Peculiarities of American Cities

The most imposing and ornate building of the city, architecturally speaking, is the Columbia Life Insurance building, which is of rose-colored granite, in the Renaissance style, four stories high, with a massive stone cornice representing mythological figures. The roof is reached by an elevator, and affords a fine view.

The city abounds in handsome churches. Most prominent among them all is Christ Church (Episcopal) at the corner of Thirteenth and Locust streets. It is in the cathedral gothic style, with stained-glass windows and lofty nave. The Catholic Cathedral, on Walnut street, between Second and Third streets, is an imposing structure with a front of polished freestone faced by a Doric portico. The Church of the Messiah (Unitarian), at the corner of Olive and Ninth streets, is a handsome gothic structure. The Jewish Temple, at the corner of Seventeenth and Pine streets, is one of the finest religious edifices in the city. There are many others which will challenge the visitor's attention and admiration as he passes through the streets of the city.

The wholesale business of St. Louis is confined to Front, Second, Third and Main streets. Front street is one hundred feet wide, and extends along the levee, being lined with massive stores and warehouses. Fourth street contains the leading retail stores, and on every pleasant day it is filled with handsome equipages, while on its sidewalks are found the fashion and beauty of the city. Washington avenue is one of the widest and most elegant avenues in St. Louis, and west of Twenty-seventh street contains many beautiful residences. Pine, Olive and Locust streets, Chouteau avenue and Lucas Place, are also famed for their fine residences. Lindell or Grant avenue, running north and south, on the western boundary of the city, and slightly bending toward the river, is its longest street, being twelve miles in length.

The corporate limits of St. Louis extend eleven miles along the river, and about three miles inland. The densely built portion of the city is about six miles in length by two in width. Its public parks are one of its striking features. They embrace an aggregate of about 2,000 acres. The most beautiful is Lafayette Park, lying between Park and Lafayette, Mississippi and Missouri avenues. In it are a bronze statue of Thomas H. Benton, by Harriet Hosmer, and a bronze statue of Washington. It is for pedestrians only, is elaborately laid out and ornamented, and is surrounded by magnificent residences. Missouri Park is a pretty little park at the foot of Lucas Place, containing a handsome fountain. St. Louis Place, Hyde Park and Washington Square are all attractive places of resort. Northern Park, on the bluffs to the north of the city, is noted for its fine trees, and contains 180 acres. Forest Park is the great park of the city. It lies four miles west of the Court House, and contains 1350 acres. The Des Pares runs through it, and the native forest trees are still standing. With great natural advantages, it requires only time and art to number it among the handsomest parks in the country. Tower Grove Park, in the southwest part of the city, contains 227 acres, offers delightful drives among green lawns and charmingly arranged shrubbery.

Adjoining this park is Shaw's Garden, which contains 109 acres. It possesses a peculiar interest, from the manner in which it is arranged. It is divided into three sections, the first being the Herbaceous and Flower Garden, embracing ten acres, and including every flower which can be grown in the latitude of St. Louis, besides several greenhouses containing thousands of exotic and tropical plants. The second section, called the Fruticetum, comprises six acres devoted to fruit of all kinds. The Arboretum, or third section, includes twenty-five acres, and contains all kinds of ornamental and fruit trees. The Labyrinth is an intricate, hedge-bordered pathway, leading to a summer-house in the centre. There are also a museum and botanical library. This garden is entirely the result of private taste and enterprise, having been planned and executed by Henry Shaw, who has thrown it open to the public, and intends it as a gift to the city.

Bellefontaine Cemetery is the most beautiful in the West. It is situated in the northern part of the city, about four and one-half miles from the Court House, and embraces 350 acres. It contains a number of fine monuments, while the trees and shrubbery are most tastefully arranged. Calvary Cemetery, north and not far distant, is nearly as large and quite as beautiful. Here, in these quiet cities of the dead, far from the bustle of the great town, the men and women of this western metropolis, whose lives were passed in turmoil and activity, find at last that rest which must come to all.

