The visitor to St. Louis, if from the east, will probably make his approach over the great bridge which spans the Mississippi. This bridge, designed by Captain Eads, and begun in 1867, was completed in 1874, and is one of the greatest triumphs of American engineering. It consists of three spans, resting on four piers. The central span is 520 feet in width, and the side ones 500 feet each. They have a rise of sixty feet, sufficient to permit the passage of steamers under them, even at high water. The piers are sunk through the sand to the bed-rock, a distance of from ninety to one hundred and twenty feet, the work having been accomplished by means of iron wrought caissons and atmospheric pressure. Each span consists of four ribbed arches, made of cast steel. The bridge is two stories high, the lower story containing a double car track, and the upper one two horse-car tracks, two carriageways and two foot-ways. Reaching the St. Louis shore, the car and road ways pass over a viaduct of five arches, of twenty-seven feet span each, to Washington avenue, where the railway tracks run into a tunnel 4,800 feet long, terminating near Eleventh street. Bridge and tunnel together cost eleven millions of dollars.

This wonderful structure, which has few if any equals upon the continent, will impress the traveler with the commercial magnitude and enterprise of the great western city to which it forms the eastern portal. Looking from the car window he will see, first, the Mississippi, which, if at the period of low water, disappoints him with its apparent insignificance; but which, if it be at the time of its annual flood, has crept, on the St. Louis side, nearly to the top of the steep levee, and has filled up the broad valley miles away on the hither side, a rushing, turbulent river, turbid with the yellow waters of the Missouri, which, emptying into it twenty miles above, have scarcely, at this point, perfectly mingled with the clearer Mississippi. He will see next the river front of St. Louis—a continuous line of steamboats, towboats and barges, without a sail or mast among them; the levee rising in a steep acclivity twenty feet above the river's edge; and multitudinous mules, with their colored drivers, toiling laboriously, and by the aid of much whipping and swearing, up or down the steep bank, carrying the merchandise which has just been landed, or is destined to be loaded in some vessel's hold. Beyond the river rises the city, terrace above terrace, its outlines bristling with spires, and prominent above all, the dome of the Court House.

St. Louis is situated in the very heart of the great Mississippi Valley, and a large share of its rich agricultural products and mineral stores are constantly poured into her lap. Pilot Knob and Iron Mountain, both containing inexhaustible supplies of the useful ore, are not far distant. The lead districts of Missouri include more than 6,000 square miles. In fifteen counties there is copper. In short, within one hundred miles of St. Louis, gold, iron, lead, zinc, copper, tin, silver, platina, nickel, emery, cobalt, coal, limestone, granite, pipe-clay, fire-clay, marble, metallic paints and salt are found, in quantities which will repay working. In the State there are twenty millions acres of good farming lands; five millions of acres are among the best in the world for grapes; and eight millions are particularly suited to the raising of hemp. There is, besides, a sufficiency of timber land. With all these resources from which to draw, it would be surprising if St. Louis did not become a leading city in the West. Situated, as she is, on the Mississippi River, about midway between its source and its mouth, the junction of the Missouri twenty miles above, and that of the Ohio about one hundred and seventy-five miles below, and being the river terminus of a complicated system of western railways, the towns and cities, and even the small hamlets of the north, south and west, and to a limited extent of the east also, all pay her tribute. As Chicago is the gateway to the East, by means of the great chain of lakes and rivers at whose head she sits, so St. Louis holds open the door to the South and the East as well, through the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers.

In many respects the business rival of Chicago to-day, it has a history reaching half a century further back. While Chicago was still a howling wilderness, its only inhabitants the warlike Pottawatomies, who sometimes encamped upon the shores of its lake and river, St. Louis had a local habitation and a name. On February fifteenth, 1764, Pierre Laclede Siguest, an enterprising Frenchman, established at this point a depot for the furs of the vast region watered by the Mississippi and Missouri, and gave it the name of St. Louis. This was done by permission of the Governor General of Louisiana, which was then a French province. In the course of the year cabins were built, a little corn planted and the Indians placated. The Frenchmen seemed to have gotten along with the Indians tolerably well in those days. They had no hesitation in marrying squaws, even though they already possessed one lawful wife; they were good tempered and merry, and attempted no conversion of the Indians with a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other. So the two races got along nicely together.

