AROUND THE HARBOR OF NEW YORK. (continued 2)

THE CITY OF CHURCHES.

The Borough of Brooklyn, which has grown from the overflow of New York, whose people are said to go over there "chiefly to sleep or be buried," is popularly known as the "City of Churches." A large portion of the working population of the metropolis, as well as the merchants and business men, make it their home and dormitory, while there are beautiful cemeteries in the suburbs peopled largely by dead New Yorkers. Greenwood, overlooking New York harbor from Gowanus Heights in South Brooklyn, is regarded as one of the finest American cemeteries. In no other city can be found such an aggregation of churches, developed in a past generation, and under the ministry of a regiment of distinguished clergymen, then led by Beecher and Storrs, so that the popular title was well bestowed. Brooklyn is entirely the growth of the nineteenth century, a growth due to the inability of New York to spread, excepting far northward. It stretches several miles along East River and three or four miles inland, and grows rapidly. When the century began, however, it was hard work to find three thousand people there, and, strangely enough, they had to cross over to New York to go to church. Just about the time old Peter Minuit was buying Manhattan from the Indians, a band of Walloons first settled in Brooklyn. Their descendants drove cows across East River to Governor's Island to graze, the Buttermilk Channel between them being then shallow enough for fording, though it is now scoured out deep enough to float the largest vessels, the docks located where the cows then crossed now accommodating an enormous commerce. At first a little ferry from Fulton Street to Peck Slip, New York, accommodated the straggling village, and it has grown into more than a dozen steam ferries of the largest capacity, which (besides the bridge) will carry daily a half-million people across at one cent apiece, this fleet of packet-boats being the greatest transporters of humanity in the world.

The Indians called the region around Wallabout Bay, and Gowanus Mercychawick, meaning "the sandy place." When the Walloons came along, they began settling on the shores of the bay, which they called Waal-bogt, afterwards gradually changed to its present name of Wallabout. In 1646 the town was organized by Governor Kieft as Breuckelen, he appointing Jan Eversen Bout and Huyck Aertsen as "schepens" or superintendents to preserve the peace and regulate the community. During the Revolution the British prison-ships were moored in the Wallabout, and it is estimated that eleven thousand five hundred Americans, chiefly seamen, died upon them, the shores of the bay being full of dead men's bones, which the tides for many years washed out from the sand. In 1808 these bones were finally collected and put in a vault near the Navy Yard, which had been established on the bay. This is the chief naval station of the United States, covering about eighty-eight acres, including all the available space. There is attached a large naval hospital, while between the two is the immense Wallabout Market, covering forty-five acres, the largest in Brooklyn, its buildings being brick structures in the old Dutch style.

Fulton Street is the chief highway of Brooklyn, beginning almost under the shadow of the great Bridge. It is a broad and attractive street, stretching six miles to the eastern edge of the city, and about one mile from the river it passes the various city buildings, including the Post-office, Court-house and Borough Hall, all handsome structures. In front of the Borough Hall is a fine statue of Brooklyn's most famous clergyman, Henry Ward Beecher. From Fulton Street radiate several of the highways leading into the fashionable residential quarter,—Brooklyn or Columbia Heights,—overlooking East River, where the tree-bordered streets are lined with costly and attractive dwellings. Here in Orange Street, in a very quiet spot, is Brooklyn's most noted edifice, a plain, wide, unornamented brick building, with the inscription, "Plymouth Church, 1849." Here preached for nearly forty years, until he died in 1887, Beecher, the great Puritan, whose family was so noted. His father, Lyman Beecher, like the son, fought slavery and intemperance in Boston, Litchfield and Cincinnati, and was an impressive pulpit orator. The old man was eccentric, however, and after being wrought up by the excitement of preaching, is said to have gone home and let himself down by playing on the fiddle and dancing a double-shuffle in the parlor. He had thirteen children, nearly all famous, and has been described as "the father of more brains than any other man in America." Four sons were clergymen and two daughters noted authoresses. Henry Ward, who ruled Brooklyn, and Harriet, who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, were among the great leaders of the anti-slavery movement.

