leet, averaging perhaps fifty
canal-boats and barges, propelled by a powerful steamer intercalated
near the centre. The traveller new to Hudson River scenery will be
startled, any summer day on which he may choose to take a steamboat trip
to Albany, by the apparition, at distances varying from one to three
miles all the way, of floating islands, settled by a large commercial
population, who like their dinner off the top of a hogshead, and follow
the laundry business to such an extent that they quite effloresce with
wet shirts, and are seen through a lattice of clothes-lines. Let him
know that these floating islands are but little drops of vital blood
from the great heart of the West, coming down the nation's main artery
to nurse some small tissue of the metropolis; that these are "Hudson
River tows"; and that, novel as that phenomenon may appear to him, every
other fresh traveller has been equally startled by it since March, and
will be startled by it till December. Another ministry to New York is
performed by the _night-tows_, consisting of a few cattle, produce, and
passenger barges attached to a steamer, made up semi-weekly or
tri-weekly at every town of any importance on the Hudson and the Sound.
We will not include the large fleet of Sound and River sloops, brigs,
and schooners in the list of New York's artificial advantages.

Turning to New York's land communication with the interior, we find the
following railroads radiating from the metropolitan centre.

1. A Railroad to Philadelphia.
2. A Railroad to the Pennsylvania Coal Region.
3. A Railroad to Piermont on the Hudson.
4. A Railroad to Bloomfield in New Jersey.
5. A Railroad to Morristown in New Jersey.
6. A Railroad to Hackensack in New Jersey.
7. A Railroad to Buffalo.
8. A Railroad to Albany, running along the Hudson.
9. Another Railroad to Albany, by an interior route.
10. A Railroad to New Haven.
11. A Railroad to the chief eastern port of Long Island.
12. The Delaware and Raritan Road to Philadelphia, connecting with New
York by daily transports from pier.
13. The Camden and Amboy Railroad, connecting similarly.
14. The Railroad to Elizabeth, New Jersey.

The chief eastern radius throws out ramifications to the principal
cities of New England, thus affording liberal choice of routes to
Boston, New Bedford, Providence, and Portland, as well as an entrance to
New Hampshire and Vermont. To all of these towns, except the more
southerly, the H