The peace of 1763 gave the country east of the Mississippi to the English, and the Frenchmen who had settled upon the Illinois made haste to remove to St. Louis, to avoid living under the rule of their "natural enemy." This was scarcely accomplished when the more terrible news reached them that Louis XV had ceded his possessions west of the Mississippi to Spain. For the next thirty years the town was a Spanish outpost of Louisiana, in which province no one not a Catholic could own land.

To go to New Orleans and return was a voyage of ten months; but in that early day, and under such surprising difficulties, St. Louis began its commercial career. It exported furs, lead and salt, and imported the few necessaries required by the settlers, and beads, tomahawks, and other articles demanded by the Indians in exchange for furs. In 1799 the inhabitants numbered 925, a falling off of 272 from the previous year. In 1804, St. Louis passed to the United States, together with the whole country west of the Mississippi. In 1811 the population had increased to 1400, and there were two schools in the town, one French and one English. In 1812 the portion of the territory lying north of the thirty-fifth degree of latitude was organized as Missouri Territory. In 1813 the first brick house was erected in St. Louis. In 1820 its population was 4,928. In 1822 it was incorporated as a city.

After the cession of Louisiana to the United States, the law forbidding Protestant worship, and requiring owners of land to profess the Catholic faith, was repealed, and men American born but of English descent began to pour into the town. In 1808 a newspaper was established, and in 1811 many of the old French names of the streets were changed to English ones. In 1812 the lead mines began to be worked to better advantage, on a larger scale, and agriculture assumed increasing importance. In 1815 the first steamboat made its appearance.

In 1820 St. Louis cast its vote for slavery, and settled the question for Missouri. The population then was 4,928, which in 1830 had increased to 5,852; 924 additional inhabitants in ten years! From 1830 to 1860 its population trebled every ten years, the census returns of the latter year giving it 160,773. In 1870 it had nearly doubled again, the number being 310,864 inhabitants. According to the United States Census report of 1880, the population was 350,522, which made St. Louis the sixth city in the Union. Since that time it has been rapidly on the increase.

St. Louis is among the first of our cities in the manufacture of flour, and is a rival of Cincinnati in the pork-packing business. It has extensive lumber mills, linseed-oil factories, provision-packing houses, manufactures large quantities of hemp, whisky and tobacco, has vast iron factories and machine shops, breweries, lead and paint works. In brief, it takes a rank second only to New York and Philadelphia in its manufactures, to which its prosperity is largely due. In 1874 the products of that year were valued at nearly $240,000,000, while it furnished employment to about 50,000 workmen. Great as are Chicago's manufacturing interests, St. Louis excels her in this respect, while she rivals the former city in her commercial interests. The natural commercial entreport of the Mississippi Valley, the commerce of St. Louis is immense. It receives and exports to the north, east and south, breadstuffs, live stock, provisions, cotton, lead, hay, salt, wool, hides and pelts, lumber and tobacco.

St. Louis is perched high above the river, so that she is beyond the reach of all save the highest floods of that most capricious stream. She is built on three terraces, the first twenty, the second one hundred and fifty, and the third two hundred feet above low-water mark. The second terrace begins at Twenty-fifth street, and the third at CÔte Brillante, four miles west of the river. The surface here spreads out into a broad, beautiful plain. The highest hill in the neighborhood of the city was the lofty mound on the bank of the river, a relic of prehistoric times, and from which St. Louis derived its name of the "Mound City." Greatly to the regret of antiquarians a supposed necessity existed for the removal of this mound, and now no trace of it is left.

In 1842 Charles Dickens published his American Notes, in which is found the following description of St. Louis:

"In the old French portion of the town the thoroughfares are narrow and crooked, and some of the houses are very quaint and picturesque, being built of wood, with tumble-down galleries before the windows, approachable by stairs, or rather ladders, from the street. There are queer little barber shops and drinking houses, too, in this quarter; and abundance of crazy old tenements, with blinking casements, such as may be seen in Flanders. Some of these ancient habitations, with high garret gable windows perking into the roofs, have a kind of French spring about them; and, being lopsided with age, appear to hold their heads askew, besides, as if they were grimacing in astonishment at the American improvements."