The people of St. Louis are supplied with water from the river, the waterworks being situated at Bissell's Point, three and one-half miles north of the court house. Two pumping engines, each with a daily capacity of 17,000,000 gallons, furnish an ample supply for all the needs of the great city.

Fair week, which is usually the first week in October, is the great holiday and gala season of St. Louis. The writer of this article was once so fortunate as to visit the city early in this week. Every train of cars on the many lines which centre at St. Louis, and every steamboat which came from up or down the river, brought its living freight of men and women, who were out for a week's holiday, and, it may have been, paying their annual visit to the greatest city west of the Mississippi. The country roads leading to town were black with vehicles of all descriptions, and laden with men and merchandise. The laborers and mules upon the levee were busier than ever, receiving and transporting the articles to be exhibited and sold. Every hotel was crowded, and the surplus overflowed into boarding and lodging houses, so that their keepers undoubtedly reaped a golden harvest for that one week, at least. The streets were thronged with an immense and motley multitude: business men, on the alert to extend their trade and add to their gains; working women, who found an opportunity for a brief holiday; ladies of fashion who viewed the scene resting at their ease in their carriages; farmers from the rural districts, looking uncomfortable yet complaisant in their Sunday suits, and trying to take in all there was to see and understand; their wives, old-fashioned and countrified in their dress, and with a tired look upon their faces, which this week given up to idleness and sight-seeing could not quite dispel; sporting men, easily recognizable by their flashy dress and "horsey" talk; gamblers and blacklegs by the score, whose appearance and manners were too excessively gentlemanly to pass as quite genuine, and whose gains during the week were probably larger and more certain than those of any other class; western men, with their patois, borrowed apparently from the slang of every nation on the globe; Southerners, with their long hair, slouched hats and broad accent; river hands, whose most noticeable accomplishments seemed to be disposing of tobacco and inventing new oaths; negroes, whose facile natures entered heartily into the occasion, and on whose sleek, shining countenances the spirit of contentment was plainly visible; eastern men, with the Yankee intonation; Germans, in great numbers, patronizingly endorsing their adopted country, and selling lager beer with stolid content; Irishmen, whose preference was whisky, and who were ever ready for fun or a fight; beggars, plying their vocation with an extra whine, adopted to conceal an unwonted tendency to cheerfulness; magnates, who looked pompous and conscious of their own importance, but who were jostled and pushed with the democratic disregard for rank and station which characterizes an American crowd.

Probably in no city in the Union would one find quite so cosmopolitan a multitude, representing all sections and all nationalities so impartially. In the business and populous centre of our country, here came all classes and peoples who had been born under, or had sought the protection of, our flag, to worship one week at the shrines of Ceres and Pomona.

The fair grounds of the St. Louis Agricultural and Mechanical Association are three miles northwest of the Court House, and embrace eighty-five acres handsomely laid out and containing extensive buildings. The Amphitheatre will seat 40,000 persons. The street cars leading to these grounds were at all times filled with people, and in addition there was a constant procession of carriages, wagons and carts, going and returning. Within the enclosure the dense throng surged and swayed like a human whirlpool. The displays in the agricultural and mechanical departments were something astonishing; for where in the world is there such grain grown and in such quantities, as in the Mississippi and Missouri valleys? Where are there such fat oxen, such sleek, self-satisfied cows, with such capacity for rich milk? Horses, hogs and sheep were all of the best, and indicated that the West is very far advanced in scientific stock raising. The farm implements displayed all sorts of contrivances for lightening and hastening the farmer's toil. It needed but a glance to show that farming in this region was no single-man, one-horse affair.

In art the East as yet excels the West; for in the scramble after material gain the artistic nature has not been greatly cultivated, and its expressions are, for the most part, crude. But they give promise of future excellence. St. Louis has no picture gallery worthy the name, but excells in scientific and educational institutions.

The Mercantile Library, at the corner of Fifth and Locust streets, contains 50,000 volumes, and its hall is decorated by paintings, coins and statuary, among which latter may be mentioned Miss Hosmer's life-size statue of Beatrice Cenci and Œnone; a bronze copy of the Venus de Medici, a sculptured slab from the ruins of Nineveh, and marble busts of Thomas H. Benton and Robert Burns. The library with its reading room is free to strangers.

