The approach from the sea to Sandy Hook is first guided for the modern
navigator by the flashing white light on Fire Island, a low sand-strip
on the Long Island Coast; and then there rise in front the Highlands
of the Navesink, on the Jersey Coast south of Sandy Hook, with a pair
of twin lighthouses perched upon their green slopes. The Hook, a long
strip of yellow sand enclosing the harbor, also has another lighthouse
on its northern end. Here are the expanding works of a formidable fort
defending the harbor entrance, and an artillery trial and proving
ground. Behind the Navesink Highlands and the Hook, the Jersey shore
of the lower bay stretches far back westward into Raritan Bay, thrust
up into the land between New Jersey and Staten Island. The green hills
of this island, crowned with villas, make the northwestern boundary
of the bay. To the right hand of the Hook, and north of the entrance,
is the sand strip of Coney Island, with its stretch of hotels and
buildings, the popular seashore resort of New York. Within the Hook is
the lower Quarantine on the west bank of Romer Shoal, and over
opposite is Gravesend Bay, behind Coney Island. The Narrows, where the
Hudson has forced an outlet through a broken-down mountain range, is
partly obstructed by an island reef of rocks. The hill-slopes,
together with the island, are fortified, Forts Hamilton and Tompkins
being on either hand, named after Alexander Hamilton and Daniel D.
Tompkins, the latter having been a Governor of New York and
Vice-President of the United States. On the island is the little red
sandstone Fort Lafayette, where many famous political prisoners were
confined during the Civil War. Within the Narrows the upper bay
spreads out, the high Staten Island hills, covered with noble
mansions, rising on the left hand, while on the right are the hamlets
on the lower shores of Long Island, with the distant tombs of
Greenwood Cemetery behind. The villages of Clifton and Stapleton and
the Quarantine Station are on Staten Island, Stapleton being the
yachting headquarters. Bedloe's and Ellis's Islands are passed, the
latter being the landing-place of arriving emigrants, while on the
former, now called Liberty Island, is the colossal Liberty Statue
presented to the United States by France in commemoration of the
Centenary of the Declaration of Independence in 1876. This statue,
designed by Bartholdi and erected ten years later, is a female figure
holding aloft a torch--"Liberty enlightening the world." It is made of
copper and iron, and weighs two hundred and twenty-five tons. The
statue is one hundred and fifty-one feet high, and stands on a granite
pedestal one hundred and fifty-five feet high.
Over on the western side, behind these small islands, the Jersey shore
recedes, and the strait making the boundary of Staten Island, which
the Dutch named the Kill von Kull, stretches around behind that island
to Arthur Kill and sundry railway coal-shipping ports on its banks,
where the great coal roads come out from the Pennsylvania mines. Just
in the entrance to East River is Governor's Island, with an
old-fashioned circular stone fort, called Castle William, and the more
modern defensive work, Fort Columbus. On Governor's Island is the
United States Army headquarters. This old Castle William, with another
very similar circular fort, then called Castle Clinton, on the Battery
at the lower end of Manhattan Island, were the defensive works of New
York in the eighteenth century. Castle Clinton is now an aquarium. Red
Hook, the jutting point of Brooklyn, is opposite Governor's Island,
and above it the East River opens, the strait flowing between New York
and Brooklyn, and connecting the harbor with Long Island Sound,
twenty miles distant, beyond the famous "Hell Gate," once the terror
of the mariner, but since improved by costly rock excavations which
have made a deep and safe channel. Through the East River and Hell
Gate flows the greater part of the Hudson River tidal current. Both
the East and North Rivers are lined on either side for miles by piers
crowded with shipping, and the tall towers and ponderous cables of the
Brooklyn Bridge rise high above the East River, while behind the
foliage-covered Battery Park stretches the metropolis, with its many
huge buildings.