Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/138

 On reaching the tower, I found it pierced by an archway affording passage to a spacious balcony. Standing on this, near where the Battery is now situated, I saw before me the bay, studded with craft of strange appearance. Near at hand I recognized Governor's, Bedloe's, and Ellis's Islands. But how altered their aspect! Governor's Island no longer presented a trace of any thing resembling a fort, or any sign of man's distrust or defiance of man. On the site of Brooklyn stood a city, statelier and more turret-crowned even than her predecessor of the present. In the foreground were granite docks fringed with shipping. From the edge of the docks extended a broad, open space unencumbered with buildings of any kind. Massive warehouses lined the farther edge of the esplanade, on which could be distinguished the locomotive wagons, sometimes singly, sometimes in long lines, carrying to and fro the cargoes that constituted the material of commerce between different hemispheres.

Farther back from the water, the city, though abounding in stately edifices, was no longer so closely built, but displayed among its masonry a large amount of foliage. This arose, as I afterwards discovered, from the city being throughout arranged in squares, each enclosing an expanse of verdure.

Brooklyn had become a great university city, where, during six months of the year, some fifty thousand students, of both sexes, attended the prelections of celebrated teachers. My first thought, upon hearing this, was, By what possible means do the authorities manage to preserve order among such a concourse? How are