LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 73 



CHAPTER VI. 



IMPORTANCE OF THE WORK WE HAVE TO DO IN PRE- 

 PARING THE NEW COUNTRY FOR CIVILIZED HABITA- 

 TION LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE THE ART WHICH 

 LIES AT ITS FOUNDATION. 



|HE world is always wondering at the exhibition 

 of the last evidence of human skill, enterprise and 

 power. The public works, the palaces, hotels, 

 steamboats and ships, which in their day are described as 

 magnificent triumphs of ingenuity and energetic enterprise, 

 but which in the opinion of croakers must prove ruinous 

 to their projectors, are found in a very few years to be 

 inadequate to the public necessity, and are so far eclipsed 

 by the new creations which that necessity inspires, that 

 they sink into comparative insignificance. 



And the same is true of the growth of new cities. To 

 some of us who are not yet decrepid, it seems but yesterday 

 that travellers who had penetrated by weary stage journey 

 into the wilds of Western New York, came back with 

 enthusiastic accounts of the wonderful city of Rochester, 

 which had sprung into being in a day and attained civic 

 rank while the stumps were still standing in the streets. 

 Then came Buffalo, and Cincinnati and Chicago, each 

 outstripping the other, and each confident that it was the 



