equest and
hardest to be obtained was _safety_; and it was Cincinnati that was
soonest able to supply this most universal object of desire. In
December, 1788, fifteen or twenty men floated down the Ohio among the
masses of moving ice, and, landing upon the site of Cincinnati, built
cabins, and marked out a town. Matthias Denman of New Jersey had bought
eight hundred acres of land there, at fifteen-pence an acre, and this
party of adventurers planted themselves upon it with his assistance and
in his interest. Jerseymen and Pennsylvanians were finding their way
down the Ohio, and founding settlements here and there, whenever a
sufficient number of pioneers could be gathered to defend themselves
against the Indians. President Washington sent a few companies of troops
for their protection, and the great question was where those troops
should be posted. The major in command was at first disposed to
establish them at North Bend; but while he was selecting a place there
for his fort, he fell in with a pair of brilliant black eyes,--the
property of one of the settler's wives. He paid such assiduous court to
the lady, that her husband deemed it best to remove his family to
another settlement, and pitched upon Cincinnati. The major then began to
doubt whether, after all, North Bend _was_ the proper place for a
military work, and deemed it best to examine Cincinnati first. He was
delighted with Cincinnati. He removed the troops thither, built a fort,
and thus rendered the neighborhood the safest spot below Pittsburg. This
event was decisive: Cincinnati took the lead of the Ohio towns, and kept
it.

In all the history of Cincinnati, this is the only incident we have
found that savors of the romantic.

Those black eyes lured Major Doughty to the only site on the Ohio upon
which one hundred thousand people could conveniently live without
climbing a very steep and high hill. It is also about midway between the
source of the river and its mouth; the Ohio being nine hundred and
fifty-nine miles long, and Cincinnati five hundred and one miles from
the Mississippi. The city is nearly the centre of the great valley of
the Ohio; it is, indeed, exactly where it should be, and exactly where
the metropolis of the valley might have been even if Major Doughty had
not been susceptible to the charms of lovely woman. It is superfluous to
say that Cincinnati is situated on a "bend" of the Ohio, since the Ohio
is nothing but bends, and anything tha