THE

HE midnight and mid-ocean of southern lati- | three o'clock every morning, in all the mutations of tudes are not more stilly than the water-front of the city is a few hours before daybreak. At about

season, after the most wearing night's work in the world, a little string of writers, compositors, and proof-readers, in sociable twos and threes, and in meditative singleness, may be seen passing down

Fulton Street, from the great newspaper offices in Park Row, to the principal Brooklyn ferry-house. When they reach the East River, they might almost as well (for all the sparks of animation visible) be on the brink of Dante's Cimmerian stream, which—

"All the woes hems in of all the universe."

inhabitants on every floor; the confluent streets pour increasing crowds upon the wharves, and the air rings with the Wagnerian rhythm of the commotion. The friction of the multitude, the variety of color and structure, the quaintness of many buildings, the gracefulness and poetic suggestiveness of the ships, and the impetuous system of the traffic, are some of the things that make the scene particularly charming and exhilarating.

There are sounds: the tide whispers around the piers; the footsteps of the belated pedestrians, the dip of oars, and the hollow thud of paddles, echo The bowsprits of magnificent clippers reach so with preternatural clearness; but these lend the far across the street that they endanger the windows force of contrast to the sepulchral silence with- of the stores; voluminous sails, whose snowy whiteout breaking it, and in the same way the few lights ness has been stained brown and yellow by tropical in sight make the blackness in which they hang heat and mid-ocean brine, hang out from the spars blacker. A schooner drifts inertly with the tide, her in the sun; in some instances canvas banners are sails looming in mid-air like the wings of a mon- unrolled from the foremasts, announcing the names, strous night-bird, and her steering-lamps gleaming destinations, and sailing-dates, of the ships; a faint red and green like a pair of dragon-eyes; a ques- odor of tar flavors the air, and a few of the buildtionable row-boat shoots across the quivering reflec-ings have been so amended and amplified by detions thrown out by the lights on the piers; the ferry-boat, with her cabin-windows shining, crosses and recrosses at long intervals. But it is as deathly still as a Sierra pine-forest; the towers of the Brook-joyment in all the promenaders of this busy riverlyn Bridge rise out of the darkness like two massive mountain-buttes; the masts and cordage of the shipping form a pen-and-ink network against the sky; the vast metropolis and its harbor are fast asleep and dreaming.

The dream lasts until the earliest russet streak of dawn shows itself over Corlear's Hook, and then the sleeping giant into which our fancy has transfigured the city murmurs and stirs ; the relaxed pulse of business dilates with new currents, and the nightly lethargy is overcome in a flood of burning energy. The awakening is like the starting of a great, complicated machine: the first motions are cautious and slow; but, as the velocity increases, the various parts become blurred in the seeming confusion of a perfect unison.

The little tow-boats moored to the wharves are the earliest heralds of the morning; as their fires are lighted, gray coils of smoke and white threads of steam roll out of their funnels, and, while it is yet dark, they evince a predisposition to that exuberant vitality which characterizes them when they are under way. The ferry-boats multiply like the brass spheres of a conjurer, and their decks are crowded with laborers; from corners that have been sealed in shadows, unsuspected vehicles of commerce emerge; a hundred new routes are opened; and, almost before the tired-out newspaper-men are in their well-earned beds, the stream that was so silent and unburdened when they crossed it is animated beyond description by a dazzling fleet of steam and sailing vessels.

Upon the wharves, and along the river-streets, a similar transformation takes place. The reader has probably seen those surprising developments of a pantomime by which water-lilies unfold charming young women, and bulrushes are turned to gnomes. In the same spontaneous and inexplicable way gangs of laborers and horses seem to be evolved out of the packages of freight; the dreamy old stores reveal

tached portions of vessels that they are like old wrecks cast high and dry upon a beach.

I think we can detect an unconscious sort of en

street; the careworn faces are lightened by the pleasurable sensations of its commercial activity and picturesque variety; but the medium through which the real sentiment of the scene reflects itself is the boy with nautical aspirations-the slender little fellow with pathetically hopeful eyes-whom we meet from time to time, watching with keen absorption the loading and unloading of vessels. His view is introspective, and what he sees leads his mind beyond the external objects visible to the many other and wider phases of maritime life.

As we purpose making a complete tour of the wharves, our starting-point shall be far up the East River, and thence we will follow the water-front to the Battery; from the Battery to the North River, and up the North River to the edge of the suburbs -an itineracy that will allow us to see in greater detail the extent of the dock facilities and the diversity of the harbor's commerce.

Above Corlear's Hook the river widens, but the traffic is not as great as it is lower down, very little shipping being docked above Grand Street. The piers here are quiet; the vessels moored to them are out of service, or under repairs, or awaiting a charter, and a crippled old watchman is the last remnant of the crew. On warm afternoons a few unpretentious anglers-laborers out of work-drowsily play for a bite, and on Sundays whole families of working-people from the overcrowded tenements of the neighborhood cluster in the spots where the breeze from the river is strongest.

Just across the stream at Greenpoint, on the Brooklyn shore, there are some ship-building yards, in which the white frames of the embryo vessels on the stocks are visible; and a short distance to the north are the oil-docks of Hunter's Point, from which petroleum of various grades is exported.

Occasionally the great reservoirs of oil adjoining the docks take fire, and a gorgeous and comparatively inexpensive conflagration results. The writer re

other spectacle could surpass it in grandeur. A sud-est objects into a black relief, and throwing bloodden flame leaped out of the uncertain darkness, and uncovered the buildings of the town behind it, and