Hub

“ The Northern Bridge, Steel and Girder Co. was not so far from our town—only fifty miles—but it was like moving into a strange, new world to pass through the portals of that concern. Clatter and bang and hubbub ... men roaring orders ... ”

“ On the north side the wall rises to include a hill which it there meets with, and on the other three sides the city is surrounded by a ditch, which is filled by the rising tide, when, for a time, the revolting mass of filth that lies in its bed is concealed from view. There are twelve outer gates—four of which are in the partition wall, and two water gates, through which boats pass from east to west across the new city. ”

“ A mist of time rolls up and hides the red stone wall and shingles from my sight, and, when it clears away, a vast and shining city stands exposed to view, with miles of street and garden, and an outer wall, of sweep so vast that the eye can hardly take it in, with massive gates and towers to defend these gates, of enormous strength. ”

“ At one place, in looking over the parapet of such a bridge, you see a vast market, with carts filled with vegetables standing all around it. At another, you behold a great railway station, with crowds of passengers on the platforms, and trains of cars coming and going; at another, a range of beautiful gardens and pleasure grounds, with ladies and gentlemen walking in them, or sitting on seats under the trees, and children trundling their hoops, or rolling their balls, over the smooth gravel walks. ”

“ A splendid harbor frames itself out of the mellow uncertainty—a harbor whereof the long white arms are stretched out to welcome the commerce of all the known world; and under the white fronts, and at the temple steps of that ancient city, Commerce poured into the lap of Luxury every commodity that could gratify cupidity or minister to human pleasure. ”

“ There is no bank to lay the tracks upon; from wall to wall the river surges, leaps, and roars. From out the water those mighty walls, built by Nature’s hand, run right straight up, 2600 feet in the air. ”

“ The city stands on nearly one hundred detached islets, connected by more than three times that number of drawbridges—the houses rising bolt upright out of the water—each street being a quay lined with trees—and each mansion a warehouse, as evinced by the crane and rope at the attic for hoisting in goods, furniture, fuel, and provisions. ”

“ The mass of public buildings and houses, as seen from the Pont Neuf, rises around you on either hand, whether you look up or down the river, in huge, aspiring, tortuous ridges, and produces a solidity of impression and a fantastic confusion not easy to reconcile. The clearness of the air, the glittering sunshine, and the cool shadows add to the enchantment of the scene. In a bright day, it dazzles the eye like a steel mirror. ”

“ For many generations the surface of the continent has been covered with roads, villages, and towns, bridges, aqueducts, and canals, to which this century has added a multitudinous network of railways, with their embankments and tunnels. In short, wherever man has lived, the ground beneath him bears witness to his presence. ”

“ At the foot of the heights flows a narrow and deep river, with an antique bridge communicating with a long and narrow suburb, flanked on either side by rich meadows of the brightest green, beyond which spreads the city ”

“ Great warehouses, tall buildings, a tower or so, three or four graceful bridges, one beyond the other, set with bright lights and bearing a luminous traffic, drop their images into the stream, and each light they bear makes a long, slightly wavering reflection upon the smooth black water. ”

“ Here and there a crooked, twisted tunnel forms a skylight overhead, and the blue heavens look down through it like a far-off eye. You cannot number the caverns and niches. Everywhere the sea has bored alleys and galleries, or hewn out solemn aisles, with arches intersecting each other, and running off into capricious furrows and mouldings. ”

“ As they came through Buttermilk Channel, they beheld [Pg 112] with delighted astonishment the fort, the church, the governor's house, the great dock jutting out into the salt river, the Stadt Huys, the rondeel, and a goodly assemblage of houses, with the gable ends to the street, as before the villanous introduction of new fashions, and at the extremity of the city, the gate and wall, from whence Wall-street deriveth its name. ”

“ The little portage pathways which connected the heads of our rivers and lakes or offered the voyageur a thoroughfare around the cataracts and rapids of our rivers were, as the subtitle of this volume suggests, the “Keys of the Continent” a century or so ago. The forts, chapels, trading stations, treaty houses, council fires, boundary stones, camp grounds, and villages located at these strategic points all prove this. The study of these routes brings one at once face to face with old-time problems from a point of view almost never otherwise gained. ”

“ From the harbour, filled with shipping, the ground rises all round to a height of 500 or 600 feet in steep slopes, upon which the city is built; a line of warehouses or other great white buildings, connected no doubt for the most part, if not altogether, with the trade of the port, forms the front rank, and gives an imposing facing to the whole. ”

“ Those wonderful little landscapes which open at the exit from each tunnel, and where to the darkness and the gloom succeed, as if by magic, those rapid glances at swelling lawns, deep-bosomed woods, and winding rivers, with peaceful homesteads dotting the banks, were so many surprises full of marvellous beauty. ”

“ Some of us have been to a large island that has been built up into a city. When the New York boys and girls want to leave their city they must either go in a boat, or over a bridge, or through a tunnel far under a river. Why? When you visit Atlantic City your train goes over a bridge into the city. ”

“ Where is the building of the Tower Bridge, the Power Houses, the Docks, the Blackwall Tunnel, the Trams, the Tube, or any of the other works by which this age, this workaday age, has distinguished itself, all of which are worth painting? ”

“ What is that mass which looms on beyond, where cloud-combing office buildings scallop the sky and bridges leap in far-flung spans from shore to shore? That's her—all right—the high picketed gateway of the nation. ”

“ The noble gateway leads now, not from courtyard to hall, but doorless, with its massive stones wrenched apart by clinging ivy, stands merely as some sort of key to the enigma of ground plan presented by walls ruinated in greater part to the level of the watery turf. ”