Besides the library there is a public school library of 38,000 volumes; an Academy of Science, founded in 1856, with a large museum and a library of 3,000 volumes; and a Historical Society, founded in 1865, with a valuable historical collection. Washington University, organized in 1853, embraces the whole range of university studies except theology. With it is connected the Mary Institute, for the education of women, the Polytechnic School, and the Law School. The public school system of St. Louis is one of the best in the country, and its school-houses are commendably fine. The Roman Catholic College of the Christian Brothers has about four hundred students, and a library of 10,000 volumes. Concordia College (German Lutheran), established in 1839, has a library of 4,500 volumes. Besides the numerous public schools, the Roman Catholics, who embrace a majority of the inhabitants, have about one hundred parochial, private and conventual schools. They have also a number of convents, charitable homes, asylums and hospitals.

The hotels, chief amongst which are the new Southern Hotel, Lindell House, Planters' Hotel, Laclede Hotel and Barnum's Hotel, will compare favorably, in point of attendance, comfort and elegance, with any in the country. Horse cars traverse the city in every direction, rendering all points easily accessible, and carriages are in waiting at the depots and steamboat landings. Ferries ply continually to East St. Louis, on the Illinois shore, from the foot of Carr street, north of the bridge, and from the foot of Spruce street, south of it, the two points of departure being about a mile apart.

So long as the Mississippi River washes the levee in front of the city, the citizens of St. Louis are in little danger of long remaining dull, for want of excitement. That river, one of the uneasiest of water courses, constantly furnishes fresh themes of interest, and even of anxiety. It has a singular penchant for a frequent change of channels, and occasionally threatens to desert to Illinois and leave St. Louis an inland town, with its high levee a sort of rampart to receive the mocking assaults of Chicago. Then, every spring, there is the annual freshet, which, once in ten or fifteen years, creeps up over the top of the levee, and finds its way into cellars and first floors of stores and warehouses. Occasionally there is a severe winter, when ice is formed upon the river as far south even as St. Louis; and when it breaks up in the spring, mischief is sure to ensue. A hundred steamboats are in winter quarters along the levee, their noses in the sand, and their hulls extending riverward, fixed in the ice. At last the great mass of congealed water, extending up the river hundreds of miles, begins to move down stream. The motion is at first scarcely perceptible; but, suddenly, the ice cracks and breaks, and fragments begin to glide swiftly with the current of the river. The various masses create conflicting currents, and, presently, the surface of the stream is like a whirlpool. Some boats are crushed like egg shells between the floes; cables snap, and others are drawn out into the midst of the whirling waters and are fortunate indeed if they are not overwhelmed or forced upon the ice. Meantime, consternation reigns upon the levee. The multitudes are powerless to prevent, yet make frantic and futile efforts while they watch, the disaster. At the breaking up of the ice in 1866, seventeen steamboats were crushed and sunk in a few minutes. Then there are other river disasters; steamboats burned; others struck on snags and sunk; and now and then a boiler explosion makes up the tale of horrors and prevents the Mississippi from ever becoming monotonous or uninteresting.

St. Louis was most unfavorably affected by the war, and made to expiate her political sin of 1820. On the border land between the North and the South, the conflict was carried on in her very midst. Sectional strife was most bitter and keen. There was no neutrality, and there could be none. All were either for or against; families were divided in deadly strife; and while the city suffered to a terrible degree from this condition of affairs, in back counties whole sections were depopulated. The population being largely southern, either by birth or descent, its sympathies were with the South. The class truly loyal was the Germans, who numbered about 60,000 of the population, and who were characterized by the Secessionists as the "D – Dutch." The blockade of the river reduced the whole business of the city to about a third of its former amount. Yet, when the war was ended, St. Louis was quick to recover her prostrated energies. In 1866, and but two years after the war, the city did more business than in any preceding year; and, relieved from the incubus of slavery, which had retarded its progress, it aroused itself to new life.

