Beautiful were the sights which greeted the eye of the adventurous Dutch navigator, as on the twenty-third day of September, 1609, he cast anchor in the broad bay of New York. On every side the shores were feathered by woods, freshly painted by the liberal hand of an American autumn. The varied trees, the golden willow, the scarlet sumach, the red and white maples, the sassafras, mixing with the oaks and beeches and the birch,—unassociated as yet with schools or discipline,—had begun to blaze in their varied gorgeous hues, and their leaves to cover the ground with carpets of beautiful patterns. Upon the branches climbed vines that fell from tree to tree, draping them in garments whose innocent height rivalled those of the Indians who found shelter beneath them. Through these woods the mocking-bird trilled its varied song, its original strains almost as liquid and sweet as those of its mimic successor, the unfeathered biped who now lures the modern New-Yorker to greenly arching saloons, and there exchanges notes with him. The humming-bird, too, darted in sparkles through the leafy avenues,—not as now carried upon the top of a lady’s head, but dipping its own bill in the wild flowers that hung through all the Boweries of Manhattan. Pigeons, unplucked, sped unhurt through all the saloons of nature. Doves, not those mellifluous names that invite to restaurants, and there present their dear bills to the stranger, but the gayly plumed and round-necked birds, cooed in the thickets. Coveys of quails occupied the place of those other coveys, which, turned to jail-birds, now flutter behind bars. Here and there troops of wild turkey wheeled in long circles, instead of dangling, as now, by one leg in front of a Broadway market. In the untroubled waters oysters made their own beds, and tucked themselves in as they saw fit, undisturbed by the injurious names of hard shell which a party of frogs or others might croak out around them. The opossum had not yet lent its name to deceitful concealments, but openly showed its offspring in its domestic pouch. Turtles, although wearing the green, innocently walked around with their feet upon the honest earth, instead of spreading them upwards in the air, with their backs uneasily indorsing the city’s dirty sidewalks, their office-like fatness attracting the liquorish eye of some gourmand. Even the bears licked their own cubs with innocent delight, not only in Wall Street, but in all the unwalled places in and about New York. The thrifty otter—the only banker on the whole island—made his deposits in safety; nor was he frightened, as he slowly accumulated the savings of his well-spent life, by the lively sallies of the jackdaw, carrying ever with him the burglarious instruments of his trade; nor heeded the harmless slanders of the woodpecker, as he gratified his strange taste in finding out and exploring the tender or rotten character of the neighboring trees.