“Your Help will just have to fix them all into the middle of the street, but you must mind, old woman, that it is the middle.  I expect you don’t know as we have got a law what forbids throwing such things at the sides of the streets; they must just all be cast right into the middle, and the pigs soon takes them off.”

In truth the pigs are constantly seen doing Herculean service in this way through every quarter of the city; and though it is not very agreeable to live surrounded by herds of these unsavoury animals, it is well they are so numerous, and so active in their capacity of scavengers, for without them the streets would soon be choked up with all sorts of substances in every stage of decomposition.

We had heard so much of Cincinnati, its beauty, wealth, and unequalled prosperity, that when we left Memphis to go thither, we almost felt the delight of Rousseau’s novice, “un voyage a faire, et Paris au bout!” —­As soon, therefore, as our little domestic arrangements were completed, we set forth to view this “wonder of the west” this “prophet’s gourd of magic growth,”—­this “infant Hercules;” and surely no travellers ever paraded a city under circumstances more favourable to their finding it fair to the sight.  Three dreary months had elapsed since we had left the glories of London behind us; for nearly the whole of that time we beheld no other architecture than what our ship and steam-boats had furnished, and excepting at New Orleans, had seen hardly a trace of human habitations.  The sight of bricks and mortar was really refreshing, and a house of three stories looked splendid.  Of this splendour we saw repeated specimens, and moreover a brick church, which, from its two little peaked spires, is called the two-horned church.  But, alas! the flatness of reality after the imagination has been busy!  I hardly know what I expected to find in this city, fresh risen from the bosom of the wilderness, but certainly it was not a little town, about the size of Salisbury, without even an attempt at beauty in any of its edifices, and with only just enough of the air of a city to make it noisy and bustling.  The population is greater than the appearance of the town would lead one to expect.  This is partly owing to the number of free Negroes who herd together in an obscure part of the city, called little Africa; and partly to the density of the population round the paper-mills and other manufactories.  I believe the number of inhabitants exceeds twenty thousand.

We arrived in Cincinnati in February, 1828, and I speak of the town as it was then; several small churches have been built since, whose towers agreeably relieve its uninteresting mass of buildings.  At that time I think Main street, which is the principal avenue, (and runs through the whole town, answering to the High street of our old cities), was the only one entirely paved.  The troittoir is of brick, tolerably well laid, but it is inundated by every shower, as