With the Quaker-like simplicity of its outward appearance, its absence of business rush, and its general tranquillity, St. Louis' resemblance to the Quaker City ceases. It is a town of composite character, but from its earliest existence has been under Roman Catholic domination. Even now the Roman Catholic element predominates in its population. And its French and Spanish founders, though their quaint buildings are torn down and replaced by more modern ones, and their very streets re-named, have left their impress upon the city. Its many places of amusement, compared to its population, its general gayety, its stores closed by sunset in winter, and before sunset in summer, its billiard rooms open on Sunday, and its ball-playing on the same day, all give indication of its being the home of a people whose ancestors had no New England prejudices against worldly amusements, and in favor of sobriety, decorum, industry, and the observance of the Sabbath.

St. Louis presents a pleasing contrast to many other western cities. Its prosperity is substantial – not a sham. The capital which has paid for these costly places of business and elegant residences, and is invested in these gigantic enterprises, has been created out of the immense material wealth of the State – not borrowed on a factitious credit. Its merchants do not make princely fortunes in a day, but what they acquire they keep. With so satisfactory a past, the errors of its youth atoned for, the future of St. Louis cannot fail to be a brilliant one.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

SYRACUSE

Glimpses on the Rail. – Schenectady. – Valley of the Mohawk. – "Lover's Leap." – Rome and its Doctor. – Oneida Stone – The Lo Race. – Oneida Community. – The City of Salt. – The Six Nations. – The Onondagas. – Traditions of Red Americans. – Hiawatha. – Sacrifice of White Dogs. – Ceremonies. – The Lost Tribes of Israel. – Witches and Wizards. – A Jules Verne Story. – The Salt Wells of Salina. – Lake Onondaga. – Indian Knowledge of Salt Wells. – "Over the Hills and Far Away." – A Castle. – Steam Canal Boats. – Adieux. – Westward Ho!

The distance from Albany to Syracuse by rail, on the line of the New York Central, is about one hundred and forty-two miles, or reckoned by language on the dial, between six and seven hours.

Schenectady, the first stopping point on the route outward, was once hovered under the motherly wings of Albany – her lawful progeny. The embryo city, however, had aspirations of her own, and set up in the world for herself. She now rejoices in a population of about twenty-five thousand, and has separated herself from the maternal skirt by seventeen miles of intervening country. Union College, the alma mater of many of the sons of New York and her sister States, is located at this point.

The route from Albany to the junction of the Watertown and Ogdensburg Road, at Rome, takes us through the Valley of the Mohawk – one of the loveliest valleys in the State. At Little Falls the scenery is wild and rugged, and looking out from the car window to the opposite hillside, where the waters break into foam over the rocks, set in a dark framework of pines, the imaginative traveler conjectures at once that this must be the scene of the "Lover's Leap" – a bit of romance rife in this region. But the Mohawk rushes on, unmindful of those legendary lovers; the heartless conductor, who cares nothing about dreams, shouts "all aboard!" from the platform, and the screech of the engine whistle echoes down the valley, as the train is once more in motion.

At Utica we make a longer stop. This point is the largest place between Albany and Syracuse, and is as handsome a city as sits on the banks of the Mohawk. The Black River Railroad joins the main line of the New York Central here, and it is also the location of the State Lunatic Asylum.

Rome comes next in order, in importance and population, and is the last place of any note on the road to Syracuse. It is a stirring little city of about ten or eleven thousand inhabitants, and at least some of its citizens have mastered the art of advertising, if one may judge from the pamphlets which flood the arriving and departing trains. We are repeatedly made aware of the fact that one of the dwellers in Rome is a doctor, and that he doats on curing – not corns, but cancers.

The Midland Road from Oswego, and the Watertown Road – those connecting arterial threads from Lake Ontario and Northern New York – unite with the main artery, the Central, here, and the flow of human freight down these channels is continuous and unceasing.

The second station from Rome, on the road to Syracuse, is Oneida – so named from the tribe of red men who, less than a century ago, occupied this particular region. A tradition once existed among the Oneidas that they were a branch of the Onondagas, to whom they were allied by relationship and language. Long ago they lived on the southern shore of Oneida Lake, near the mouth of the creek, but afterwards their habitation was made higher up the valley. The famous "Oneota" or Oneida Stone became their talisman and the centre of their attractions. Many of their tribe were distinguished as orators and statesmen.

