en Duyvil, the
spot immortalized by Washington Irving, and, entering the express car,
bound and gagged the messenger in charge, threw the safe off and jumped
after it. The iron box contained a large amount of greenbacks and
government bonds, which the thieves succeeded in appropriating. Some of
these daring robbers were subsequently arrested and lodged in the White
Plains jail, but on the day set for the trial, the sheriff discovered
that his prisoners of the night before, whom he imagined quite secure,
had left, without waiting to say good-bye. Some friends and confederates
came to their assistance, released them and drove them down to the city,
from whence they finally reached our sister Kingdom, recently made
famous as the abode of the fashionable defaulter.

The successful perpetration of this bold robbery suggested to a number
of idle men the idea of robbing the freight cars as they remained
apparently unguarded on the tracks in the vicinity of the West Thirtieth
street station, and led to the formation of the notorious Tenth Avenue
gang. The cars arriving from the west and other points loaded with
valuable goods and merchandise, offered facilities of a most tempting
kind to the members of this gang, and large quantities nightly
disappeared until, week after week, the goods stolen aggregated
thousands of dollars loss to the railroad company. The proximity of the
river aided the operations of this gang very materially, for much of the
goods were spirited away with the assistance of the river thieves and
their boats, both sets of thieves acting, of course, in collusion.

It is a very difficult thing to map out just the precise localities
where criminals reside now, owing, in a great measure, to the efficiency
of the present police, who keep evil-doers under constant surveillance,
preventing them remaining long in any one place. Of course, such streets
as are contained in wards of the city where the poorest people dwell
will invariably have their quota of questionable characters; but the
days when gangs of roughs, "toughs" or thieves can flourish in one
particular section, it is to be hoped, are matters of the past.

It is a matter of surprise to other nations, and of congratulation to
ourselves, that at the present such crimes against persons and property
as burglary, pocket-picking and highway robbery are much rarer in
proportion than in any other cosmopolitan city in the world.

CHAPTER III.

STREET ARABS