Clinton Street leaves Fulton a little beyond Orange, and passes southward through Brooklyn Heights, being the chief street of the fashionable district. Embowered in trees, handsome churches and residences border it, and Pierrepont, Remsen, Montague and other noted streets extend at right angles from it to the edge of the bluff, where the Heights fall sharply off to the river. Here, at seventy feet elevation, and overlooking the lower level of buildings and piers at the water's edge, are the terraces where the finest residences are located, having a magnificent outlook upon the harbor and New York City beyond. The ships land their cargoes within almost a stone's throw of the palaces. In this district there are several large apartment-houses and various clubs, a statue of Alexander Hamilton adorning the front of the Hamilton Club at Remsen and Clinton Streets. Upon Remsen Street is another noted building, the Congregational "Church of the Pilgrims," a spacious graystone edifice with towers, its most prominent tower and spire being a commanding landmark for vessels sailing up New York Bay. There is let into the outer wall of this church, about six feet above the pavement, a small piece of the original "Plymouth Rock" whereon the Pilgrims in 1620 landed in Massachusetts Bay—a dark, rough-hewn fragment, projecting with irregular surface a few inches from the wall. As an author, lecturer and preacher, the veteran pastor for over a half-century, Dr. Richard Salter Storrs, acquired wide renown. Upon Clinton Street is the elegant Pointed Gothic brownstone St. Ann's Episcopal Church, famous for its choir, and on Montague Street the Holy Trinity Church, its spire rising two hundred and seventy-five feet. But almost everywhere are churches, there being about five hundred in Brooklyn. The noted Pratt Institute is one of the best known charities of the city, founded and endowed by Charles Pratt, an oil prince, as a technical school, its spacious and well-equipped buildings caring for thirty-four hundred students. The object of this noble institution is "to promote manual and industrial education, and to inculcate habits of industry and thrift."

GREENWOOD CEMETERY AND PROSPECT PARK.

A border of tombs almost surrounds Brooklyn, for in the suburbs are the great cemeteries which are the burial-places of both cities. In lovely situations upon the surrounding hills are Greenwood, Cypress Hills, Evergreen, Holy Cross, Calvary, Mount Olivet, The Citizens' Union, Washington and other cemeteries, occupying many hundreds of acres. Of these, the noted Greenwood is the chief, covering some four hundred acres on Gowanus Heights, south of the city. This is a high ridge dividing Brooklyn from the lowlands on the south side of Long Island, and it has elevations giving charming views. The route to it crosses various railroads leading to Coney Island, which is the ultimate objective point of most Brooklyn lines of transit. A neat lawn-bordered road leads up to the magnificent cemetery entrance on Fifth Avenue, an elaborate and much ornamental brownstone structure rising into a central pinnacle over a hundred feet high. This entrance covers two fine gateways, with representations of Gospel scenes, the principal being the Raising of Lazarus and the Resurrection. The grounds display great beauty, the ridgy, rounded hills spreading in all directions, the surface being an alternation of hills and vales, vaults terracing the hillsides, with elaborate mausoleums above and frequent little lakes nestling in the pleasant valleys. Vast sums have been expended on some of the grander tombs, which are upon a scale of great magnificence. The attractive rural names of the walks and avenues, the delicious flowers and foliage, the balmy air, the lakes, valleys and points of beautiful outlook giving grand views over New York Bay and the surrounding country, make Greenwood a park as well as a cemetery, and it is generally admitted to be without a peer. Many costly pantheons and chapels cover the remains of well-known people, and one mausoleum is a large marble church. A three-sided monument of peculiar construction standing on a knoll marks the resting-place of Samuel F. B. Morse, the telegrapher. Horace Greeley's tomb has his bust in bronze on a pedestal. A colossal statue surmounts the grave of the great De Witt Clinton, the Governor of New York who built the Erie Canal and thus secured the commercial supremacy of the city. The romantic career of Lola Montez ended in Greenwood. Commodore Garrison, who was at one time Vanderbilt's rival in steamship management, is interred in a mosque. The tomb of the Steinways is a large granite building. A magnificent marble canopy crowns the Scribner tomb, having beneath it an angel of mercy. There is an appropriate monument to Roger Williams. Here are also buried Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing-machine, Peter Cooper, Henry Ward Beecher, James Gordon Bennett, Henry George and others of fame. The Firemen, the Pilots and the New York Volunteers all have grand monuments, the statue sentinels of the latter overlooking the bay. Among these magnificent sepulchres, probably the most magnificent is that of Charlotte Canda, an heiress, who died in early youth, her fortune being expended upon her tomb.

