s | | | |
| | paid during year | 21,714,981.10| 52,254,317.92| 58,885,853.42|
|6 |No. of Vessels entered | | | |
| | from Foreign Ports | | | |
| | during year | 965 | 5,406 | 4,983 |
|7 |No. of Vessels cleared | | | |
| | to foreign Ports | | | |
| | during year | 966 | 5,014 | 4,666 |
|--+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+

Besides the various berths or anchorages and the warehouses of New York,
commerce is still further waited on in our metropolis by one of the most
perfect systems of pilot-boat, steam-tug, and lighter service which have
ever been devised for a harbor. No vessel can bring so poor a foreign
cargo to New York as not to justify the expense of a pilot to keep its
insurance valid, a tug to carry it to its moorings, and a lighter to
discharge it, if the harbor be crowded or time press. Indeed, the first
two items are matters of course; and not one of them costs enough to be
called a luxury.

The American river-steamboat--the palatial American _steamboat_, as
distinguished from the dingy, clumsy English _steamer_--is another of
the means by which Art has supplemented New York's gifts of Nature. This
magnificent triumph of sculpturesque beauty, wedded to the highest grade
of mechanical skill, must be from two hundred and fifty to four hundred
feet long,--must accommodate from five hundred to two thousand
passengers,--must run its mile in three minutes,--must be as _rococo_ in
its upholsterings as a bedchamber of Versailles,--must gratify every
sense, consult every taste, and meet every convenience. Such a boat as
this runs daily to every principal city on the Sound or the Hudson, to
Albany, to Boston, to Philadelphia. A more venturous class of coasting
steamers in peaceful times are constantly leaving for Baltimore,
Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Key West, Mobile, New Orleans, and
Galveston. The immense commerce of the Erie Canal, with all its sources
and tributaries, is practically transacted by New York City. Nearly
everything intended for export, plus New York's purchases for her own
consumption, is forwarded from the Erie Canal terminus in a series of
_tows_, each of these being a rope-bound f