CHAPTER XXXVI. 



Louisville. Noble Site for a Commercial City. Geology. Medical Stu 

 dents. Academical Rotation in Office. Episcopal Church. Preaching 

 against the Reformation. Service in Black Methodist Church. Im 

 proved Condition of Negroes in Kentucky. A colored Slave married as 

 a free White. Voyage to Cincinnati. Naturalized English Artisan 

 gambling. Sources of Anti-British Antipathies. Progress of Cincinnati. 

 Increase of German Settlers. Democracy of Romanists. Geology of 

 Mill Creek. Land Tortoises. Observatory. Cultivation of the Vine. 

 Sculpture by Hiram Powers. 



April 5, 1846. FROM New Albany we.crossed the river to 

 Louisville, the metropolis of Kentucky, and found the Gait 

 House the best hotel we had been in since we left the St. Louis 

 at New Orleans. On our way through the streets, we saw 

 written in large letters, over a smith s shop, the word &quot; black- 

 smithy,&quot; and another inscription ran thus : &quot; Cash paid for 

 coon, mink, wild-cat, beaver, musk-rat, otter, bear, wolf, arid 

 deer- skins ;&quot; which reminded us that this city, being the first 

 place where large vessels coming up the river are stopped by the 

 Falls, is the natural emporium for the produce of the western 

 hunting grounds. A more noble site for a great commercial 

 town can not be imagined ; and several merchants expressed to 

 me their opinion, that Cincinnati, founded at a later date, would 

 not have outstripped her rival in the race, so as to number now 

 a population of nearly 100,000 souls, more than double that of 

 Louisville, but for the existence of slavery, and a large negro 

 population in Kentucky. Besides the disadvantages always 

 arising from the partition of a country between two races, evils 

 which emancipation can not put an end to, Kentucky suffers 

 from the decided preference shown to the right bank of the river 

 by the best class of new settlers from the northeastern states, 

 who choose the free state of Ohio for their residence, instead of 

 the slave state on the left bank. 