There is a high lookout upon the eastern border of this attractive place, where the flat land at the base of the ridge spreads for miles away to the sea. The Coney Island hotels, by the ocean side, are dim in the distance, and far over the water the Navesink Highlands close the view beyond Sandy Hook. The many railroads leading to Coney Island can be traced out, as on a map, across the level land. Over on the western side of the cemetery is another lookout, having a broad view of Brooklyn and the harbor, extending to the hills of Staten Island and the distant Jersey lowlands beyond. This is the verge of Gowanus Heights, with the busy commerce of the port spread at its base. It is this magnificent scene which the marble sentinels overlook who are guarding the Volunteers' Monument erected by the city of New York.

Between Greenwood Cemetery and Prospect Park there are various railways, all going to Coney Island, and also the Ocean Parkway, leading thither, a splendid boulevard, two hundred feet wide, and planted with six rows of trees, being flanked on either side by a broad cycle-path. It is laid in a straight line from the southwestern corner of the Park for three miles to the great seaside resort. Prospect Park covers nearly a square mile on an elevated ridge on the edge of Brooklyn, and it has great natural attractions which did not need much change to improve the landscape, while the fine old trees that have been there for centuries are in magnificent maturity. Its woods and meadows, winding roads, lakes and views, combine many charms. On Lookout Hill, rising two hundred feet, the most commanding point, with a view almost entirely around the compass, there is a monument on the slope in memory of the Maryland troops who fell in the Revolutionary battle of Long Island, fought in August, 1776, on these heights. The Park is ornamented with several statues, including one of Abraham Lincoln, and there is a bust of John Howard Payne, the author of Home, Sweet Home. It has an extensive lake, a deer preserve, children's playgrounds, and a concert grove and promenade. The main entrance is a fine elliptical plaza with a splendid fountain, and adorned by a Memorial Arch to the Soldiers and Sailors of the Civil War, and a statue of James Stranahan, a venerable citizen of Brooklyn, foremost in all its good works, who died in 1898. The Brooklyn Institute, an academy of art and science with a large membership, has a large building in the Park.

CONEY ISLAND.

Pretty much all routes through Brooklyn, as already indicated, lead to Coney Island, the barren strip of white sand, clinging to the southern edge of Long Island, about ten miles from New York, which is the objective point of the populace when in sweltering summer weather they crave a breath of sea air. The antiquarians of the island insist that it was the earliest portion of these adjacent coasts discovered, and tell how Verrazani came along about 1529 and found this sand-strip, and how Hudson, nearly a century later, held conferences with the Indians on the island. But however that may be, its wonderful development as a summer resort has only come since the Civil War. It has a hard and gently-sloping beach facing the Atlantic, and can be so easily and cheaply reached, by so many routes on land and water, that it is no wonder, on hot afternoons and holidays, the people of New York and Brooklyn go down there by the hundreds of thousands. Coney Island is about five miles long, and from a quarter-mile to a mile in width, being separated from the adjacent low-lying mainland only by a little crooked creek and some lagoons. It has two bays deeply indented behind it, Gravesend Bay on the west and Sheepshead Bay on the east. The name is derived from Cooney Island, meaning the "Rabbit Island," rabbits having been the chief inhabitants in earlier days. The Coney Island season of about a hundred days, from June until September, is an almost uninterrupted festival, and nothing can exceed the jollity on these beaches, when a hot summer sun drives the people down to the shore to seek relief and have a good time. They spread over the miles of sand-strip, with scores of bands of music of varying merit in full blast, minstrel shows, miniature theatres, Punch and Judy, merry-go-rounds and carrousels, big snakes, fat women, giant, dwarf, midget and pugilistic exhibitions, shooting-galleries, concerts, circuses, fortune-tellers, swings, toboggan slides, scenic railways, and myriads of other attractions; lakes of beer on tap, with ample liquids of greater strength; and everywhere a good-humoured crowd, sight-seeing and enjoying themselves, eating, drinking, and very numerously consuming the great Coney Island delicacy, "clam-chowder." To the clam, which is universal and popular, the visitors pay special tribute. This famous bivalve is the Mya Arenaria of the New England coast, said to have been for years the chief food of the Pilgrim fathers. Being found in abundance in all the neighboring waters, it is served in every style, according to taste. As the Coney Island "Song of the Clam" has it:

