2 " NEW TEAOKS IN NOETH AMEEIOA. 



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filled, they all start clown to the river-baiik and drive straight 

 on to the ferry-boat, closely followed by the small fry. Tlic 

 omnibuses and carriages take up one side of the boat, the 



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carts and wagons fill the other ; the whistle sounds, and off 

 we go, apparently up stream, but we soon find that the 

 current is carrying us across, and that in reality we only hold 

 our ground against it. It is now that we fully realise the 

 width of the river and the great rapidity of its current. 



The St. Louis ferry-boat will soon be a thing of the past, 

 for the foundations of a splendid bridge are already laid. It 

 is, I believe, to be built on arches for some distance on each 

 side, and to be united in the centre by a suspension bridge 

 600 feet in length, and so lofty that the largest river boats 

 may pass beneath it without lowering their chimneys. This 

 bridge, like that of Niagara, is to combine road and rail, one 

 above the other. Besides this, a tunnel is also in contempla- 

 tion, which will supply to 'another section of the city simiwr 

 advantages. 



It would not, I think, be just to St. Louis to leave it 

 behind us without devoting a few lines to its history and 

 future prospects. The capital of the West may be taken as 

 a sample of those large commercial centres of the TJniteu 

 States whose growth has been so marvellous. 



I^ot more than a century ago, in the summer of ITo^j 

 Pierre Lascede, with a party of French trappers and tradt 

 started up the Mississippi, from New Orleans, for the piupose 

 of establishing a trading-post at the junction of the two grea^ 

 rivers— the Mississippi and the Missouri. After five months 

 travel, their destination was reached, but the low lands an 

 treacherous banks at the junction did not satisfy them ; 

 they retraced their steps to a rising ground which they ha 

 passed twenty miles below on the western bank ; and here 



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so 



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