ony of charm, like the stereotyped features of a placid and
passionless beauty, which characterizes your standard harbor-scenes. New
York may not be as classic or correct as her languishing rivals on the
Hellespont or the blue waters of the Mediterranean, but she has the
fascination arising from mobility of feature, endless variety of
expression, and vivacity of mood. One who daily crosses the North River
for a year will have seemed to belt the globe and voyaged through all
zones. He will have danced upon the sparkling waves of the AEgean, groped
through the fogs of Liverpool, sweltered in the sultry glare of Tunis,
skirted the ice-clad shores of Scandinavia, sickened in the surges of
the Channel, lain glassed in the watery mirror of the China Sea. And he
will have observed striking features peculiar to this latitude of the
Atlantic coast. I recall an atmospheric effect in springtime resembling
a light pearl-colored mist, which had none of the qualities of a fog,
but rather lent a weird transparency to the air. It gave the impression
of sunlight faded or washed of its golden particles, or of a picture
drawn on pearl. There was a statuesque stillness about the water, a near
and yet a far look about the entire scene, which imparted a sense of
unreality, almost of the supernatural.

I have spoken of fogs on the river. Their prevalence differs greatly in
different years, also their density and darkness. The East River, from
its narrowness, its crowded condition, and its rapid current, is far
more obstructed by them; but the Bridge has changed all that. The fogs
are to be charged to the serious discount of suburban life; still more
the snow-storms, which are more deadening to sound and less capable of
illumination. But the use of electric light and the vast capacities of
the steam-whistle and fog-horn, not to speak of the more than Indian
expertness to which a pilot's eye and ear can be trained, have reduced
the inconvenience to a minimum. There is, however, to the imaginative
traveller a compensating, albeit an awful, charm. It is like exploring
some dim and echoing cave resounding with an organ-concert played by
Titans on the very instruments of AEolus himself. The whole river makes
one think of a vast shell, full of the boomings and sighings of an
infinite sea.

But such experiences on the North River are rare, even in times of fog
or snow. For the most part the climate of New York harbor is singularly
clear, and its aut