New York is one of the most wonderful products of our wonderful western civilization. It is itself a world in epitome. Thoroughly cosmopolitan in its character, almost every nationality is represented within its boundaries, and almost every tongue spoken. It is the great monetary, scientific, artistic and intellectual centre of the western world. Containing much that is evil, it also abounds with more that is good. It is well governed. Its sanitary arrangements are such as to make it peculiarly free from epidemic diseases. The record of its crimes is undoubtedly a long one; but when the number of its inhabitants is considered, it will be found to show an average comparing favorably with other cities. Thousands of happy homes are found throughout its length and breadth. Hundreds of good and charitable enterprises are originated and fostered within its limits, and grow, some of them, to gigantic proportions, reaching out strong arms to the uttermost confines of the country and even of the world, comforting the afflicted, lifting up the degraded, and shedding the light of truth in dark places. It is already a great city, a wonderful city. But what it is to-day is only the beginning of what those who live fifty years hence will behold it. There is still space upon Manhattan Island for twice or thrice its present population and business; and the no distant future will undoubtedly see this space fully occupied, while it is among the possibilities that New York will become, in point of inhabitants and commercial interests, the first city in the world.
NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE.
CHAPTER XXII.
OMAHA.
Arrival in Omaha.—The Missouri River.—Position and Appearance of the City.—Public Buildings.—History.—Land Speculation.—Panic of 1857.—Discovery of Gold in Colorado.—"Pike's Peak or Bust."—Sudden Revival of Business.—First Railroad.—Union Pacific Railroad.—Population.—Commercial and Manufacturing Interests.—Bridge over the Missouri.—Union Pacific Depot.—Prospects for the Future.
On the afternoon of October twenty-first, 1876, I sat in the saddle upon the eastern bank of the Missouri River, opposite Omaha, Nebraska, having that day accomplished a horseback journey of twenty-two miles, on my way from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Paul Revere, the faithful horse who had borne me all the way from Boston, declined entering the ferry boat, it being his firm conviction that rivers should either be crossed by bridges or forded. At last, being gently coerced, the horse reluctantly consented, and the muddy current of the river was soon crossed. At three o'clock I entered the city of Omaha, the half-way house across the continent, it having been a little more than five months since I dashed out of the surf, my horse's hoofs wet and dripping with the brine of the Atlantic.
Omaha lies on the eastern boundary of Nebraska, opposite Council Bluffs, on the western bank of the Missouri River, a turbulent stream, which is never satisfied with its position, but is constantly shifting and changing, and making for itself new channels. A bottom land about three miles wide stretches out between Omaha and Council Bluffs, and through this the Missouri rolls, a swift, muddy stream, slowly but surely carrying the Rocky Mountains down to the Mississippi, which, in its turn, deposits them in the Gulf of Mexico, and helps to extend our Gulf coast. The Missouri vibrates like a pendulum, from one side of this bottom land to the other; now being near one city, and then near the other. At the period of my visit its current washed the front of Omaha, leaving Council Bluffs some distance off on the opposite side; but it was already beginning its backward swing. Thus the boundary line between Nebraska and Iowa is being continually shifted, and one State is augmented in territory at the expense of the other.