On the west side there was another outlet, skirting the Hudson River and extending to the little village of Greenwich; and the occasional outbreak of yellow fever in New York made this a popular resort. The influx of twenty thousand refugees during one of these scares, early in the present century, completely changed the character of this village, and although most of the newcomers returned to the lower end of the island, Greenwich had practically become, by 1830, an integral part of the city. The northward spread via Greenwich Street, the Bowery and Broadway continued, till Yorkville and Harlem on the east and Manhattanville and Bloomingdale on the west were absorbed by the growing city. In 1874 the Harlem was crossed, and New York ceased to be an island; in 1895 still further accessions were made in Westchester County. But the crowning event in the expansion of the city was the legislation by which, on January 1, 1898, Brooklyn and the outlying towns and villages on Long Island, and all of Staten Island, were brought within the limits of New York—an act that raised the population at a stroke from less than 1,900,000 to near 3,400,000, and incidentally brought almost half the people of the State under the immediate rule of Tammany Hall. A word should be said as to the Society, named in honor of Tamanend, an Indian chief who signed one of the treaties by which William Penn acquired the site of the city of Philadelphia. One of many societies of the same name, organized for social and political purposes toward the close of the eighteenth century, it reflected, to a certain extent, a spirit which had prevailed among the younger officers of the Revolution who had felt the force of Rousseau’s idealization of primitive man. Its first meeting was held on “St. Tammany’s day” (May 12), 1789. In membership it was allied with the Sons of Liberty and the Sons of 1776, and it has always professed “intense Americanism,” so far as that phrase is synonymous with Anglophobia. At first its ranks were recruited from among the small merchants, retailers and mechanics of the city; and by coming into close touch with the mass of immigrants that form so large a proportion of the population, giving the newcomers employment in some cases, in others charitable aid, instructing the alien voter as to his political rights and privileges, and directing him in their exercise, it has built up an enormous voting machine, insufficient to defeat a united opposition, but almost invariably so fortunate in local contests as to find its opponents divided. While nominally Democratic in national affairs, Tammany has never scrupled to oppose the Democratic party in the pursuit of its own immediate end—the control of local offices and revenues. This powerful machine has now for several years been dominated by an illiterate immigrant. [Illustration: THE STADT HUYS.]