Identifier: newnewyorkcomme00vand (find matches)
Title: The new New York : a commentary on the place and the people
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Van Dyke, John Charles, 1856-1932 Pennell, Joseph, 1857-1926
Subjects: New York (N.Y.) -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York : Macmillan Co.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
as they go. Over the Narrows, overConey Island, over Long Island, the view extends; butever the eyes keep returning to the distant sea, the trailof smoke, the glint of sails along the rim. To the southare the hills of Navesink and the low shores of New Jersey,to the west the marshes, and to the northeast the distantNew York. The interior of Staten Island is one of the most positivecontrasts one can meet with in the greater city. It isdifficult to realize that the woods and ponds, the farms andgardens and country places, that one sees over there, arereally a part of New York. It is like a country districtin the Mohawk Valley, with plowed fields, meadows,cattle, and timbered hilltops. The woods and fields arenot trimmed or swept or bridle-pathed or terraced or laidout for tennis and golf. It is not a park; it is what is leftof primeval nature. Daisies are growing in the lowlands,violets are blooming along the wood roads, and wild rosesare nodding and bending along the fences. The brooks
Text Appearing After Image:
Pi^ P^ THE ISLANDS 397 find their own way to the sea, the squirrels hunt their ownprovender, and the song birds build their nests quite un-observed. For not a great many people penetrate into the interiorof Staten Island. It is the borough of Richmond and hassomething more than seventy thousand inhabitants; butNew Yorkers hardly yet regard it as part of the city,because it is five miles from the Battery and has to bereached by a ferry-boat, time twenty-two minutes. Oc-casionally the man in the motor goes chasing through it atbreakneck speed, seeing nothing except the signboardsof the automobile club; but those who come over to theisland for a quiet stroll along the wood roads and throughthe fields are very few. The city dweller likes to thinkabout such things when reading his evening paper bythe fire, and to hear him talk on occasion one mightimagine that in the city he was in durance vile; butat heart he does not care too much for nature. Helikes people better than stumps, and, conse

Note About Images