A Tour through North America by Patrick Shirreff

_New York-Damask hair-cloth manufactory-Dr H -- , President Jackson, and Black Hawk-Hyde Park-Residences in America and Britain-Taste for Flowers-Cattle and Sheep-Scenery of the Hudson and Clyde-Fast Eating-Albany-Coach Passengers-Women working in Fields._

Several days were spent in viewing the beauties of New York and its neighbourhood, which the works of recent travellers render unnecessary for me to describe at length. This city is the first city in the Union, both as to shipping and population, which does not perhaps fall much short of two hundred and forty thousand. It is situated on an island separated from the mainland by a small creek passing betwixt the north and east rivers, which some individuals failed in converting into a canal. From the site of New York as an emporium of trade, there seem to be no limits to the extension of the city and its suburbs. It is already the chief outlet of much of the produce of the eastern parts of the New England states, part of Pennsylvania and Ohio, and almost the whole of New York State. When the canals and railways now in progress are completed, it will also become the depôt for part of the produce of the states of Indiana, Illinois, and the unsurveyed country to the west of Lake Michigan, traversed by the rivers Mississippi and Missouri; and, in the course of events, Upper Canada may be added to the list. The mouth of the Mississippi seems the only outlet, calculated by the extent of inland navigation, to vie with New York; but the warm and pestilential nature of the climate unfits it for the reception of produce, and the residence of man. The public and private buildings vary in size and elegance; and the inhabitants are justly proud of Waverley and Lafayette Places, the houses of the latter being decorated with immense Corinthian pillars, and the whole fronts and steps consist of marble. The streets are not so clean as the inhabitants wish strangers to believe; but as swine seem, in part, intrusted with the charge of removing the filth, they are in as good order as might be expected. The streets appear to be thronged at all hours, noise and uproar prevailing when I retired for the night; ladies and gentlemen on horseback, and the industrious on foot, were bustling forth at five in the morning when I arose. Emblems of aristocratic pride and shameless mendicity occasionally met the eye, in the red vests and peculiar cut coats of serving men standing at the back of luxurious carriages, and in the extended hat supplicating charity. Like other large commercial and manufacturing towns, activity characterises the inhabitants by day, dissipation by night.