ther
from the axis of national civilization, and backed by a much narrower
agricultural tract. We will not refer to disadvantages of commercial
exchange, since San Francisco may at any time be relieved of these by a
Pacific Railroad. On our Atlantic side there is certainly no harbor
which will compare for area and convenience with that of New York.

It is not only the best harbor on our coast, but that in easiest
communication with other parts of the country. To the other portions of
the coast it is as nearly central as it could be without losing fatally
in other respects. Delaware and Chesapeake Bays afford fine roadsteads;
but the low sand barrens and wet alluvial flats which form their shores
compelled Philadelphia and Baltimore to retire their population such a
distance up the chief communicating rivers as to deprive them of many
important advantages proper to a seaport. Under the influence of free
ideas may be expected a wonderful development of the advantages of
Chesapeake Bay. Good husbandry and unshackled enterprise throughout
Maryland and Virginia will astonish Baltimore by an increase of her
population and commerce beyond the brightest speculative dreams. The
full resources of Delaware Bay are far from being developed. Yet
Philadelphia and Baltimore are forever precluded from competing with New
York, both by their greater distance from open water and the comparative
inferiority of the interior tracts with which they have ready
communication. Below Chesapeake Bay the coast system of great
river-estuaries gives way to the Sea-Island system, in which the
main-land is flanked by a series of bars or sandbanks, separated from it
by tortuous and difficult lagoons. The rivers which empty into this
network of channels are comparatively difficult of entrance, and but
imperfectly navigable. The isolation of the Sea Islands is enough to
make them still more inconvenient situations than any on the main-land
for the foundation of a metropolis. Before we have gone far down this
system, we have passed the centre where, on mathematical principles, a
metropolis should stand.

Considered with regard to the tributary interior, New York occupies a
position no less central than with respect to the coast. It is
impossible to study a map of our country without momently increasing
surprise at the multiplicity of natural avenues which converge in New
York from the richest producing districts of the world. The entire
result of the cou