ting north, east, west, and south; each
house communicating with an alley, furnishing a back entrance.
This plan would not be a bad one were the town properly drained,
but as it is, these alleys are horrible abominations, and must, I
conceive, become worse with every passing year.

To the north, Cincinnati is bounded by a range of forest-covered
hills, sufficiently steep and rugged to prevent their being built
upon, or easily cultivated, but not sufficiently high to command
from their summits a view of any considerable extent. Deep and
narrow water-courses, dry in summer, but bringing down heavy
streams in winter, divide these hills into many separate heights,
and this furnishes the only variety the landscape offers for many
miles round the town. The lovely Ohio is a beautiful feature
wherever it is visible, but the only part of the city that has
the advantage of its beauty is the street nearest to its bank.
The hills of Kentucky, which rise at about the same distance from
the river, on the opposite side, form the southern boundary to
the basin in which Cincinnati is built.

On first arriving, I thought the many tree covered hills around,
very beautiful, but long before my departure, I felt so weary of
the confined view, that Salisbury Plain would have been an
agreeable variety. I doubt if any inhabitant of Cincinnati ever
mounted these hills so often as myself and my children; but it
was rather for the enjoyment of a freer air than for any beauty
of prospect, that we took our daily climb. These hills afford
neither shrubs nor flowers, but furnish the finest specimens of
millepore in the world; and the water courses are full of fossil
productions.

The forest trees are neither large nor well grown, and so close
as to be nearly knotted together at top; even the wild vine here
loses its beauty, for its graceful festoons bear leaves only when
they reach the higher branches of the tree that supports them,
both air and light being too scantily found below to admit of
their doing more than climbing with a bare stem till they reach a
better atmosphere. The herb we call pennyroyal was the only one
I found in abundance, and that only on the brows, where the
ground had been partially cleared; vegetation is impossible
elsewhere, and it is this circumstance which makes the "eternal
forests" of America so detestable. Near New Orleans the
undergrowth of Palmetto and pawpaw is highly beautiful, but in
Tennessee, Indiana, a