When the Dutch traders raised their storehouse of logs on yonder untamed and desolate strand, perhaps as early as 1615; when the Walloons established their settlement on this side of the river, in 1624, at that "Walloons' Bay" which we still call the Wallabout; or when, later, in 1626, Manhattan Island, estimated to contain 22,000 acres, was purchased from the Indians for $24, paid in beads, buttons and trinkets, and the Block House was built, with cedar palisades, on the site of the Battery, it is, of course, commonplace to say that they who had come hither could scarcely have had the least conception of what a career they thus were commencing for two great cities. But it is not so wholly commonplace to say that those who saw this now wealthy and splendid New York a hundred years since, less conspicuous than Boston, far smaller than Philadelphia, with its first bank established in 1784, and not fully chartered till seven years later; with its first daily paper in 1785; its first ship in the Eastern trade returning in May of the same year; its first Directory published in 1786, and containing only 900 names; its Broadway extending only to St. Paul's; with the grounds about Reade street grazing-fields for cattle, and with ducks still shot in that Beekman's Swamp which the traffic in leather has since made famous: or those who saw it even fifty years ago, when its population was little more than one-third of the present population of this younger city; when its first Mayor had not been chosen by popular election; when gas had but lately been introduced, and the superseding of the primitive pumps by Croton water had not yet been projected--they, all, could hardly have imagined what already the city should have become: the recognized centre of the commerce of the Continent; one of the principal cities of the world.