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Show 1836- 1837] Fbgg's Far West 143 strange as it may seem, has been the difficulty of procuring, at a conscionable outlay of dollars and cents, a suitable steed for a protracted jaunt. But, thanks to the civility or selfism of a friend, this difficulty is at an end, and I have at length succeeded in securing the reversion of a tough, spirited little bay, which, by considerate usage and bountiful foddering, may serve to bear me, with the requisite quantum of speed and safety, over the prairies. A few days, therefore, when the. last touch of acclimation shall have taken its leave, and " I'm over the border and awa\" The city of San' Louis, now hoary with a century's years, was one of those early settlements planted by the Canadian French up and down the great valley, from the Northern Lakes to the Gulf, while the English colonists of Plymouth and Jamestown were wringing out a wretched subsistence along the sterile shores of the Atlantic, wearied out by constant warfare with the thirty Indian tribes within their borders. Attracted by the beauty of the country, the fertility of its soil, the boundless variety of its products, the exhaustless mineral treasures beneath its surface, and the facility of the trade in the furs of the Northwest, a flood of Canadian emigration opened southward after the discoveries of La Salle, and the little villages of Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Prairie du Po, Prairie du Rocher, St. Phillipe, St. Ferdinand, Peoria, Fort Chartres, Vuide Poche, Petites Cotes, now St. Charles, Pain Court, now St. Louis, and others, successively sprang up in [ 116] the howling waste. Over nearly all this territory have the Gaul, the Spaniard, the Briton, and the Anglo- American held rule, and a dash of the national idiosyncrasy of each may be detected. Especially true is this of St. Louis. There is an antiquated, venerable air about its narrow streets and the ungainly edifices of one portion of it; the steep- roofed stone cottage of the Frenchman, and the tall stuccoed- |
