Manhattan Island, the seat of the city of New York, is fifteen miles long, and one and a half in its average breadth. It is washed on the western side by the Hudson, and separated from the continent and Long Island on the east by narrow channels. It is generally level in the lower part, and the soil here rests upon a granite rock. At the northern extremity, the granite is succeeded by limestone, which affords excellent marble, and extends for some distance into the country. In the northern part, the shores are rocky, and the face of the island strongly marked by abrupt crags and ravines, hills and valleys, insulated rocks and marshy inlets. The gneiss rock, which is much used for side-walk pavements and the foundations of buildings, is found in abundance here. Small quantities of porcelain clay have also been found upon the island.

The Bay of Chesapeak contains many islands within the limits of Maryland. Kent Island, on the east side of the bay, opposite Annapolis, is twelve miles long. The Tangier Islands lie farther down the bay. On the seacoast is the island of Assatiegue, twenty miles long and two broad. The coast of North Carolina is skirted by a range of low, sandy islands, thrown up by the sea. They are long and narrow, and inclose several bays or sounds. They are generally barren. The southern part of South Carolina exhibits a similar range, separated from the main land by narrow channels, which afford a steam-boat navigation. These islands, like the neighboring continent, are low and flat, but are covered with forests of live oak, pine, and palmetto. Before the cultivation of cotton, many of them were the haunts of alligators, and their thick woods and rank weeds rendered them impenetrable to man. At present, they are under cultivation and well inhabited; and as the voyager glides along their shores in a steam-boat, he is enchanted with the prospect of their lively verdure, interspersed with thick clumps of palmettoes, live oak, and laurel, and flowering groves of orange trees. The long sandy beaches which border these islands towards the sea, are covered with thousands of water-fowl. Georgia is also bordered with a range of small islands and marshy tracts, intersected by channels and rivulets which are navigable for small vessels. These islands consist of a rich gray soil called hammoc land. In their have endeavored to describe from the Pavilion at Staten Island. There are finer views of New York itself from the opposite shores of New-Jersey, on the one side, and from Brooklyn and the heights of Long Island, on the other; but Staten Island is unquestionably the place for seeing New York in combination with its noble harbor, and the surrounding seas and the shipping which adorn them. After I had once found my way under the guidance of my friends to the Pavilion, I frequently bent my steps to it when I had leisure, to spend an hour or two in the island, and never returned without being equally delighted with the scenery above the quarantine ground. Strange it is, but not less strange than true, that I have never observed in any of the published tours relative to the United States, the slightest reference made to the beauties of Staten Island, or to the prospect from the Pavilion. Captain Hall's Travels were brought me while I was writing the notes of this excursion, but it does not appear from them that he had ever visited this island, though only five miles from New York, where he resided for a considerable period. At a subsequent period I procured at Philadelphia, Mr. Darby, the geographer's, valuable view of the United States, and was glad to find that he recommended Staten Island as possessing he most variegated landscapes on the Atlantic coast of the United States. 'No traveller ought (he writes) to neglect it. In a clear day, a single hour on some of the hills of Staten Island is worth a voyage of considerable extent. How many who visit New-York with all the means of gratification, and who travel for mere amusement. lose the invaluable pleasure of scanning the rich perspective from Staten Island. Thousands and tens of thousands.Stuart's America.

natural state, they are covered with forests of live oak, pine, and hickory but under cultivation they produce the best cotton in the world, called SeaIsland cotton. There are many small islands scattered along the coast of Florida; and off the southern extremity, at some distance from the land, lies a cluster, on one of which, Key West, the United States have established a naval station.

The Chandeleur Islands lie on the eastern coast of Louisiana; they are little more than heaps of sand, covered with pine forests. West of the Mississippi are many others scattered along the coast. Here is the island of Barataria, formerly noted as a nest of pirates. It lies in a bay which receives the waters of a lake of the same name. The soil of these islands is generally rich; most of them are low and level. There are some very fertile islands in the Mississippi, and in the Great Lakes.

The Island of Michilimackinac, in the strait connecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, is important in a political point of view, being the Gibraltar of the north-west. It is of an elliptical form, about seven miles in circumference, rising gradually to the centre; its figure suggested to the mind of the Indians its appropriate name, Michi Mackina,† (Great Turtle.) The greater part of the island is almost an impenetrable thicket of underwood and small trees, which contribute materially to the defence of the garrison. Fort Holmes stands on a summit of the island, several hundred feet above the level of Lake Huron, and is now one of the most formidable positions in the western country. The French were the first settlers, and their descendants, to a considerable number, reside near the Fort.

