[AX] According to the official report of the Trustees and visitors of the common schools, dated July 30, 1833, there were then in Cincinnati 6,000 children between the ages of 6 and 16 years, exclusive of 230 children of colour for whom there is a separate school. About 2,300 children attended the common schools and 1,700 private schools. The number of common schools is 18, under the care of 12 masters and 5 assistants, 6 mistresses and 7 assistant mistresses. The masters receive 400 dollars a year, and the assistants 250; the school mistresses 216, and the assistants 168. These salaries are thought to be too low.
[AY] This museum has one show which I never saw anywhere else; it is a representation of the Infernal Regions, to which the young Cincinnati girls resort in quest of that excitement which a comfortable and peaceful, but cold and monotonous manner of life denies them. This strange spectacle seems to afford a delicious agitation to their nerves, and is the principal source of revenue to the museum.
[AZ] The water used in Philadelphia is supplied by the Schuylkill, a fall in which is made to drive the pumps, by which the reservoirs are filled. The Fairmount works are arranged and ornamented with much taste, and at very little expense; the ornamental part, strictly speaking, merely consists of some lawns, wooden balustrades, and two wretched statues; yet the effect is very elegant.
[BA] In a report on executive patronage lately made to the Senate by Mr Calhoun, the following statement of the number of persons employed by the Federal government is given:
| Administrative and financial agents | 12,144 |
| Military Service and Indian affairs | 9,643 |
| Naval affairs | 6,499 |
| Post Office | 31,917 |
| Total | 60,203 |
[LETTER XIX.]
Cincinnati.
Natchez, (Miss.) Jan. 4, 1835.
Cincinnati contains about 40,000 inhabitants, inclusive of the adjoining villages; although founded 40 years ago, its rapid growth dates only about 30 years back. It seems to be the rendezvous of all nations; the Germans and Irish are very numerous, and there are some Alsacians; I have often heard the harsh accents of the Rhenish French in the streets. But the bulk of the population, which gives its tone to all the rest, is of New England origin. What makes the progress of Cincinnati more surprising is, that the city is the daughter of its own works. Other towns, which have sprung up in the United States in the same rapid manner, have been built on shares, so to speak. Lowell, for example, is an enterprise of Boston merchants, who, after having raised the necessary funds, have collected workmen and told them, "Build us a town." Cincinnati has been gradually extended and embellished, almost wholly without foreign aid, by its inhabitants, who have for the most part arrived on the spot poor. The founders of Cincinnati brought with them nothing but sharp-sighted, wakeful, untiring industry, the only patrimony which they inherited from their New England fathers, and the other inhabitants have scrupulously followed their example and adopted their habits. They seem to have chosen Franklin for their patron-saint, and to have adopted Poor Richard's maxims as a fifth gospel.
I have said that Cincinnati was admirably situated; this is true in respect of its geographical position, but, if you follow the courses of the rivers on the map, and consider the natural resources of the district, you will find that there are several points on the long line of the rivers of the West as advantageously placed, both for trade and manufactures, and that there are some which are even more favoured in these respects. Pittsburg, which has within reach both coal and iron, that is to say, the daily bread of industry, which stands at the head of the Ohio, at the starting point of steam-navigation, at the confluence of the Monongahela and the Alleghany, coming the one from the south and the other from the north; Pittsburg, which is near the great chain of lakes, appears as the pivot of a vast system of roads, railroads, and canals, several of which are already completed. Pittsburg was marked out by nature at once for a great manufacturing centre and a great mart of trade. Louisville, built at the falls of the Ohio, at the head of navigation for the largest class of boats, is a natural medium between the commerce of the upper Ohio and that of the Mississippi and its tributaries. In respect to manufacturing resources, Louisville is as well provided as Cincinnati, and the latter, setting aside its enchanting situation, seemed destined merely to become the market of the fertile strip between the Great and Little Miami.