CHAP. XXXIX.] OMNIBUSES. 249 



In the five months since we were last in this metropolis, whole 

 streets had been built, and several squares finished in the northern 

 or fashionable end of the town, to which the merchants are now 

 resorting, leaving the business end, near the Battery, where they 

 formerly lived. Hence there is a constant increase of omnibuses 

 passing through Broadway, and other streets running north and 

 south . Groups of twelve of these vehicles may be seen at once, 

 each with a single driver, for wages are too high to support a 

 cad. Each omnibus has an opening in the roof, through which 

 the money is paid to the coachman. We observed, as one 

 woman after another got out, any man sitting near the door, 

 though a stranger, would jump down to hand her out, and, if it 

 was raining, would hold an umbrella over her, frequently offering, 

 in that case, to escort her to a shop, attentions which are com 

 monly accepted and received by the women as matters of course. 



All the streets which cross Broadway, run east and west, and 

 are numbered, so that they have now arrived at 146th-street 

 a mode of designating the different parts of the metropolis worthy 

 of imitation on both sides of the Atlantic, since experience has 

 now proved that there is in the Anglo-Saxon mind an inherent 

 poverty of invention in matters of nomenclature. For want of 

 some municipal regulations like those of New York, the same 

 names are indefinitely multiplied in every great city, and letters, 

 after wandering over all the streets bearing the same appellation, 

 to the infinite inconvenience and cost of the post-office, are at 

 length received, if haply they ever reach their destination, long 

 after they are due. 



The low island on which New York is built, is composed of 

 granite and gneiss covered with &quot; drift&quot; and boulders. The 

 original surface being very uneven, the municipality has fixed 

 upon a certain grade or level to which all heights must be 

 lowered by blasting the rocks or by carting away the gravel, 

 and up to which all the cavities must be raised. Besides other 

 advantages of this leveling process, the ground is said to become 

 more healthy and free from malaria, there being no longer any 

 stagnant pools of water standing in the hollows. 



May 10. Paid a visit to Mr. Audubon, the celebrated orni- 



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