jacob Leister instituted an insurrection against the unpopular administration of Nicholls, which he easily overthrew, and strengthened the fort by a battery of six guns outside its walls. This was the origin of the "Battery." In 1691 he was arrested and convicted on a charge of treason and murder, condemned to death, and executed.