The long and narrow Coney Island sand-strip may be divided into four distinctive sections—a succession of villages chiefly composed of restaurants, lodging-houses and hotels, built along the edge of the beach, and usually on a single road behind it. In the past generation the rougher classes best knew its western end or Norton's Point, a resort of long standing. The middle of the island is a locality of higher grade—West Brighton Beach. Here great iron piers project into the ocean, being availed of for steamboat landings, restaurants and amusement places, while beneath are bathing establishments. Electricity and fireworks are used extensively to add to the attractions, and there is also a tall Observatory. The broad Ocean Parkway, coming down from Prospect Park and Brooklyn, terminates at West Brighton Beach. East of this is a partially vacant, semi-marshy space, beyond which is Brighton Beach, there being a roadway and elevated railroad connecting them. Brighton is the third section, and about a half-mile farther east is the fourth and most exclusive section—Manhattan Beach. Here are the more elaborate and costly Coney Island hotels. In all this district the power of the ocean is shown in the effect of great storms, which wash away roads, railways and buildings, and shift enormous amounts of the sands from one locality, piling them up in front of another. Huge hotels have had to be moved, in some cases bodily, a thousand feet back inland from the ocean front, to save them, and immense bulkheads constructed for protection; but sometimes the waves play havoc with these. Very much of the money spent by the visitors has to be devoted to saving the place and preventing the wreck of the great buildings. But this does not worry the visitors so much as it does the landlords. On a hot day the vast crowds arriving on the trains are poured into the hotels, and swarm out upon the grounds fronting them, where the bands play. Here the orchestras give concerts to enormous audiences. The piazzas are filled with supper-parties, the music amphitheatres are crowded, and thousands saunter over the lawns. As evening advances, the blaze of electric illumination and brilliancy of fireworks are added, and the music, bustling crowds and general hilarity give the air of a splendid festival. The bathing establishments are crowded, and many go into the surf under the brilliant illumination. Not a tree will grow, so that the view over the sea is unobstructed, and out in front is the pathway of ocean commerce into New York harbor, with the twinkling, guiding lights of Sandy Hook and its attendant lightships beyond. What a guardian to the mariner is the lighthouse:

The tall Observatory, on its airy steel framework, rises three hundred feet to overlook the wonderful scene. When the top is reached, the first impression made is by the dissonant clangor of the many bands of music below, heard with singular clearness and much more intensity of sound than on the ground. This discord ascends from all sorts of structures, generally having flat pitch-and-gravel roofs, forming a variegated carpet far below. Coney Island stretches along the ocean's edge, with the lines of foaming surf slowly rolling in. To the eastward, at Brighton and Manhattan Beaches, it bends backward like a bow, with semicircular indentations where the sea has made its inroads. To the westward, the curve of the beach is reversed, and the extreme point of the island ends in a knob having a distinctive hook bent back on the northern side. Behind the long and narrow strip of sand there are patches of grass, and much marsh and meadow, spreading away to the northward, and meandering through the marsh can be traced the crooked little tidal creek and series of lagoons separating Coney from the mainland. Far away northward runs the broad tree-bordered Ocean Parkway, with the hills of Prospect Park and the tombs and foliage of Greenwood Cemetery hiding Brooklyn, and closing the view at the distant horizon. Various railways stretch in the same direction, some crossing the bogs on extended trestle-bridges. Many carriages are moving and thousands of people walking about in the streets and open spaces beneath us, while upon the ocean side the piers extend out in front, with their steamboats sailing to or from the Narrows to the northward, around the knob and hook at Norton's Point. Far south over the water are the distant Navesink Highlands behind Sandy Hook and the low adjacent New Jersey Coast, gradually blending into the Staten Island hills to the westward. Around from the south to the east is the broad and limitless expanse of ocean, where, in the words of Heinrich Heine:

Far to the eastward, seen across the broad Jamaica Bay, are more low sandy beaches, each with its popular resort, though all pale before the crowning glories of Coney Island. There is Rockaway, with its iron pier and railway connecting with the mainland to the northeast, also Arverne and Edgemere, the distant cottage-studded Long Beach, and the hazy sand-beaches of Far Rockaway. And as we gaze over this wondrous scene down by the water side, the freshening wind gives a pleasant foretaste of old ocean, and recalls the invocation of Barry Cornwall: