And in those days the island was continually swept by epidemics--violent, far-reaching, and registering alarming mortality.
Greenwich seemed to be the only place where one didn't get yellow fever or anything else, and terrorised citizens began to rush out there in droves, not only with their bags and their baggage, and their wives and children, but with their business too! John Lambert, an English visitor to America in 1807, writes: "As soon as yellow fever makes its appearance, the inhabitants shut up their shops and fly from their homes into the country.

Those who cannot go far on account of business, remove to Greenwich, situate on the border of the Hudson about two or three miles from town.

The banks and other public offices also remove their business to this place and markets are regularly established for the supply of the inhabitants." Things went so fast for Greenwich during the biggest of the yellow fever "booms" that one old chronicler (whose name I regret not being able to find) declares he "saw the corn growing on the corner of Hammond Street (West Eleventh) on a Saturday morning, and by the next Monday Niblo and Sykes had built a house there for three hundred boarders!" Devoe says that: "The visits of yellow fever in 1798, 1799, 1803 and 1805 tended much to increase the formation of a village near the Spring Street Market and one also near the State Prison; but the fever of 1882 built up many streets with numerous wooden buildings for the uses of the merchants, banks (from which Bank Street took its name), offices, etc." "'The town fairly exploded,'" quotes Macatamney,--from what writer he does not state,--"'and went flying beyond its bonds as though the pestilence had been a burning mine.'" It was in 1822 that Hardie wrote: "Saturday, the 24th of August our city presented the appearance of a town beseiged.

From daybreak till night one line of carts, containing boxes, merchandise and effects, was seen moving towards Greenwich Village and the upper parts of the city.

Carriages and hacks, wagons and horsemen, were scouring the streets and filling the roads; persons with anxiety strongly marked on their countenances, and with hurried gait, were hustling through the streets.