hour found ourselves there. The distance is 6 miles, and the island is
18 miles long, 7 miles wide, and 300 feet high. Here are a large
hospital for mariners and the quarantine burying-ground. It is also
studded with several genteel residences. In 1657 the Indians sold it to
the Dutch for 10 shirts, 30 pairs of stockings, 10 guns, 30 bars of
lead, 30 lbs. of powder, 12 coats, 2 pieces of duffil, 30 kettles, 30
hatchets, 20 hoes, and one case of knives and awls.

Several emigrant vessels were then in the bay. On our return, we saw
with painful interest many of them setting their foot for the first
time on the shore of the New World. They were then arriving in New
York, chiefly from the United Kingdom, at the rate of one thousand a
day. The sight affected me even to tears. It was like a vision of the
British Empire crumbling to pieces, and the materials taken to build a
new and hostile dominion.

I should draw too largely upon your patience, were I to describe many
objects of interest and many scenes of beauty I witnessed in New York
and the neighbourhood. The Common Schools; the Croton Waterworks,
capable of yielding an adequate supply for a million-and-a-half of
people; Hoboken, with its sibyl's cave and elysian fields; the spot on
which General Hamilton fell in a duel; the Battery and Castle Garden--a
covered amphitheatre capable of accommodating 10,000 people; the Park,
and the City Hall with its white marble front; Trinity Church; and its
wealthy Corporation; Long Island, or Brooklyn, with its delightful
cemetery, &c., &c. Suffice it to say that New York has a population of
about 400,000; and that it has for that population, without an
Established Church, 215 places of worship. Brooklyn has also a
population of 60,000, and 30 places of worship.