It is
watered throughout its length by the Bronx river and is one of
the most beautiful parks in existence.
As we crossed the ferry over to this wonderful city we thought
how scarcely more than three centuries ago, when Paris and
London had been great for a thousand years, New York City with
its wonderful buildings rising before us was only a little
wooded island with here and there scattered tepees, and in place
of magnificent avenues and boulevards were found morasses
crossed by streams and presided over by wild beasts.
Civilization was old in Europe before Henry Hudson appeared on
this beautiful river.
Some one has described New York as a chaotic city, where huge
masses of masonry and iron rise mountain high with no
relationship existing between any of the structures. One views
their stupendous forms as he does the mountains along the
Hudson. "They are serrated, presenting ragged, irregular
outlines, which are lost in the accidental sky-line, giving one
at once the impression of power, wealth, and aggressiveness."
The vast, impenetrable wall of solid masonry along the river is
almost as wonderful as the Palisades.
The magnetic attraction of such an enormous amount of steel
concentrated in so small a space is said to be so great that it
frequently varies the points of the compass on boats in the
harbor as much as seven degrees.
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