Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/211



NEW YORK CITY

THE COSMOPOLITAN CITY

By comparison with London, New York is a city of the second size, lacking some millions of the population of the modern Babylon. Even Paris, though less populous, outranks the American metropolis in many of the elements that go to the making of a great city. But in drawing these comparisons it must be remembered that only three centuries ago, when the French and English capitals had been places of importance for over a thousand years, New York was a wooded island, criss-crossed by innumerable streams, indented by morasses and infested by Indians and wild beasts. European civilization was wrinkled with age long before a permanent roof was erected on the island of Manhattan; and three lives such as that of