unk the horses were obliged to pull
the heavy wagon, and then an equally precipitous descent, gave a view of
the Alleghany River and Oil Creek, with Oil City at their confluence,
and a background of bluffs and mountains cutting sharp against the clear
blue sky.

This view Miselle contemplated with one eye; but the other remained
rigidly fixed upon the road before her.

Even Jamie paused, and finally suggested,--

"Reckon, men, you'd best get out and walk alongside. The women can stay
in; and if she's going over, you can shore up."

Under these cheerful auspices the descent was accomplished, and, by some
miracle, without accident.

At the foot of the bluff commences the slough in which Oil City is set;
and as it deepened, the horses gradually sank from view, until only
their backs were visible, floundering through a sea of oily mud of a
peculiarly tenacious character. Miselle has the warning of Munchausen
before her eyes; but, in all sadness, she avers that in the principal
street of Oil City, and at the door of the principal hotel, the mud was
on that day above the hubs of the wagon-wheels.

Having refreshed themselves in body and mind at the Petroleum House,
where a lady in a soiled print dress and much jewelry kindly played at
them upon a gorgeous piano, the party went forth to view the city.

The same mingling of urgent civilization and unsubdued Nature observable
in Corry characterizes Oil City to a greater extent. On one side of the
street, crowded with oil-wagons, the freight of each worth thousands of
dollars, stand long rows of dwellings, shops, and warehouses, all built
within two years, and on the other impinges a bluff still covered with
its forest growth of shrubs and wood-plants,--while upon the frowning
front of a cliff that has for centuries faced nothing meaner than the
Alleghany, with its mountain background, some Vandal has daubed the
advertisement of a quack nostrum.

Farther on, where the bluff is less precipitous, it has been graded
after a fashion; and the houses built at the upper side of the new
street seem to be sliding rapidly across it to join their opposite
neighbors, which, in their turn, are sinking modestly into the mud.

A plank sidewalk renders it possible to walk through the principal
streets of this city; but temptation to do so is of the slightest.

Monotonous lines of frail houses, shops whose scanty assortment of goods
must be sold at enormous prices to pay the expense of