The Oneida "Community" live about two miles back from the station, and, notwithstanding their peculiar religious belief and social practices, they have achieved a reputation for quiet thrift, industry and harmony, which their more Puritanic neighbors would do well to emulate.

But, at last, our train enters the outskirts of Syracuse, and penetrating the heart of the city, rumbles inside the gates of the New York Central Station at this place. Outside, all is hurry and bustle, and confusion, as we descend the steps and elbow our way through the crowd, to run the gauntlet of hack drivers and baggage expressmen, with their plated caps and deafening calls.

Syracuse is sometimes known as the Central City, on account of its location near the geographical centre of New York. It was first settled in 1787, and did not pass the limits of a small village until the completion of the Erie canal, in 1825. Two canals and three or four lines of railway now centre here, and contribute to the growth of this enterprising city. The region surrounding Syracuse is rife with the romantic history of that once powerful Indian Confederacy known as the Six Nations, now fast fading from the memory of men. The site of their ancient Council House was on Onondaga Creek, a few miles distant from the city, and is still held sacred to their traditions by the remnant of the lost tribes now occupying the Indian reservation. The Onondagas became the leading nation of the Confederacy. No business of importance, touching the Six Nations, was transacted, except at Onondaga. They held the key of the great Council House; they kept the sacred council fire ever burning. From what portion of the country they emigrated before occupying this region is unknown, but there is a very early tradition among them that, many hundred moons ago, their forefathers came from the North, having inhabited a territory along the northern banks of the St. Lawrence. After a lapse of time there was an exodus of the powerful tribe to the hills and hollows of Onondaga.

The River God of this nation was named Hiawatha – which meant "very wise." He always embarked in a white canoe, which was carefully guarded in a lodge especially set apart for that purpose. Their favorite equipments were white. White plumes, from the heron, were worn in their head-bands when they went on the war path; white dogs were sacrificed. The yearly sacrifice of the dogs, among the Onondagas, was a ceremony of great importance with the tribe, and occurred at one of the five stated festivals of the Six Nations. On the great sacrificial day it was the habit of the people to assemble at the Council House in large numbers. Early in the morning, immense fires were built, guns were discharged, and loud hallooing increased the noise. Half a cord of wood, arranged in alternate layers, was placed near the Council House, by a select committee of managers, for the sacrificial offering. The two officiating priests for the occasion, as well as the high priest, were dressed in long, loose robes of white. At about nine o'clock in the morning the two priests appear. The white dogs following them are painted with red figures, and adorned with belts of wampum, feathers and ribbons. The dogs are then lassooed and suffocated, amid yells and the firing of guns. After some intervening ceremonies, the details of which are too long for recital here, a procession is formed, led by the priests in white, followed by the managers, bearing the dogs on their shoulders. A chant is sung as the procession marches around the burning pile three successive times; the dogs are then laid at the feet of the officiating priest, a prayer is offered to the Great Spirit and the high priest, lifting the dogs, casts them into the fire. After this, baskets of herbs and tobacco are thrown, at intervals, into the fire, as propitiating sacrifices.

Their idea of these sacrifices was, that the sins of the people were, in some mysterious manner, transferred yearly to the two priests in white, who, in turn, conveyed them to the dogs. Thus the burnt offering expiated the sins of the people for a year.

These ideas and customs are so singularly similar to the ancient Jewish religious rites as to suggest a possible origin from the same source. The mystical council fire of the Six Nations, which was kept always burning by the Onondagas, who had charge of it, and which, if extinguished, was supposed to prophesy the destruction of the nation, may have a deeper meaning than that attached to it by the chiefs themselves. It may possibly point to a common parentage with the ever-burning flame in the Vestal Temple at Rome, whose eclipse endangered the safety of the city. Another point of resemblance may be noted. Time, which is reckoned among the Red men by moons, also suggests the Jewish year, which began with the new moon, and was reckoned by lunar months.