There seems to be little doubt that the city of N.Y. and its environs has become within the last decade larger even than London. The population of greater London (including all the separate administrative entities within the Metropolitan Police District) is estimated at 7,435,379. Jersey City, Hoboken, and the other N.J. cities on the west, as well as Yonkers, Mt. Vernon, New Rochelle, etc., on the north, although politically detached, are included in the "city" of N.Y. in the larger sense, their political detachment being in a certain sense accidental. Including these, the population of N.Y. area corresponding to the Metropolitan London area is 7,583,607. The population of N.Y. City proper is 5,261,151. The London area comparable with this, viz., the part of London governed by the London County Council has a population of 5,028,974. Comparing the areas of the two--N.Y.C. with 327 sq. miles and London with 692 sq. miles, it is hard to understand how the respective populations should approximate each other so nearly until it is remembered that New York grows perpendicularly instead of horizontally, that it usurps more air rather than more land. In some of the downtown business streets, such as Wall or Rector, the buildings tower so high above the narrow thoroughfare that they form a kind of deep canyon along which the wind is drawn as through a tunnel. In the colonial period Philadelphia was the most important city, commercially, politically and socially, while just before the War of Independence, Boston, with a population of 20,000 was the most flourishing town in all the colonies. During the Revolutionary War, N.Y.C. had fallen to a population of 10,000 and in 1790 it had barely gained a position of leadership with 33,131, but by 1840 N.Y.C. had grown to be a city of 313,000 while Philadelphia had 95,000 and Boston 93,000. [Illustration: Commodore Vanderbilt Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) at the age of 16 bought a sailboat in which he carried farm produce and passengers between Staten Island, where he lived, and N.Y. He was soon doing so profitable a business that in 1817, realizing the superiority of steam over sailing vessels, he was able to sell his sloops and schooners, and became the captain of a steam ferry between N.Y. and New Brunswick. His projects grew enormously. He inaugurated steamship lines between N.Y. and San Francisco, N.Y. and Havre, and other places. In 1857-1862 he sold his steamships and turned his attention more and more to the development of railways, with the result that before his death he had built up and was a majority share owner in the N.Y. Central & Hudson River, the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, the Harlem, and the Michigan Central & Canada Southern railways, and had holdings in many others. He died at N.Y. in 1877.]