There is nothing of this now seen in St. Louis, except in the narrower streets along the river, which remain a lasting relic of the ancient city. Yankee enterprise has obliterated, in the appearance of the city at least, all trace of its French and Spanish origin. The work of renovation must have commenced soon after Dickens' visit, for Lady Emeline Wortley, visiting St. Louis in 1849, describes it as follows:—

"Merrily were huge houses going up in all directions. From our hotel windows we had a long view of gigantic and gigantically-growing-up dwellings, that seemed every morning to be about a story higher than we left them on the preceding night; as if they had slept, during the night, on guano, like the small boy in the American tale, who reposed on a field covered by it, and whose father, on seeking him the following day, found a gawky gentleman of eight feet high, bearing a strong resemblance to a Patagonian walking stick."

If Chicago is a western reproduction of New York, with its characteristic alertness preternaturally developed, St. Louis takes Philadelphia for her prototype. The merchants and statesmen plodding wearily across the continent during the latter part of the last century and early in this, found Philadelphia the chief city of the country, and went home with their minds filled with the distinguishing features of that city. These they reproduced, as far as was practicable, in their own young and growing town. They laid it out with regularity, the streets near the river, which describes a slight curve, running parallel to it. Further back, they describe straight lines, while the streets running from east to west are, for the most part, at right angles with those they cross. Imitating Philadelphia, the streets are named numerically from the river. Those crossing them have arbitrary names given them, while many Philadelphia nomenclatures, such as Market, Chestnut, Pine, Spruce, Poplar, Walnut and Vine, are repeated. The houses are also numbered in Philadelphia fashion, the streets parallel with the river being numbered north and south from Market street, and those running east and west taking their numbers from the river. In numbering, each street passes on to a new hundred; thus No. 318 is the ninth house above Third street on one side of the way.

Not only in these superficial matters is Philadelphia imitated, but the resemblance is preserved in more substantial particulars. Many of the buildings are large, old-fashioned, square mansions, built of brick with white marble trimmings. There is less attempt at architectural display than in Chicago, apparently the main thought of the builders being to obtain substantiality. Yet there are many handsome buildings, both public and private. One of the finest structures of its kind in the United States is the Court House, occupying the square bounded by Fourth, Fifth, Chestnut and Market streets. It is in the form of a Greek cross, of Grecian architecture, built of Genevieve limestone, and is surmounted by a lofty iron dome, from the cupola of which it is possible to obtain an extensive view of the city and its surroundings. The building cost $1,200,000. The fronts are adorned with beautiful porticoes. The Four Courts, in Clark avenue, between Eleventh and Twelfth streets, is a handsome and spacious building, constructed of limestone, at a cost of $1,000,000. A semi-circular iron jail is in its rear, so constructed that all its cells are under the observation of a single watchman. A Custom House and Post Office has recently been erected, at the corner of Olive and Eighth streets. It is of Maine granite, with rose-colored granite trimmings, three stories in height, with a French roof and Louvre dome, and occupies an entire square. The cost of the structure was $5,000,000.

The Chamber of Commerce is the great commercial mart of the city, the heart of enormous business interests, whose arteries sometimes pulsate with feverish heat, and whose transactions affect business affairs to the furthest extent of the country. The edifice is the handsomest of its kind in America. It is five stories high, wholly built of gray limestone, and cost $800,000. The main hall of the Exchange is two hundred feet long, one hundred wide, and seventy high. In the gallery surrounding it strangers can at any time witness the proceedings on the floor, and watch how fortunes are made and unmade.

The most imposing and ornate building of the city, architecturally speaking, is the Columbia Life Insurance building, which is of rose-colored granite, in the Renaissance style, four stories high, with a massive stone cornice representing mythological figures. The roof is reached by an elevator, and affords a fine view.

The city abounds in handsome churches. Most prominent among them all is Christ Church (Episcopal) at the corner of Thirteenth and Locust streets. It is in the cathedral gothic style, with stained-glass windows and lofty nave. The Catholic Cathedral, on Walnut street, between Second and Third streets, is an imposing structure with a front of polished freestone faced by a Doric portico. The Church of the Messiah (Unitarian), at the corner of Olive and Ninth streets, is a handsome gothic structure. The Jewish Temple, at the corner of Seventeenth and Pine streets, is one of the finest religious edifices in the city. There are many others which will challenge the visitor's attention and admiration as he passes through the streets of the city.