Maniton Island is situated near the eastern coast of Lake Michigan; it is six miles long and four wide, and is held sacred by the Indians. The Castor Islands are a chain of islets, extending from Grand Traverse Bay nearly across the lake; they are low and sandy, but afford a shelter for light boats in their passage to Green Bay. Grosse Isle is a valuable alluvion of several thousand acres, being five miles long, and from one to two wide.

*There are about one hundred and twenty-five islands of considerable size, and a multitude of small ones, in that part of the Mississippi between New Orleans and the junction of the Ohio. Wolf Island, about twenty-four miles below the confluence, is situate in a fine part of the river, where the banks are high and the current rapid. This island is about twenty miles in circumference, and contains fifteen thousand acres of good land, with a fine prairie in the centre.

There are many beautiful scenes in passing the islands upon the river, which I saw to great advantage, it being full, and yet only in a few places overflowing its proper course; but natural beauties of this kind, where all that sort of variety of feature is wanting which depends upon the neighborhood of mountain and hill, and where nothing but the forest is to be seen, excepting, at considerable distances from each other, patches of cultivated ground, soon cease to be very interesting, and the river, the prodigious length of which, as well as its great volume of water, astonish the beholder for the first time, is the only object that on such a voyage as this continues powerfully to arrest the attention. Stuart's America.

The Indian tradition concerning the name of this little barren island is curious. They say that Michapous, the chief of spirits, sojourned long in that neighborhood; and they believe that a mountain on the border of the lake was the place of his residence, which they still call by his name. It was here, say they, that he first instructed men to make nets for fishing, and where he has collected the greatest quantity of fish. On the island he left spirits named Imakinakos, and from these aerial possessors it has received the appellation of Michilimackinac.

GENERAL REMARKS ON ISLANDS.

It has been well observed, that a large island is a continent in miniature, with its chains of mountains, its lakes, rivers, and not unfrequently its surrounding islets. The smaller islands are found single, or in groups. Among the low or flat islands, there are Some which are only banks of sand, scarcely raised above the surface of the water; sometimes they consist of masses of shells or petrifactions, as the Isles of Lachof to the north of Siberia, which are nothing but masses of ice, sand, and the bones of the mam. moth. The Pacific contains a great many islands formed of coral reefs, which are sometimes covered with sand, and afford nourishment to a few plants.

Among the more elevated islands we find very many which owe their foundation, in a great measure, to volcanic agencies. Submarine islands, as they have been sometimes called, or immense sand-banks, covered with shoal water, are not unfrequent. Chains of islands in the neighborhood of continents seem to be often formed by the action of the waters washing away the less solid parts, which once occupied the spaces between the mountains and rocks. In this manner were probably formed the islands along the coast of the United States, which still appear above the surface of the waves.

One of the chief advantages that islands derive from their situation is, that the climate is generally rendered mild and salubrious, from the vapors of the surrounding sea, which generally moderate the violence of heat and cold, both of which are sensibly less than on the continent in the same latitude. Another advantage is found in their accessibility on every side, by which islands are open to receive and export commodities, and at times when the ports of the continent are closed. An island has on all sides the most extensive and effectual frontier, subsisting forever without repairs and without expense; and, which is still more, derives from this very frontier, a great part of the subsistence of its inhabitants, and a valuable article in its commerce, from fisheries.

The island of Acroteri, famous in ancient history, is represented to have risen from the sea, in a violent earthquake; its surface is composed of pumice-stone incrusted with a covering of fertile earth. Four neighboring islands have been attributed to a similar cause, and yet the sea about them cannot be fathomed by any sounding line. These have risen at different periods, the last in 1573, the first long before the birth of Christ. Similar eruptions of islands have occurred in the group of the Azores. Thus in Decem ber, 1720, a violent shock of an earthquake was felt at Tercera. During the night, the top of a new island appeared, which ejected a huge column of smoke. The pilot of a ship who attempted to approach it sounded on one side of the new formed island, but could not reach bottom with a line of sixty fathoms. On the opposite side, the sea was deeply tinged with various colors, white, blue and green, and was very shallow. This island gradually diminished in size, and finally altogether disappeared.

History abounds with accounts of floating islands, but they are either false or much exaggerated. These islands are generally found in lakes, and are composed of the aight matter floating on the surface of the water in cakes, forming, with the roots of plants, collections of different sizes, which, not being fixed in any part to the shore, are driven about by the winds. In the course of time, some of them arrive at considerable Size The floating islands, however, mentioned by the old writers, have now disappeared or become fixed.

CHAPTER X.-CÁPES AND PENINSULAS.

