“ It is not surprising that the pioneer butcher of the city found time from his chopping blocks to strike the tuning-fork, for Cincinnati, even after the location there of Fort Washington, was many times on the verge of starvation, and would have starved but for the timely help of frontier hunters under the noted Colonel Wallace, who brought the meat of buffalo, bear and deer to the stricken settlement. To-day the city dines well. In truth, it is famed for its good cheer and its bohemian independence. ”

“ The Vincennes of to-day is a thriving, bustling city of ten thousand inhabitants. It has modern schools and modern churches, modern ideas and modern progressiveness. As a city it has had its ups and downs since it lost political prestige, but for some years it has steadily grown, until now it is classed as one of the beautiful cities of the State. Surrounded by a magnificent agricultural section, and with many manufacturing interests, it threw off long ago the old French habits and customs and took on a progressive spirit, which promises a bright future. ”

“ The manufacturing interests of Detroit are varied. Its commercial representatives are found in almost every country, and "Detroit" stoves, drugs, and chemicals are known in every clime. We have numerous parks, but Belle Isle is indeed the priceless jewel in the crown of Detroit: woods of green and waters of blue, art and nature, moving waves and waving grass, stillness and activity, vistas and broad views, beautiful flowers and lofty trees, the white sails of numerous vessels, and the swift motions of great steamers all alike are combined in the captivating beauties of this favored place. ”

“ It is often flippantly asserted that America has no history; and even well-informed Americans, who have come to appreciate their national history at large, are apt to fancy that, in any event, the West has had a prosaic career, being simply an overflow or outgrowth from the East. But a perusal of these pages will surely convince the thoughtful reader that Western history is not so easily disposed of. It will be found a chronicle abounding in complexities, aglow with life and color, freighted with significance to the continent at large. ”

“ But when the new civilization had built its cities and established its railways and there was time again to cultivate the arts of rest, romance turned once more to Monterey. Capital saw in its ruins an opportunity for gain. In its environs Stevenson beheld a paradise for poets, and Monterey became a field of dalliance, a mecca for millionaires at play, an unfailing inspiration to every spirit in a mood to dream.
Junípero at Monterey initiated the activities that held the coast against envious nations, and now to his tomb comes the tide of travel. ”

“ The comical cabin bore the legend, "Kerfoot's Block. Everything gone but wife, children, and energy." Small as the shanty was, it was an inspiration. It marked the beginning of a city now so vast that the municipality existing before the fire seems but a shadow. Through the city run paved streets whose aggregate length would reach from Chicago to New York, and start the traveller some distance on his way to Boston. More than 100,000 street lights, kept "trimmed and burning" by the municipality at an annual cost of over $1,000,000, twinkle in the city by night. ”

“ You would expect politics to be continually threatened with reform; an occasional [447] economic heresy to get a passing boom; newspapers to be wide-awake, vituperative, and not greatly influential. And you would expect to find Denver, as you do find it, a brilliant, active, inspiring city, full of promise in itself and possessed by a people who—being chiefly of American stock and wrought upon by a climate which is the climate of the States intensified—in their alertness and in their intensity perhaps speak of the American citizen as this continent of ours will sometime mould him. ”

“ Westward of the Mississippi lie six hundred miles of plains, fertile and attractive on their eastern edge, a desert waste beyond, ending abruptly in rocky mountains. The mountains, dropping here and there into high and barren tablelands, roll on a thousand miles to the Pacific. From the Canadian to the Mexican boundary, plains and mountains thus dispose themselves and make the arena for the drama of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the new West,—a conquest of a not too unwilling nature by energetic and efficient men. ”

“ After the first settlers came strange sights. Round-towered and red-painted windmills began to dot the banks of the Detroit, and all "along shore" narrow farms, a city block in width and fifty times as long, stretched from the river rearward to meadows and woods. The canoe and the pirogue were always in the stream, and in them the French girls were as much at home as mermaids in the sea. The fort was the centre of every interest. ”

“ The Island finally passed into the keeping of the United States in 1815.
Then followed the great days of the fur companies, when the place was astir with a life so gay and vivid that only to hear of it stirs the blood of the untamed savage which centuries of the repressions of civilization have not routed from our hearts. Hundreds of hardy, ill-paid engagés, hundreds of happy-go-lucky, hard-working voyageurs and coureurs des bois and hundreds of Indians crowded into the hundreds of tents set up along the beach ”

“ The people of San Francisco are of all kindreds and tongues. Buddha, Mahomet, and Confucius are prayed to beside the Christian temples. The Indians of the Mission have faded from the peninsula and the sombreroed Spaniard dashes no more from the Mission to the beach about his bull-fights and bear-baitings. But here are Anglo-Saxons, Teutons, Celts, Greeks, Slavs, Latins, Hindus, Chinese, Kanakas, Japanese, and Chilenos, all mixing in the great crucible and slowly shaping a new type of man, the Western American. ”