The wholesale business of St. Louis is confined to Front, Second, Third and Main streets. Front street is one hundred feet wide, and extends along the levee, being lined with massive stores and warehouses. Fourth street contains the leading retail stores, and on every pleasant day it is filled with handsome equipages, while on its sidewalks are found the fashion and beauty of the city. Washington avenue is one of the widest and most elegant avenues in St. Louis, and west of Twenty-seventh street contains many beautiful residences. Pine, Olive and Locust streets, Chouteau avenue and Lucas Place, are also famed for their fine residences. Lindell or Grant avenue, running north and south, on the western boundary of the city, and slightly bending toward the river, is its longest street, being twelve miles in length.

The corporate limits of St. Louis extend eleven miles along the river, and about three miles inland. The densely built portion of the city is about six miles in length by two in width. Its public parks are one of its striking features. They embrace an aggregate of about 2,000 acres. The most beautiful is Lafayette Park, lying between Park and Lafayette, Mississippi and Missouri avenues. In it are a bronze statue of Thomas H. Benton, by Harriet Hosmer, and a bronze statue of Washington. It is for pedestrians only, is elaborately laid out and ornamented, and is surrounded by magnificent residences. Missouri Park is a pretty little park at the foot of Lucas Place, containing a handsome fountain. St. Louis Place, Hyde Park and Washington Square are all attractive places of resort. Northern Park, on the bluffs to the north of the city, is noted for its fine trees, and contains 180 acres. Forest Park is the great park of the city. It lies four miles west of the Court House, and contains 1350 acres. The Des Pares runs through it, and the native forest trees are still standing. With great natural advantages, it requires only time and art to number it among the handsomest parks in the country. Tower Grove Park, in the southwest part of the city, contains 227 acres, offers delightful drives among green lawns and charmingly arranged shrubbery.

Adjoining this park is Shaw's Garden, which contains 109 acres. It possesses a peculiar interest, from the manner in which it is arranged. It is divided into three sections, the first being the Herbaceous and Flower Garden, embracing ten acres, and including every flower which can be grown in the latitude of St. Louis, besides several greenhouses containing thousands of exotic and tropical plants. The second section, called the Fruticetum, comprises six acres devoted to fruit of all kinds. The Arboretum, or third section, includes twenty-five acres, and contains all kinds of ornamental and fruit trees. The Labyrinth is an intricate, hedge-bordered pathway, leading to a summer-house in the centre. There are also a museum and botanical library. This garden is entirely the result of private taste and enterprise, having been planned and executed by Henry Shaw, who has thrown it open to the public, and intends it as a gift to the city.

Bellefontaine Cemetery is the most beautiful in the West. It is situated in the northern part of the city, about four and one-half miles from the Court House, and embraces 350 acres. It contains a number of fine monuments, while the trees and shrubbery are most tastefully arranged. Calvary Cemetery, north and not far distant, is nearly as large and quite as beautiful. Here, in these quiet cities of the dead, far from the bustle of the great town, the men and women of this western metropolis, whose lives were passed in turmoil and activity, find at last that rest which must come to all.

The people of St. Louis are supplied with water from the river, the waterworks being situated at Bissell's Point, three and one-half miles north of the court house. Two pumping engines, each with a daily capacity of 17,000,000 gallons, furnish an ample supply for all the needs of the great city.

