best harbor that there is.
It must be the city in easiest communication with the interior, either
by navigable streams, or valleys and mountain-passes, and thus the most
convenient rendezvous for the largest number of national interests,--the
place where Capital and Brains, Import and Export, Buyer and Seller,
Doers and Things to be Done, shall most naturally make their
appointments to meet for exchange. Last, (and least, too,--for even
cautious England will people jungles for money's sake,) the metropolis
must enjoy at least a moderate sanitary reputation; otherwise men who
love Fortune well enough to die for her will not be reinforced by
another large class who care to die on no account whatever.

New York answers all these requisites better than any metropolis in the
world. She has a harbor capable of accommodating all the fleets of
Christendom, both commercial and belligerent. That harbor has a western
ramification, extending from the Battery to the mouth of Spuyten Duyvil
Creek,--a distance of fifteen miles; an eastern ramification, reaching
from the Battery to the mouth of Haarlem River,--seven miles; and a main
trunk, interrupted by three small islands, extending from the Battery to
the Narrows,--a distance of about eight miles more. It is rather
under-estimating the capacity of the East River branch to average its
available width as low as eighty rods; a mile and a half will be a
proportionately moderate estimate for the Hudson River branch; the
greatest available width of the Upper Bay is about four miles, in a line
from the Long Island to the Staten Island side. If we add to these
combined areas the closely adjacent waters in hourly communication with
New York by her tugs and lighters, her harbor will further include a
portion of the channel running west of Staten Island, and of the rivers
emptying into Newark Bay, with the whole magnificent and sheltered
roadstead of the Lower Bay, the mouth of Shrewsbury Inlet, and a portion
of Raritan Bay.

As this paper must deal to a sufficient extent with statistics in
matters of practical necessity, we will at this stage leave the reader
to complete for himself the calculation of such a harbor's capacity. In
this respect, in that of shelter, of contour of water-front, of
accessibility from the high seas, New York Harbor has no rival on the
continent. The Bay of San Francisco more nearly equals it than any
other; but that is on the Pacific side, for the present much far