I have seen one built in forty feet of water. Beaver Street, which to-day is so far distant from the sea, was named thus because formerly it was a small bay in which these animals had formed an embankment. I have conversed with old inhabitants who told me that they had seen the sea mount up to the very neighbor- hood of the City Hall. Here one finds a union of Dutch neatness with English taste and architecture. The houses are finished, placed, and painted with the greatest care.
Stone being rare, nearly the whole city is built of bricks.
Let those who like myself have experienced the extreme hospitality of the New Yorkers praise it as it deserves. New York being the constant meeting place of the English packet-boats, this city is necessarily the first that European strangers enter. The reception which they receive here is enough to give them a high idea of American generosity, as well as of the simple and cordial friendliness which they are to expect in the other cities of this Continent. The streets are frequently cleaned, and are lighted during the dark nights. The city contains three thousand four hundred houses, twenty-eight thousand inhabitants, and twenty churches belonging to different sects.