New York Island is situated in the upper New York bay, eighteen milesfrom the Atlantic Ocean, at the mouth of the Hudson river, which forms its western boundary, is separated from Long Island by the East river, and from the rest of New York State by the Harlem river and Spuyten Duyvel creek. The island is thirteen and one-half miles long, two and one-half wide at its extreme point, contains fourteen thousand acres, and is by survey divided into 141,486 lots, twenty-five by one hundred feet each. Its original surface was diversified by broken rocky hills, marshes, and ponds of water, and by arable and sandy plains. The rocks, which consisted principally of gneiss, hornblende, slate, mica, limestone, and granite, have been, for the most part, too coarse and brittle for building purposes, but have been employed to advantage in grading and docking. A bold rocky ridge, starting on the southern portion, extended northward, branching off into several spurs, which again united, forming Washington Heights, the greatest elevation anywhere attained (two hundred and thirty-eight feet above tide), and ending in a sharp precipitous promontory at the northern extremity of the island.

A body of fresh water known as "Collect Pond," nearly two miles in circumference, and fifty feet deep, covered the territory of the present Five Points, and the site of the Tombs, and was connected with the Hudson by a deep outlet on the line of Canal street, from which the street takes its name. This lake was encircled with a dense forest, and was the resort of skating parties in winter, while in summer Stevens and Fitch experimented in steam navigation on its waters ten years before Fulton''s vessel skimmed the Hudson. Deep rivulets supplied by springs and marshes cut the surface in many directions. Up Maiden lane flowed a deep inroad from the bay. In the vicinity of Peck Slip ran a low watercourse, which in the wet season united with the Collect, thus cutting off about eight hundred acres on the lower point, into a separate island. A deep stream flowed down Broad street, up which boatmen came for many years in their canoes to sell their oysters. The sources that supplied these lakes and streams still exist, and these waters are carried off through numerous immense sewers, covered deep in the earth, over which thousands tread daily, unconscious of their existence. The lower part of the island has been greatly widened by art; the whole territory covered by Front and Water streets on the east side, and by West, Greenwich, and Washington, on the west, including the whole site of Washington Market, was once swept by the billows of the bay. The chills and fever, with which hundreds of families are afflicted at this writing, result doubtless from these numerous covered but malarious marshes.

Civilization introduced gardening and farming. At the surrender of the Dutch dynasty the city occupied only the extreme southern portion of the island, a high wall, with ditch, having been thrown across it on the line of Wall street, for defence. All above this was for several years common pasture ground, but was afterwards divided into farms. The Governor''s garden lay along what is now Whitehall street; the site of St. Paul''s (Episcopal) Church was a rich wheat-field; the site of the old New York Hospital was once a fine orchard; the Bible House and Cooper Institute cover what at a later period was devoted to luxurious, gardens. The central portion of the island was during the English colonial period mapped out into rich productive farms, where men of means settled, became rich, and left their names in the streets that were afterwards constructed.

The city proper now extends from the Battery northward, and is compactly built for six miles, and irregularly to the Harlem river. The few vacant lots below Fifty-ninth street are being rapidly improved, and a vast amount of building is going on much farther up. Gardening is still conducted on a splendid scale on the upper portions of the island, though these green plots are being constantly encroached upon by the advance of the mason and the joiner. On the west side, through Bloomingdale, Manhattanville, and Washington Heights, may be found still some of the old country mansions and yards of the good lang syne, and many modern palatial residences glittering with costly splendor.