The present population is
estimated at 65,000, which makes Charleston a place of about the size of
Rockford, Illinois, Sioux City, Iowa, or Covington, Kentucky; but as, in
the case of Charleston, more than half this number is colored,
Charleston is, if the white population only is considered, a place of
approximately 30,000 inhabitants, or, roughly speaking, about the size
of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., or Colorado Springs, Colorado.
In area, also, Charleston is small, covering less than four square
miles. This is due to the position of the city on a peninsula formed by
the convergence and confluence of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, which
meet at Charleston's beautiful Battery precisely as the Hudson River and
the East River meet at the Battery in New York. The shape of Charleston,
indeed, greatly resembles that of Manhattan Island, and though her
harbor and her rivers are neither so large nor so deep as those of the
port of New York, they are altogether adequate to a considerable
maritime activity.
The Charleston Chamber of Commerce (which, like everything else in
Charleston dates from long ago, having been founded in 1748) quotes
President Taft as calling this port the most convenient one to Panama--a
statement which the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce is in position to
dispute.
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