Fair week, which is usually the first week in October, is the great holiday and gala season of St. Louis. The writer of this article was once so fortunate as to visit the city early in this week. Every train of cars on the many lines which centre at St. Louis, and every steamboat which came from up or down the river, brought its living freight of men and women, who were out for a week's holiday, and, it may have been, paying their annual visit to the greatest city west of the Mississippi. The country roads leading to town were black with vehicles of all descriptions, and laden with men and merchandise. The laborers and mules upon the levee were busier than ever, receiving and transporting the articles to be exhibited and sold. Every hotel was crowded, and the surplus overflowed into boarding and lodging houses, so that their keepers undoubtedly reaped a golden harvest for that one week, at least. The streets were thronged with an immense and motley multitude: business men, on the alert to extend their trade and add to their gains; working women, who found an opportunity for a brief holiday; ladies of fashion who viewed the scene resting at their ease in their carriages; farmers from the rural districts, looking uncomfortable yet complaisant in their Sunday suits, and trying to take in all there was to see and understand; their wives, old-fashioned and countrified in their dress, and with a tired look upon their faces, which this week given up to idleness and sight-seeing could not quite dispel; sporting men, easily recognizable by their flashy dress and "horsey" talk; gamblers and blacklegs by the score, whose appearance and manners were too excessively gentlemanly to pass as quite genuine, and whose gains during the week were probably larger and more certain than those of any other class; western men, with their patois, borrowed apparently from the slang of every nation on the globe; Southerners, with their long hair, slouched hats and broad accent; river hands, whose most noticeable accomplishments seemed to be disposing of tobacco and inventing new oaths; negroes, whose facile natures entered heartily into the occasion, and on whose sleek, shining countenances the spirit of contentment was plainly visible; eastern men, with the Yankee intonation; Germans, in great numbers, patronizingly endorsing their adopted country, and selling lager beer with stolid content; Irishmen, whose preference was whisky, and who were ever ready for fun or a fight; beggars, plying their vocation with an extra whine, adopted to conceal an unwonted tendency to cheerfulness; magnates, who looked pompous and conscious of their own importance, but who were jostled and pushed with the democratic disregard for rank and station which characterizes an American crowd.

Probably in no city in the Union would one find quite so cosmopolitan a multitude, representing all sections and all nationalities so impartially. In the business and populous centre of our country, here came all classes and peoples who had been born under, or had sought the protection of, our flag, to worship one week at the shrines of Ceres and Pomona.

The fair grounds of the St. Louis Agricultural and Mechanical Association are three miles northwest of the Court House, and embrace eighty-five acres handsomely laid out and containing extensive buildings. The Amphitheatre will seat 40,000 persons. The street cars leading to these grounds were at all times filled with people, and in addition there was a constant procession of carriages, wagons and carts, going and returning. Within the enclosure the dense throng surged and swayed like a human whirlpool. The displays in the agricultural and mechanical departments were something astonishing; for where in the world is there such grain grown and in such quantities, as in the Mississippi and Missouri valleys? Where are there such fat oxen, such sleek, self-satisfied cows, with such capacity for rich milk? Horses, hogs and sheep were all of the best, and indicated that the West is very far advanced in scientific stock raising. The farm implements displayed all sorts of contrivances for lightening and hastening the farmer's toil. It needed but a glance to show that farming in this region was no single-man, one-horse affair.

In art the East as yet excels the West; for in the scramble after material gain the artistic nature has not been greatly cultivated, and its expressions are, for the most part, crude. But they give promise of future excellence. St. Louis has no picture gallery worthy the name, but excells in scientific and educational institutions.

The Mercantile Library, at the corner of Fifth and Locust streets, contains 50,000 volumes, and its hall is decorated by paintings, coins and statuary, among which latter may be mentioned Miss Hosmer's life-size statue of Beatrice Cenci and Œnone; a bronze copy of the Venus de Medici, a sculptured slab from the ruins of Nineveh, and marble busts of Thomas H. Benton and Robert Burns. The library with its reading room is free to strangers.

Besides the library there is a public school library of 38,000 volumes; an Academy of Science, founded in 1856, with a large museum and a library of 3,000 volumes; and a Historical Society, founded in 1865, with a valuable historical collection. Washington University, organized in 1853, embraces the whole range of university studies except theology. With it is connected the Mary Institute, for the education of women, the Polytechnic School, and the Law School. The public school system of St. Louis is one of the best in the country, and its school-houses are commendably fine. The Roman Catholic College of the Christian Brothers has about four hundred students, and a library of 10,000 volumes. Concordia College (German Lutheran), established in 1839, has a library of 4,500 volumes. Besides the numerous public schools, the Roman Catholics, who embrace a majority of the inhabitants, have about one hundred parochial, private and conventual schools. They have also a number of convents, charitable homes, asylums and hospitals.