“ A considerable part of the labor of the town is fetching water over the bridge. On a hill overlooking the village is a big, pretentious brick house, with a tower, the furniture of which is an object of wonder to those who have seen it. ”

“ Once coming over on the ferry from Jersey City she had scanned the great towers and buildings, set with twinkling lights as with many jewels, and beheld the huge bridges, across which an endless stream of traffic passed and repassed, like human life itself in its unending succession. ”

“ This vast system of tunnelling which extends from the heart of Paris to the plain of Mont Souris is in reality a city where rock takes the place of houses, galleries the place of streets, dead men the place of citizens, and eternal darkness the place of day and night. ”

“ You could trace the lines of the streets by these long heaps of stones, and it was evident from their regularity that this city must have been built in blocks, and that the houses, to judge from the heaps of ruins, must have been of a considerable height. Further along I came to more docks nearly filled with silt and stones, and more bridges, that had been constructed of iron with stone piers, similar to the great high level bridge that first met my vision. ”

“ The town is walled, and after you have passed through a massive gateway in the southern wall, you are in the country. As you approach the Rock from the sea, it matters not from what direction, you get the idea that it is nothing but a barren rock. ”

“ For, travelling by bus, one can't avoid seeing, even in London, a few stray works of God --the sky, for example, an occasional tree, the flowers in the window-boxes. But travel by Tube and you see nothing but the works of man--iron riveted into geometrical forms, straight lines of concrete, patterned expanses of tiles. ”

“ Immediately at the side of one of these humble and human gateways there is a great gap in the wall, with a wide road running through it. There is something of unreason in the sight which affects the eye as well as the reason. ”

“ The bridge, which makes land across the water, and the boat, which makes land on the water, and the cable, which makes land and water alike—these are the physical forms of the spirit of modern life, the democracy of matter. ”

“ The inequality of the ground renders it necessary to make a long circuit in order to reach the lower part of the river; and in so doing you may observe, or fancy you observe, some remains of the ancient bridge, which stood nearly where is now the grotto of the Syren, deeply encrusted in this universal deposit. Looking upwards, you see the temple, the city, the rocks, the falls, combined in the most magical manner. ”

“ The temporary houses, first built over the water in the harbor, soon gave way to more solid structures. The main business part of the city now is on solid ground, made where vessels of the largest class lay at anchor in the early days. ”

“ Looking to the north, an immense curved line shows itself, growing ever greater, opening like the arch of a gigantic bridge, and binding this first group to a second, more complicated, each peak of which has a form of its own, and does in some sort as it pleases without troubling itself about its neighbor. ”

“ Such a system of walls and gates, like many other things thought rude and primitive, is really very rationalistic. It turns the town, as it were, into a plan of itself, and even into a guide to itself. ”

“ Her middle structure, covered by the bridge which bore him, his mate, the closed wheelhouse where a man was steering shut up with the fear of being swept overboard together with the whole thing in one great crash--her middle structure was like a half-tide rock awash upon a coast. ”

“ The lower one lies in the valleys. The streets of the upper town are connected by bridges; and when you stand upon one [Pg 158] of these bridges, and look down, you see a street instead of a river below, with ranges of strange and antique-looking buildings on each side, for banks, and a current of men, women, and children flowing along, instead of water. ”

“ When you have climbed up 2,300 feet, the road, as if tired of twisting and turning, boldly attacks the mountain side, runs through a tunnel [2] pierced in the solid rock and comes out on the other side of the peak. ”

“ A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities. ”

“ Here railroads branch out, there the noble river seems narrowed by distance to an insignificant brook; while weary miles of houses spread out every way, and the largest edifices of the metropolis are dwarfed beneath the lofty height from which you gaze. ”

“ Cities originate at their most convenient point of contact with the outer world and grow in the lines of least resistance or greatest attraction, or their resultants. The point of contact differs according to the methods of transportation, whether by water, by turnpike or by railroad. The forces of attraction and resistance include topography, the underlying material on which city builders work; external influences, projected into the city by trade routes ”

“ The great wall which encircles the city is no less than 11 miles around its circumference, while there are thirteen tunnel-like gloomy entrances, through the great width at the base, on main roadways that diverge from the city, so that exit or entrance can be made from any side. ”

“ Beyond the gate, we face a beautiful picture. The sweeping arc of the Anlagen, rimmed with marble benches, balustrades, and statues, is spirited with pleasure seekers, and its thick lines of lights are all glowing brightly, and carriages and cabs are speeding noiselessly across it. ”

“ There are the same great terraces, the same steam shovels, digging and loading the dirt, the same engines and trains, and in some of the pits the forms are even fine—amphitheatres,—only the seats and steps are gigantic. ”

“ In the minds of many may rise visions of an immense bulwark, a kind of great wall of China, drawn round London, and provided with ditches, drawbridges, and barred gates; and those who are acquainted with the customs of continental towns will probably connect them with barriers and octrois, and men examining your luggage and poking among your legs for contraband articles. ”

“ My window, then, looks out from a small library upon a small harbour frequented by ships of all nations—British, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, French, German, Italian, with now and then an American or a Greek—and upon a shore which I love because it is my native country. Of all views I reckon that of a harbour the most fascinating and the most easeful, for it combines perpetual change with perpetual repose. ”

“ Every Street is known by its Name, and fortify’d with a great Gate at each end, which at Night, to prevent Tumults and Uproars, are lock’d up with wooden Locks, and open’d with a Key of the same; for here all the Locks and Keys, even of the City Gates themselves, which are plated with Iron, are made only of Wood. The number of Men, which every Night guard this City, is 28000. There is a Canal or Khalis, as they call it, which runs the whole length of the City, and conveys thro’ it Water from the Nile. ”