By the cessation of hostilities the barriers to commercial intercourse between the City and other parts of the State, &c., were removed, and the navigation of the Hudson, the Sound, and connected waters was resumed as before the war. Packets brought in the produce of the country, and left laden with commodities suited to the needs of the rural population, or with the British gold in their purses; for all the staples of food, as flour, beef, pork and butter, were in great demand, to victual the many fleets preparing to sail, freighted with troops, or with loyalists. The country people in the vicinity also flocked to the public markets, bringing all kinds of provisions, which they readily sold at moderate rates for hard cash; and thus the adjacent country was supplied and enriched with specie. The fall in prices, which during the war had risen eight hundred per cent, brought a most grateful relief to the consumers. Simultaneously with these tokens of better days, the order for the release of all the prisoners of war from the New York prisons and prisonships, with their actual liberation from their gloomy cells, came as a touching reminder that the horrors of war were at an end. Many of the old citizens who had fled, on or prior to the invasion of the City by the British, and had purchased homes in the country, now prepared to return, by selling or disposing of these places, expecting upon reaching New York to re-occupy their old dwellings, without let or hindrance, but on arriving here were utterly astonished at being debarred their own houses; the commandant, General Birch, holding the keys of all dwellings vacated by persons leaving, and only suffering the owners to enter their premises as tenants, and upon their paying him down a quarter's rent in advance! Such apparent injustice determined many not to come before the time set for the evacuation of the City, while many others were kept back through fear of the loyalists, whose rage and vindictiveness were justly to be dreaded. Hence, though our people were allowed free ingress and egress to and from the City, upon their obtaining a British pass for that purpose, yet but few, comparatively, ventured to bring their families or remain permanently till they could make their entry with, or under the protection of, the American forces.