This floating palace was built at Chester, Pa., by the Delaware Iron Ship-building and Engine Works Company. She is built of steel. Her registered tonnage is 5,398 tons. Although so vast in her proportions, the _Priscilla_ sits on the water as lightly and gracefully as a swan. Painted white as snow outside, as nearly all American river steamers are, she presents a beautiful, you might say a dazzling, appearance; and she is only one of five magnificent steamers of the Fall River Line, all substantially alike in design and equipment, running regularly all the year round between Fall River and New York, with a perfection of service that cannot be surpassed. [Illustration: “NEW YORK.” The latest Hudson River Day Steamer, 1897.] This cut, kindly furnished by the owners, gives a faithful representation of the exterior of a very beautiful Hudson River day steamboat. The _New York_ is built of steel, 311 feet over all, breadth of beam 40 feet, and over the guards 74 feet; average draught of water 6 feet. She combines speed, luxuriousness of furnishing and a beauty of finish in all parts that has not been surpassed on vessels of this class. She is capable of running 24 miles an hour. This boat and her consort, the _Albany_, are claimed to be the finest day passenger river steamers in the world. She is not crowded with 2,500 passengers, of whom 120 may sit down together to an exquisite dinner in the richly decorated dining-room. A distinct class of steamboats peculiar to America is the ferry-boat. In one of its forms it is to be found fully developed in New York harbour, and serves to convey daily countless thousands of people whose business lies in New York City, but whose homes are on Brooklyn Heights or elsewhere on Long Island, or the New Jersey coast. The boats are very large and very ugly, but do their work admirably, being adapted for the transport of wheeled carriages of every description as well as for foot-passengers. One of the sights of New York worth seeing is a visit to the Fulton Ferry in the morning or in the evening, when the crowds are the greatest. The _Robert Garrett_, which runs down the bay to Staten Island, carries from 4,000 to 5,000 passengers at a trip, and is said to be the largest steam-ferry passenger boat in existence. She is owned by the Staten Island Rapid Transit Co., and cost $225,000.