CHICAGO’S WHITE CiTy: A REMINISCENCE, 353 
—— ey 
I shall ever hold it in pleasing recolle€tion that it was, as 
already stated, my privilege and good fortune to rank 
amongst this “‘ favoured few.” 
Chicago is probably best known by the term “ Lake 
City,” from the faét that it lies on the shores of Lake 
Michigan. It is also sometimes called “ Pork-opolis,” or 
“the Metropolis of the wild and woolly West.” Distant 
nearly athousand miles, in round figures, from New York, 
it is the second largest city in the United States in point 
of population, wealth, and industrial and commercial 
importance. Chicago to-day holds nearly a million and 
a half inhabitants, and she is not yet sixty years old. It 
is a curious co-incidence that it was incorporated as a 
city in the same year as our own Georgetown—in 1837, 
the year of Queen VICTORIA’S accession to the throne of 
Britain and on the eve, so to say, of Negro Emancipationin 
the British West Indies. But its original settlement dates 
as far back as 1779, when POINT DE SABLE, a fugitive 
slave from San Domingo, located himself there. The city 
in 1871 was practically destroyed by the memorable 
conflagration which consumed 17,450 buildings, render- 
ing homeless 98,500 persons, killing 200, and occasion- 
ing a money loss set down at the enormous sum of 
$190,000,000. To quote from an official guide-book of 
the World’s Fair:—“ One year after the fire many 
of the best business blocks in the city were rebuilt ; 
five years after the fire the city was handsomer, archi- 
tefturally speaking, than ever; ten years after the fire 
all traces of the calamity had disappeared.” There was 
a second fire twenty years ago, causing nearly four mil- 
lions damage, but the distri€ét was soon rebuilt in a sub- 
stantial manner, and whilst restored and revived Chicago 
