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Show 1836- 1837] F/ agg's Far West 277 it is a flourishing town, and an early stage in the traveller's route to the Far West. Its origin, with that of most of the early settlements in this section of the valley, is French, and [ 19] some few of the peculiar characteristics of its founders are yet retained, though hardly to the extent as in some other villages which date back to the same era. The ancient style of some of the buildings, the singular costume, the quick step, the dark complexion, dark eyes and dark hair, and the merry, fluent flow of a nondescript idiom, are, however, at once perceived by the stranger, and indicate a peculiar people. St. Charles was settled in 1769, and for upward of forty years retained its original name, Les Petites Cotes. For some time it was under the Spanish government with the rest of the territory, and from this circumstance and a variety of others its population is made up of a heterogeneous mass of people, from almost every nation under the sun. Quite a flood of German emigration has, within six or seven years past, poured into the county. That wizard spell, however, under which all these early French settlements seem to have been lying for more than a century, St. Charles has not, until within a few years past, possessed the energy to throw off, though now the inroads of American enterprise upon the ancient order of things is too palpable to be unobserved or mistaken. The site of the town is high and healthy, upon a bed of limestone extending along the stream, and upon a narrow plateau one or two miles in extent beneath the overhanging bluffs. Upon this interval are laid off five streets parallel with the river, only the first of which is lined with buildings. Below the village the alluvion stretches along the margin of the stream for three miles, until, reaching the termination of the [ 20] highlands at the Mamelles, it spreads itself out to the north and west into the celebrated prairie I have described. St. Charles has long been a |