Cape Ann, the northern limit of Massachusetts Bay, is a rocky promontory, fifteen miles in length, containing several good harbors. The peninsula of Cape Cod, in the south-east part of Massachusetts, is about sixtyfive miles long, and from one to twenty miles broad; its shape is nearly that of a man's arm bent inward at the elbow and wrist. The greater part of the peninsula is a barren desert; in the south-western portion the land, though sterile, is under some little cultivation; but the northern part consists almost wholly of hills of white sand. The houses are built upon stakes driven into the ground, with open spaces between for the sand to drift through. The cape is well inhabited, notwithstanding its sterility, and supports a population of twenty-eight thousand, who derive their subsistence chiefly from the fisheries. The coast is beset with numerous shoals, and has long been the dread of mariners. At the first settlement of the country, there was an island east of the cape, about nine miles out at sea, which was twenty acres in extent, and covered with savin and cedar trees; for a century this island has been entirely submerged, and the water is above six fathoms deep.

The

The peninsula of Nahant, a few miles north of the harbor of Boston, is connected with the main land by Lynn beach, a smooth and level floor of sand two miles in length. It is divided into Great Nahant, Little Nahant, and Bass Neck: the two former being connected by a delightful beach ninety rods long. These beaches are hard and smooth, and of sufficient width at low water to accommodate thousands with a pleasant walk or ride. Great Nahant contains three hundred and five acres of land. shores of this peninsula are bold and rocky. On its southern side is a large and curious cavern called the Swallows' House, inhabited by a great number of swallows, which here make their nests. On the northern shore is a chasm thirty feet deep, called the Spouting Horn, into which, at about half-tide, the water rushes with great violence and a tremendous sound. Nahant presents some of the most striking sea views in the world. After an easterly storm, the violent dashing of the huge waves against the rocks presents a spectacle possessing all the elements of the sublime. During the heat of summer, Nahant is a favorite place of resort for invalids, and people of fashion, on account of its cool and refreshing breezes.

Cape May, on the coast of New Jersey, and the northern point of the mouth of Delaware Bay, is the termination of a range of low, sandy, barren coast, commencing at Shrewsbury. It is eighteen miles north-east of Cape Henlopen, a point on the southern coast of the entrance to the same bay. On this cape is a lighthouse of an octagon form, handsomely built of stone, one hundred and fifteen feet high, and on a foundation nearly as much above the level of the sea. Cape Henry is the southern salient point at the mouth of Chesapeak Bay; and its northern salient point, twelve miles distant to the north, is the promontory of Cape Charles.

Cape Hatteras, the most remarkable and dangerous cape on the coast of North America, is situated in latitude thirty-five degrees and twelve minutes,

and has occasioned the destruction of many a fine vessel, and the loss of hundreds of valuable lives. The water is very shoal at a great distance from the cape, which is remarkable for sudden and violent squalls of wind, and for the most severe storms of thunder, lightning, and rain, which happen almost every day for one half the year. The shoals lie about fourteen miles south-west of the cape, and are nearly five or six acres in extent, with about ten feet water. Here, at times, the ocean breaks in a tremendous manner, spouting as it were to the clouds, from the violent agitation of the Gulf Stream, which touches the edge of the banks.

Cape Fear and Cape Lookout are dangerous capes on the coast of North Carolina. The former is the southern extremity of Smith's Island, at the mouth of the river of the same name. About sixty years ago, Cape Lookout afforded an excellent harbor, capacious enough for a large fleet in good deep water; but the basin is now filled up. Roman is the name of a cape on the coast of South Carolina, and of one on the western coast of East Florida. Cape Cannaveral is on the Atlantic coast of Florida, being the projecting point of a long, narrow and low sandy island between Indian river and the ocean. Cape Florida is a promontory of the south-eastern coast of Florida, projecting to the south, and inclosing on the north-east the Bay of Biscino. Cape Sable is the extreme point of Florida. Every part of the coast of the Southern States is low and flat, without a single loty headland to warn the navigator of his approach to the land. The peninsula of East Florida may be considered an immense cape, and much the largest in the United States. The Mississippi has formed at its mouth, by the mud brought down in its waters, a cape forty miles in extent, the extreme point of which is called the Balize, through the whole length of which the river passes into the Gulf of Mexico.

GENERAL REMARKS ON CAPES AND PENINSULAS.

Parts of continents which shoot into the sea, and are connected with the main land by only a small portion of their circumference, are named peninsulas, and their figures often correspond with those of gulfs and inland seas. When such masses of land are attached to the continent by a greater extent of line than one fourth of their circumfe rence, they are not considered as peninsulas. If the projection of land reach but a short distance, they are called capes, promontories, or simply points. The most remarkable capes in the world are, Cape Horn, St. Roque, Blanco, Cod, Verd, Good Hope, Gardafui, North, Comorin, and Taymour.

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