The old Dutch city and its English successor in the lower part of the island covered a triangular space not a mile long, and about a mile wide. In the course of time Broadway was opened right up the center of this triangle, and streets called East Broadway and West Broadway were thrown in a course generally parallel to the two rivers, and the attempt was continued to make a more or less rectangular city, and finally, at the distance of more than two miles up, a real rectangular metropolis was secured by opening broad avenues, of which there are about twelve lengthwise of the whole island, and these are crossed by streets running in number up to 220th, and in the course of time in the annexed portion they will run to something like 300th Street. Although the city is thus expanded, business and population are very tenacious of the old and crowded situations. As it is impossible to draw the money and finance out of Wall Street, so it is next to impossible to alter the situation of the market houses, the railroad freight depots, the express offices, the steamboat piers, the ferries, and even the manufactories. As an immense portion of what is manufactured in New York is not sold to the people of the city, but for export, it remains a consideration to manufacture, prepare and pack goods down in the dense, lance-shaped point of the island. Consequently business, tenements, folly, manufactories, everything grow denser as you go down town, and the east side of the city is especially given up to the Germanic races. At that point there is a protuberance of the city into the East River, overlapping the city of Brooklyn, and the avenues here are not numbered, but being to the east of First Avenue they take the names of Avenues A, B, C and D. Here you find the tenement houses in their glory. Grand Street is the great artery of that side of the town. Fifty years ago there were but 200,000 inhabitants on this island; thirty-five years ago there were but 500,000; twenty-five years ago there were but 800,000 people; fifteen years ago there were 950,000. By the census of 1880 the population of the island was put down at over 1,200,000. It will not be far wrong to call it in general terms a million and a half. But the stable population of New York bears no comparison with its transient and daily population. It is immediately surrounded by two millions more of people who depend upon the city, and who can leave it at all hours of the night by ferries. It is the resort of sixty per cent. of all the ocean vessels in the country, with their crews. It contains the offices of nearly every corporation in the United States, all of which, after they have attained a certain stability or prominence, keep a commission house or branch office on New York island.