Yet the present growth of towns along Lake Erie shows with what alacrity the populations of the lower West precipitate themselves against the shores of the lake. Cleveland is growing faster than Cincinnati. Detroit, long retarded by a habitant population, is growing faster than Louisville. Toledo is growing faster than Wheeling. Buffalo has almost outgrown its more ancient neighbor of Pittsburgh. Chicago and Milwaukee stride ahead of St. Louis and Memphis. When the summer comes and the great national conventions choose their places of meeting, they benefit by experience, and both assemble the same year at Chicago to get the air of the lakes instead of sweltering in St. Louis or Cincinnati.
The fine climate about Chautauqua is in much a matter of altitude. Proceeding either east or west from this point, the shores of the lakes lie comparatively flat, and in the state of Ohio there is but one eminence sufficient to be called a mountain, and that is the Little Mountain not far from Painesville, a mere knob only about 200 feet above the plain, and ten miles back from Lake Erie. Even here some comfort can be had by the inhabitants of the plain, and a hotel was built at least fifty years ago.
The rise of public biography on the southern shore of Lake Erie has not been overlooked by the general reader; Garfield, Giddings, Wade, General McPherson, Hon. Henry B. Payne, Governor Todd, William Howells, Chief Justice Waite and many others are among the men whose minds have been lifted by the breezes from the lake, and which have already begun to display an energizing character attracting the attention of the whole country.
It has only been eighty-eight years since the first surveyors landed at Conneaut to survey the military lands of Connecticut and organize northern Ohio. When they pulled their boats ashore, which they had taken from Buffalo up the lake, they were so touched with their improved health that they moored on the beach, had prayer together and resolved to make the first day in the West a holiday. Mr. Harvey Rice in his recent history of the Western Reserve says: “The day was remarkably pleasant and the air bracing, and they partook of an extemporized feast with a keen relish, and gave for one of the toasts, ‘May these fifty sons and daughters multiply in sixteen years sixteen times fifty.’” Seven weeks after this picnic the site of Cleveland was selected for a city. Twenty-two years after that the first steamboat starting from Buffalo passed within sight of Chautauqua and entered the harbor of Cleveland and went on to Detroit.
I have been almost an extensive traveler in the United States, not like commercial travelers, merely visiting the towns and trading points, but the scenery and the health resorts. About twenty-four years ago I went on the press and the vocation of special correspondent was then just rising into consideration, and I threw myself toward it, desiring to gratify “the lust of the eye” by my newspaper facilities. Even before I left school I had tramped through the Alleghany mountains, through the Sinking Spring valley, the Seven mountains and the fountain town called Bellefonte, in the heart of the Alleghanies. Next I went through the Lackawanna and Wyoming valleys, visited the old resorts in the lap of Pennsylvania under the Blue Mountains, and in the midst of the war was a battle correspondent at such places as the Fauquier White Sulphur Springs. Next, lecturing opportunities took me through New York state and the West, and I visited Fredonia twice, in the vicinity of Chautauqua Lake, and there heard of the beautiful region almost overhanging it, on the highlands. With renewed opportunities I have been in California, about Los Angeles, and at Santa Barbara, and in southern Georgia and Florida, and in Cuba, at the Hot Springs of Arkansas, on the summits of the Osage mountains where the trade wind blows, at Springfield and through the Indian territory, and at San Antonio, in Texas, with smaller journeys to Oaklands and the Green Brier White Sulphur Springs, on the Alleghany tops and the Peaks of Otter, and along all our coasts as far as Mount Desert and New Brunswick, and several times in the White Mountains, down the St. Lawrence to the sea and out the Northern Pacific railroad, and I miss no opportunity, when I can afford it, to extend my information of places and people.
This is only said in answer to your request to give some idea of the relative quality of the air about Chautauqua Lake. I have seen no place where the air is so pure and the nights so agreeable anywhere along our lakes, and the spot seems almost arranged by nature with a reference to the anticipated arrangement of the people and the lines of communication in this republic.
When you consider that the low grade railroad route to the West must turn the Alleghany mountains to the North and use the limited space between those mountain spurs and the lake to reach the West without unnecessary expenditure of steam power, it would seem that Chautauqua Lake had been adjusted to the coming lines of travel, and we already have the Lake Shore, the Nickel Plate, the Erie, and the different Alleghany River lines, with more lines soon to come, to connect the Lehigh, the Lackawanna, the West Shore, and kindred systems with the great West.
Surely the spot is most agreeable for health and enjoyment to the great homogeneous people who are nearly evenly divided in numbers by the Alleghany range. The Alleghany mountains have hardly commenced their material development, and being full of coal, oil, iron, and the more precious minerals, the time is approaching when that mountain range will contain on its slopes the densest population in America, and its mineral resources be worked from the vicinity of Buffalo to Alabama.
My brother, Doctor Ralph M. Townsend, who was a surgeon connected with the medical schools of Philadelphia, and also a writer, was taken ill about ten years ago and compelled to search up and down the world for a climate in which to live. He tried Algiers, the south of France, the Bahamas, the Bermudas, Central America, Lower California, Colorado, and finally died in the Adirondack mountains, which he thought might allow him, in the dry air, to safely winter there. He did not like Florida, thought it was too damp, considered the southern part of California to be subject to winds, took cold in Colorado, which hastened his death, and finally considered that the northern climates were the most reliable. His vital power was almost spent when he came to this conclusion.
I was recently talking to General Pike Graham, a retired officer of the United States army and a native of Virginia, about the relative climate of Europe and America. He said that he had spent within a very few years three full winters abroad, and had tried almost all the resorts in the South of Europe, and he considered that the United States was much better situated for climate. He did not think Florida was a good climate, being too low and subject to changes and to dampness, but regarded southwestern Texas as perhaps the best he knew. I haw talked to other travelers who consider the City of Mexico to have the best air they know of on the continent.