riot of 1741. We cannot fully appreciate it, not merely because of the
incompleteness of some of its details, nor from the lapse of time, but
because of our inability to place ourselves in the position or state of
mind of the inhabitants of New York City at that period. We can no more
throw ourselves into the social condition, and feel the influences of that
time, than we can conceive the outward physical appearance of the embryo
metropolis. It is impossible to stand amid the whirl and uproar of New
York to-day, and imagine men ploughing, and sowing grain, and carting hay
into barns, where the City Hall now stands. The conception of nearly all
the city lying below the Park, above it farms to Canal Street, beyond that
clearings where men are burning brush and logs to clear away the fallow,
and still farther on, towards Central Park, an unbroken wilderness, is so
dim and shadowy, that we can hardly fix its outlines. Yet it was so in
1741. Where now stands the Tombs, and cluster the crowded tenements of
Five Points, was a pond or lakelet, nearly two miles in circumference and
fifty feet deep, and encircled by a dense forest. Its deep, sluggish
outlet into the Hudson is now Canal Street. In wet weather there was
another water communication with the East River, near Peck Slip, cutting
off the lower part of the island, leaving another island, containing some
eight hundred acres. Through Broad Street, along which now rolls each day
the stream of business, and swells the tumult of the Brokers' Board, then
swept a deep stream, up which boatmen rowed their boats to sell oysters.
The water that supplied these streams and ponds is now carried off through
immense sewers, deep under ground, over which the unconscious population
tread. Where Front and Water Streets on the east side, and West Greenwich
and Washington on the west side, now stretch, were then the East and
Hudson Rivers, having smooth and pebbly beaches. There was not a single
sidewalk in all the city, and only some half dozen paved streets. On the
Battery stood the fort, in which were the Governor's and secretary's
houses, and over which floated the British flag.