Many high artificial mounds, circular and elliptical, stood here when the city was founded. In after years, as they were leveled, one by one, they revealed relics of that ancient and comparatively civilized race, which occupied this region before the Indian, and was probably identical with the Aztecs of Mexico.
Upon the site of one of these mounds is Pike's Opera House, a gorgeous edifice, erected at an expense of half a million of dollars, by a Cincinnati distiller, who, fifteen years before, could not obtain credit for his first dray-load of whisky-barrels. It is one of the finest theaters in the world; but the site has more interest than the building. What volumes of unwritten history has that spot witnessed, which supports a temple of art and fashion for the men and women of to-day, was once a post from which Indian sentinels overlooked the "dark and bloody ground" beyond the river, and, in earlier ages, an altar where priests of a semi-barbaric race performed mystic rites to propitiate heathen gods!
A City Founded by a Woman.
Cincinnati was built by a woman. Its founder was neither carpenter nor speculator, but in the legitimate feminine pursuit of winning hearts. Seventy years ago, Columbia, North Bend, and Cincinnati—all splendid cities on paper—were rivals, each aspiring to be the metropolis of the West. Columbia was largest, North Bend most favorably located, and Cincinnati least promising of all.
But an army officer, sent out to establish a military post for protecting frontier settlers against Indians, was searching for a site. Fascinated by the charms of a dark-eyed beauty—wife of one of the North Bend settlers—that location impressed him favorably, and he made it head-quarters. The husband, disliking the officer's pointed attentions, came to Cincinnati and settled—thus, he supposed, removing his wife from temptation.
The Aspirations of the Cincinnatian.
But as Mark Antony threw the world away for Cleopatra's lips, this humbler son of Mars counted the military advantages of North Bend as nothing compared with his charmer's eyes. He promptly followed to Cincinnati, and erected Fort Washington within the present city limits. Proximity to a military post settled the question, as it has all similar ones in the history of the West. Now Cincinnati is the largest inland city upon the continent; Columbia is an insignificant village, and North Bend an excellent farm.
In architecture, Cincinnati is superior to its western rivals, and rapidly gaining upon the most beautiful seaboard cities. Some of its squares are unexcelled in America. A few public buildings are imposing; but its best structures have been erected by private enterprise. The Cincinnatian is expansive. Narrow quarters torture him. He can live in a cottage, but he must do business in a palace. An inferior brick building is the specter of his life, and a freestone block his undying ambition.
From the Queen City I went to Louisville. Though communication with the South had been cut off by every other route, the railroad was open thence to Nashville.