“ It was predicted then that Chicago would live, and live to be so mighty and so vast that the great fire would be but an incident in its history. The city was to live because beyond it were the giant forces, the teeming millions, the imperial area of the mighty West, which, having made Chicago the gateway to the East, would recreate it under the same natural necessities. ”

“ The natural meeting-place of grain, lumber, fuel, and iron would have become a city of commerce and manufactures, even if steam railroads and navigation had not come to assist in the unique development of this entrepôt, by making it the half-way house for transcontinental traffic. But though nature, as the Rev. Robert Collyer has said, "called the lakes, the forest, the prairies together in convention, and they decided that on this spot a great city should be built," Chicago has been singularly blessed in the alert and enterprising genius of her citizens. ”

“ From the breakwater which the Government builds to keep Cleveland great and to make it greater, along the avenues of residence or of trade, even through its smoky and sooty atmosphere,—sign of prosperity,—out mile after mile to the city of the dead where the well-beloved Garfield sleeps in nobly wrought sepulchre, in all and through all, Cleveland is pleasant. ”

“ IMPROVED HARBOR OF SAN PEDRO, PORT OF LOS ANGELES.
But Los Angeles is above all a city of homes and of gardens. The mildness of the climate permits the most delicate plants and trees to flourish throughout the winter. Giant bananas, fan and date-palms, rise above the houses, and at Christmas are seen hedges of callas, geraniums ten feet high, heliotropes covering whole sides of houses, and such wealth of roses and orange blossoms as baffles description. ”

“ Now they set the tall prairie grass afire, and over the site of the coming city there blazed on that parched day of September 5, 1858, a conflagration no less formidable than war. It enveloped, but could not stay the pursuing column. Destiny was striding through flame and blood that day to open a way for civilized occupation of the Pacific Northwest. Hundreds of painted warriors, including the leader of the Palouses, a chief of the Pend d'Oreilles, one of the chiefs of the Cœur d'Alenes, and two brothers of Spokane Gary, the commander of the savage army, lay dead. ”

“ Entering Indianapolis to-day upon any one of the seventeen independent railroads operated by steam locomotives, or any one of the many interurban electric systems, the traveller is entranced, in passing the wide, asphalted avenues, by the magnificent view which carries the vision to the hub of the city, where the eye readily perceives the panorama of the State House, four or five magnificent hotels, some majestic club-houses, and the world-famed Soldiers' Monument in the Governor's Circle. ”

“ They came representing steamboats plying placidly in a river whose falls are as deadly as Niagara's. Spokane is twenty-four hours' ride from the cities of Puget Sound. It is three days' journey from San Francisco, and to go from Spokane to Helena or Butte is like travelling from Chicago to Denver. Its future must be great. It has no rival. Eight railroads, three of them transcontinental, assert its supremacy. Southward stretches the most prolific grain empire in the world. ”

“ A college of artists could not have devised a more beautiful location for a city. It is set in a gigantic amphitheatre two thousand feet above sea level. High walls of basalt, picturesque with spruce and cedar and pine, form the city's rim. Against this background have been built mansions that would adorn Fifth Avenue or the Circles of the national capital. [533] Forming the city's southern border winds an abysmal gorge, and along its brink has been built one of the city's fashionable boulevards. The cataracts of the Spokane some day must inspire poets. ”

“ The architecture of San Francisco is a medley of many schools. The buildings, especially the homes, are largely of wood; the recurring feature is the bay window that focuses the light and heat. To the newcomer they all seem of the same color, for the fogs and winds soon reduce all hues to a fine, restful gray. In the beginning, by a curious irony, stone and lumber were shipped from the East and from Asia to this land of forests and granite to build some of the structures still holding their places against the pressure of time. ”

“ While growing into greatness, Cincinnati did not forget, in the critical times of the Civil War, its honorable history as the former outpost of the Republic. Its trade was largely with the South, but sternly its citizens decided that arguments in favor of trade interests smacked of treason, and with stoic heroism closed the city to rebellion. And when Lew Wallace, fortifying Cincinnati to anticipate attack, called for volunteers, the whole community responded, and from the Ohio valleys came the sharp-shooting "squirrel hunters" in procession seemingly endless to defend the city. ”

“ The American cities that equal us in age and population are few indeed. Two hundred [92] years are behind us, and three hundred thousand people fill our homes. Our people are and ever have been of many types. In the early days coureurs des bois, bluff, hearty, reckless, and Indians, the squaw trudging along bent double under her basket of bead-work, the unburdened brave stalking proudly, noiselessly along, frequented the place. Dutch traders from the Mohawk coasting along the Lakes early brought negro slaves from Albany. ”

“ In wealth, in population, in the high character and eager attendance in her great schools, in libraries, art, and architecture, as evidenced by institutes, buildings, and academies of design, in her letters, as displayed by the literary output, in her spiritual conquests, as shown in the teachings of her poets and preachers, and even in the periodical reforms that purify the political atmosphere, Chicago's future will undoubtedly be, like her past, phenomenal. ”