ks of the barges dance all the time to the
music of the band that they hire for the occasion. The stop at the
excursion park is a short one--just long enough for luncheon and a
little strolling under the trees, or bathing on the beach. Then the
homeward journey is begun, and the dancing on the barge is recommenced
and kept up until the city is reached, just before bedtime. Our great
excursion steamboats, that run to Coney Island and Rockaway, are built
on the same plan--wide open--and carry such great crowds of
pleasure-seekers that they are black with passengers. These are
sometimes hired by richer and more numerous bodies than those that hire
the hay-barges, but I can assure my readers that the real jubilant fun
is on the common barges, where the people are apt to be simple and
democratic, and ready to surrender themselves to those pleasures of
which they enjoy too little.

Our pilot-boats which go out to sea with many brave men, and leave them
one by one on the steamships that they meet--in order that those great
vessels may be safely steered into port--are very romantic boats, but
they look like mere sail-boats or yachts. Some splendid yachts become
pilot-boats when they grow too old-fashioned to keep pace with the
faster and faster boats that we are forever building. Other such yachts
become oyster-boats, and lie beside Fulton Fish Market in company with
the tank-steamers that bring fish into New York. These tank-steamers go
to Nantucket, or wherever the fishing-smacks are at work, and lie there
while sail-boat after sail-boat fill up with fish and bring their loads
to be kept in the refrigerated-tanks of the steamer, until she, also, is
filled and ready to come to the city.

Of the "whalebacks," or cigar-shaped iron ships that were first made to
traverse the great lakes, I will say very little, because they belong to
no place in particular, and excite as much curiosity here as anywhere.
Our floating pile-drivers, which look like ladders set upon boxes, are
very curious-looking vessels, but are familiar at all ports. Perhaps our
immigrant barges, which carry the immigrants from Ellis Island (where
they are landed) to the wharves of the railways by which they are to
seek homes in the West, are peculiar to New York, but they are mere
hay-barges like the excursion boats I have already described. The busy
craft that carry fresh drinking-water to the sailing-ships are usually
very ordinary tug-boats, and are only pecul