Source: Courtesy of the Kume Museum of Art.
In 1872 New York City was a major port, surrounded by water. As the delegates arrived into the famed metropolis, they marveled at the size and breadth of the city’s commercial ferry and freight vessels. There were so many people, horses, and goods in transit along the Hudson River! Nothing the men read about America could have prepared them for the scale of the United States’ shipping enterprise. The magnitude of the operation took them aback. The delegates were impressed when their carriage was loaded onto a massive ferry, without any need for them to disembark. Kunitake Kume wrote that it was surreal to view waves from a carriage window.
Date: 1870 – 1890
Source: Courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum