It Is Built, And Is An Enormous Pile, And Would Be Handsome But For A Terribly Ambitious Grecian Doorway.

It is built, as far as the walls and roof are concerned, but in all other respects is unfinished.

I was told that the shares of the original stockholders were now worth nothing. A shareholder, who so told me, seemed to regard this as the ordinary course of business.

The great glory of the town is the "levee," as it is called, or the long river beach up to which the steamers are brought with their bows to the shore. It is an esplanade looking on to the river, not built with quays or wharves, as would be the case with us, but with a sloping bank running down to the water. In the good days of peace a hundred vessels were to be seen here, each with its double funnels. The line of them seemed to be never ending even when I was there, but then a very large proportion of them were lying idle. They resemble huge, wooden houses, apparently of frail architecture, floating upon the water. Each has its double row of balconies running round it, and the lower or ground floor is open throughout. The upper stories are propped and supported on ugly sticks and rickety-looking beams; so that the first appearance does not convey any great idea of security to a stranger. They are always painted white, and the paint is always very dirty. When they begin to move, they moan and groan in melancholy tones which are subversive of all comfort; and as they continue on their courses they puff and bluster, and are forever threatening to burst and shatter themselves to pieces. There they lie, in a continuous line nearly a mile in length, along the levee of St. Louis, dirty, dingy, and now, alas! mute. They have ceased to groan and puff, and, if this war be continued for six months longer, will become rotten and useless as they lie.

They boast at St. Louis that they command 46,000 miles of navigable river water, counting the great rivers up and down from that place. These rivers are chiefly the Mississippi; the Missouri and Ohio, which fall into the Mississippi near St. Louis; the Platte and Kansas Rivers, tributaries of the Missouri; the Illinois, and the Wisconsin. All these are open to steamers, and all of them traverse regions rich in corn, in coal, in metals, or in timber. These ready-made highways of the world center, as it were, at St. Louis, and make it the depot of the carrying trade of all that vast country. Minnesota is 1500 miles above New Orleans, but the wheat of Minnesota can be brought down the whole distance without change of the vessel in which it is first deposited. It would seem to be impossible that a country so blessed should not become rich. It must be remembered that these rivers flow through lands that have never yet been surpassed in natural fertility.

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