And not a verdant glade or mountain hoary,
But treasures up within the glorious story.

_Charles Fenno Hoffman._

* * *

In 1699 the population of New York was about 6,000. In 1800, it
reached 60,000; and the growth since that date is almost incredible.
It is amusing to hear elderly people speak of the "outskirts of the
city" lying close to the City Hall, and of the drives _in the country_
above Canal Street. In the Documentary History of New York, a map of
a section of New York appears as it was in 1793, when the Gail, Work
House, and Bridewell occupied the site of the City Hall, with two
ponds to the north--East Collect Pond and Little Collect Pond,--sixty
feet deep and about a quarter of a mile in diameter, the outlet of
which crossed Broadway at Canal Street and found its way to the
Hudson.

=Greater New York.=--In 1830, the population of Manhattan was 202,000;
in 1850, 515,000; in 1860, 805,000; in 1870, 942,000; in 1880,
1,250,000; in 1892, 1,801,739; and is now rapidly approaching three
million. Brooklyn, which in 1800 had a population of only 2,000, now
contributes, as the "Borough of Brooklyn," almost two million. So that
Greater New York is the centre of about six million of people within a
radius of fifteen miles including her New Jersey suburbs with almost
five millions under one municipality.

=Brooklyn.=--In June, 1636, was bought the first land on Long Island;