as lighted in
the little hole it occupied; and in half an hour I was fast asleep on
the banks of _la belle riviere_.

FOOTNOTE:

[10] "Old Hickory" is one of the familiar names by which his lovers
delight to designate the venerable President.

PITTSBURG.

My first visit, at an early hour on Monday morning, was to the banks of
the Monongahela, which ran by the bottom of the main street, wherein I
was lodged. The water was at this time low, being fifteen feet under its
highest level: the point of junction with the Alleghany lay, as I
discovered, some way below. The opposite heights, which rise boldly from
the water's edge, looked dark and drear enough, covered as they are with
a stubble of blackened stumps, and a few blasted trees, the ghosts of
the ruined forest. The political economist, however, would find ready
consolation in the mounds of coal-dust, the dingy low-roofed buildings,
together with the swinging of a hundred cranks, worked by the engines
whose smoke is seen curling along the face of the steep hill. It is to
give place to these iron giants that the forest has been felled; and to
supply these with fire, the mountain is in this direction pierced to its
centre.

Nature has supplied this place with wharves; and the people appear
quite contented with her handiwork, for they are left as she made them.
I counted fourteen steamboats all busied in taking in or discharging
freight; and the river was here and there dotted by keels of a rude,
picturesque construction: everything, indeed, gave evidence of active
and prosperous trade.

I from hence made a circuit of the principal part of the town, which is
soon accomplished, for it offers nothing externally to arrest the
passer-by for a moment: the streets are narrow, irregular, and
ill-paved; the houses as dirty as the smoke of bituminous coal can make
them, and, though substantially built, are in general wholly destitute
of neatness or ornament.

Upon Grant's Hill, a spur of one of the surrounding heights, that
thrusts itself boldly into the heart of the delta on which the town is
built, I found a Gothic edifice almost completed, the magnitude and
tasteful design of which attracted me: I entered it, and perceived at
once that it was a place of Catholic worship. From a communicative
little man, whom I observed for some time eyeing me with a sociable
look, I learnt that this was the cathedral; and it stands a pleasing
memorial of the liberality of the s