The hotels, chief amongst which are the new Southern Hotel, Lindell House, Planters' Hotel, Laclede Hotel and Barnum's Hotel, will compare favorably, in point of attendance, comfort and elegance, with any in the country. Horse cars traverse the city in every direction, rendering all points easily accessible, and carriages are in waiting at the depots and steamboat landings. Ferries ply continually to East St. Louis, on the Illinois shore, from the foot of Carr street, north of the bridge, and from the foot of Spruce street, south of it, the two points of departure being about a mile apart.

So long as the Mississippi River washes the levee in front of the city, the citizens of St. Louis are in little danger of long remaining dull, for want of excitement. That river, one of the uneasiest of water courses, constantly furnishes fresh themes of interest, and even of anxiety. It has a singular penchant for a frequent change of channels, and occasionally threatens to desert to Illinois and leave St. Louis an inland town, with its high levee a sort of rampart to receive the mocking assaults of Chicago. Then, every spring, there is the annual freshet, which, once in ten or fifteen years, creeps up over the top of the levee, and finds its way into cellars and first floors of stores and warehouses. Occasionally there is a severe winter, when ice is formed upon the river as far south even as St. Louis; and when it breaks up in the spring, mischief is sure to ensue. A hundred steamboats are in winter quarters along the levee, their noses in the sand, and their hulls extending riverward, fixed in the ice. At last the great mass of congealed water, extending up the river hundreds of miles, begins to move down stream. The motion is at first scarcely perceptible; but, suddenly, the ice cracks and breaks, and fragments begin to glide swiftly with the current of the river. The various masses create conflicting currents, and, presently, the surface of the stream is like a whirlpool. Some boats are crushed like egg shells between the floes; cables snap, and others are drawn out into the midst of the whirling waters and are fortunate indeed if they are not overwhelmed or forced upon the ice. Meantime, consternation reigns upon the levee. The multitudes are powerless to prevent, yet make frantic and futile efforts while they watch, the disaster. At the breaking up of the ice in 1866, seventeen steamboats were crushed and sunk in a few minutes. Then there are other river disasters; steamboats burned; others struck on snags and sunk; and now and then a boiler explosion makes up the tale of horrors and prevents the Mississippi from ever becoming monotonous or uninteresting.

St. Louis was most unfavorably affected by the war, and made to expiate her political sin of 1820. On the border land between the North and the South, the conflict was carried on in her very midst. Sectional strife was most bitter and keen. There was no neutrality, and there could be none. All were either for or against; families were divided in deadly strife; and while the city suffered to a terrible degree from this condition of affairs, in back counties whole sections were depopulated. The population being largely southern, either by birth or descent, its sympathies were with the South. The class truly loyal was the Germans, who numbered about 60,000 of the population, and who were characterized by the Secessionists as the "D—— Dutch." The blockade of the river reduced the whole business of the city to about a third of its former amount. Yet, when the war was ended, St. Louis was quick to recover her prostrated energies. In 1866, and but two years after the war, the city did more business than in any preceding year; and, relieved from the incubus of slavery, which had retarded its progress, it aroused itself to new life.

With the Quaker-like simplicity of its outward appearance, its absence of business rush, and its general tranquillity, St. Louis' resemblance to the Quaker City ceases. It is a town of composite character, but from its earliest existence has been under Roman Catholic domination. Even now the Roman Catholic element predominates in its population. And its French and Spanish founders, though their quaint buildings are torn down and replaced by more modern ones, and their very streets re-named, have left their impress upon the city. Its many places of amusement, compared to its population, its general gayety, its stores closed by sunset in winter, and before sunset in summer, its billiard rooms open on Sunday, and its ball-playing on the same day, all give indication of its being the home of a people whose ancestors had no New England prejudices against worldly amusements, and in favor of sobriety, decorum, industry, and the observance of the Sabbath.

St. Louis presents a pleasing contrast to many other western cities. Its prosperity is substantial—not a sham. The capital which has paid for these costly places of business and elegant residences, and is invested in these gigantic enterprises, has been created out of the immense material wealth of the State—not borrowed on a factitious credit. Its merchants do not make princely fortunes in a day, but what they acquire they keep. With so satisfactory a past, the errors of its youth atoned for, the future of St. Louis cannot fail to be a brilliant one.

CHAPTER XXXVII.