New York is the biggest city in the USA and one of the largest cities of the World* The population of this city is near 12 million people. It is the capital of New York State.
There are 5 boroughs in New York — Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island or Richmond. Brooklyn alone has so many people that if it were a separate city, it would be the fourth largest city in the United States.
Some call New York a poem in stone and steel, others a soulless monster. It is unlike any other city in the world.
At the beginning of the 17th century only the wigwams of the Iroquois stood where the sky-scrapers of New York now reach to the clouds. In 1626 the Dutch Governor, Peter Minuit, concluded with them what American business experts call «the most profitable commercial deal in the U.S. history». With several bottles of gin and a handful of trinkets that cost twenty-four dollars, he bought a large island from the simple-hearted, trusting Indians. Later the Indians named the island Manhatta (present-day Manhattan, the main borough of New York, which in Iroquois means: «They cheated us».
It seems that at the dawn of private enterprise, too, it was hard to understand the difference between «a commercial deal» and cheating, between «a miracle of enterprise» and robbery.
It was not until the end of the 18th century that the city's real growth began. Situated as it is at the mouth of the Hudson River, which is open to ocean-going ships the year round, New York quickly became one of the largest ports in the world.
At the turn of the twentieth century millions of people driven by poverty emigrated to the United States from various countries, of Europe. They entered the New World through New York, the «Gateway of America.»
New York attracts people from all over the world. If you are crossing New York City by subway, look at the newspapers other people around read. One person is reading a newspaper in Spanish, another in Chinese, others in Arabic, Russian, Italian and French and so on.
Hundreds of thousands of them settled down in that city. That is what makes people call it the «Modern Babylon.»
At present more Irish live in New York than in Dublin, more Icelanders than in Reykjavik, more Italians than in Rome. Emigrants from seventy countries and all the continents of the world, all speaking their own languages, make up this
Modern Babylon
