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Children, ragged and numerous, with olfactory impervious to the balmy odors which floated in the air, played around the filth, and evidently enjoyed rugged health. Here the reporter encountered the Commander of Morro Castle, as Mr. Meany, the agent of the proprietor, is called. Mr. M. is a medium sized Irishman, perhaps fifty years of age, genial and snailing, and with what is still a handsome face. He collects the rents of Smoky Hollow, does all the repairs in the place, and is a generally useful man. Mr. Meany is, of course, an oracle and a great man; and is much respected in the vicinity." How is the old gentleman?" said Officer McCullough.

"Well, he is confined to his room, sir."

The old gentleman referred to is Mr. George M. Patched, the owner of Smoky Hollow. A year ago last Christmas Mr. Patched, while visiting in the Hollow, had a fall, from which he never fully recovered. He is seventy-eight years old and has a wife, but no children. He never improves his property, and portions of it are simply ruins, while more of it is rapidly falling into decay. As the party returned to the street, the eyes of the reporter lighted upon the Pacific Mills, formerly "Kelsey's Alley" and one of the landmarks of the Hollow.

"How long since the building was pulled down?" asked the reporter. "Well, it must be five or six years," said the officer.

"Oh, bless your soul, it's more nor that," interrupted the commandant, "It's double that time I think." "I say, Mrs. Flinn," addressing a jolly looking Hibernian matron who just came along, "how long since the mills was built? Tell this gentleman."

"Well, sur, sure an' it's twelve years, and devilish sorry I am that the old place was ever pulled down, for we had nice rooms and mighty shape rint there, so we did."

Proceeding up Amity street No. 12 is reached, an old vinegar factory on the street floor, now closed. The building is in a terrible state of dilapidation and threatens to tumble down at the shortest notice, yet here there are four families existing. In the yard is a pile of rotting filth, emitting the foul odor that is to be found in that locality, in abundance. In the rear of 51 and 53, a junk store is a tumbledown shed about three feet in height and about fifty, in length, which covers a hole of that length sunk some three feet in the ground, the receptacle of old bottles, rags, and the other paraphernalia of a junk shop.

Turning into Emmet street, and walking to the rear of a four story brick double house Nos. 47 and 49 two immense piles of seething garbage meet the eye. The rooms and people in the house, however, are much cleaner and neater than some of their neighbors.

Hicks street, from Atlantic to Amity, has long been known in Smoky Hollow as "The Devil's Kitchen," which name is said to have been given to it on account of the number of screeching, yelling children who are forever roaming up and down, making it a youthful pandemonium, half naked in Summer time dirty and saucy at all times. On the fourth floor of one house the reporter and officer encountered young Canane eating his dinner. The door was open, and he shouted out a cordial invitation to come in and take some, which was politely declined. "All right," said he, in a maudlin manner, "report me at the Eagle office," No. 340, in this locality, is where Burke murdered his wife some nine years ago, for which he received four years in the State Prison. Timmy Glynn, afore mentioned, also lived here. In the rear of 304 Bicks is a pile of garbage and other nuisances, which an old woman took pains to inform the reporter belonged to the next house. A good natured fellow named "Riley The Swimmer" who has performed some extraordinary swimming feats in the river, some time ago jumped down one of the outhouses in this yard to save what in the dark he supposed was an infant who had fallen in there and was smothering. On his successful exit he discovered he had extricated a young goat, and not the "kind of a kid" that he supposed, Riley received the sympathy of the man that owned the quadruped, and treated himself to a bath in the river with his clothes on.

"Well," said Officer McQullough, "we have seen about all there is of Smoky Hollow." It has of late been christened with a new name, and the old one is falling into disuse. The name now coming into vogue is "The Lava Bed." This, in one sense, is an appropriate name. As a refuge for thieves and murderers it was at one time unequalled, and it was on rare occasions that justice overtook the thieves who hid in its recesses. Within the past few years it has, however, changed in that respect, and the disreputable characters, both male and female, have been gradually weeded out and "sent up" by the police. Two or three years ago a respectable stranger would not have dared to walk through the locality. If he did he was sure to be struck with a brickbat, mobbed or robbed before he got clear of its boundaries.

The great objection now to be found there is the immense "Masses of Filth and Garbage," which block up the yards and portions of the streets, and the numbers of human creatures, who, in their poverty and dirt, are crowded into the tenements and dilapidated stables, Should "Yellow Fever or Cholera" make their way to this locality and it being on the river edge makes it doubly dangerous. Death would reap a frightful harvest, and ours would in truth become a plague-smitten city. What can the Health Board be thinking about, to let such a sleeping Nemesis rest quietly in the midst of the city? Something should be done, and that quickly, to rid the streets of the seeds of epidemic which here wait an opportunity to burst into fruit.

The Fifth Ward

Below Sands street and east of Gold street lies a section of Brooklyn but little known to the better class of her citizens. Into its precincts only the city missionary, the business agent or the police officer penetrate, and the errand of each is different and characteristic. The first goes to carry the balm of healing to suffering souls, the second to wring from the miserable inhabitants the pittance demanded for the noisome and disease haunted tenements which they occupy, and the last goes more frequently than all the rest, to search out some violator of the laws, for crime always holds high carnival when surrounded by filth and wretchedness; it is their natural home. The locality mentioned is the worst part of the notorious whence comes half of the crimes and misdemeanors that keep the dockets of the police court full, and the "Black Maria" making daily trips to the Penitentiary. It is the most crowded and filthy portion of the city, and although greatly improved to what it was a year or two ago, it is still a fearfully wretched quarter and tenanted by the poorest classes. They are even worse off than the "squatters" on the knolls around Prospect Park; the latter, at least, have pure air, while the Fifth Ward resident is denied even that cheap luxury.

The locality is best reached through York street, and if the visitor desires a rough investigation into the merits of the thing, he will have to stop at the Station House, corner of Jay and York streets, and beg the loan of an officer to accompany him. His request will be immediately complied with, and under the guardianship of the officer, he can safely make his investigation.

Such was the method pursued by the writer yesterday in his search into the sanitary condition of the Fifth Ward. Leaving the Station House the reporter and his mentor passed down York street until one block from the gate of the Navy Yard was reached. Filth and dirt reached even to the door sill of Uncle Sam's premises but there they stopped. Whatever may be the faults of his children, the old gentleman believes in pure air and good water and plenty of it.

Little Street

One block from the Navy Yard is Little street, running from York street down to the edge of the water. Its precincts are the filthiest portions of the ward, and inhabited by the poorest class. From curbstone to curbstone the pavement was littered with dirt and garbage while the gutters ran with filthy water or it lay in pools dammed up around the entrances to the sewers, and the whole festering mass full in the rays of the broiling sun was sending up odors that bore no semblance to those of "Araby the Blest."

The street seemed to be the common dumping ground for the refuse and garbage of the tenement houses that line the same, while children of all ages and degrees of raggedness gamboled over the dirt, or sat in the doorway and sniffed its perfume.

An Advantage

There is one advantage which the tenement houses of this quarter possess over those in New York. The inhabitants are not herded together in great brick buildings towering six and seven stories into the air. It is rare to find in the Fifth Ward a house with more than three stories above the basement, and there are hardly any cellar occupants. But, although the population is more subdivided "than in large tenement houses, they are crowded together just as closely, although, a it wars, done up in smaller packages.

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