Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 V13.djvu/51

 *ing city, I find it impossible. Nothing appears to {18} me to predominate but filth and smoke and bustle. The rivers and surrounding country are engaging and romantic—its situation—the Thermopylæ of the west, into which so many thousands are flocking from every christian country in the world—its rapid progress, and the enterprising character of its inhabitants, are circumstances which excite our admiration. In national industry, the true source of wealth and independence, Pittsburgh is now scarcely inferior to any of the older and larger towns in the Union. The shores of the Monongahela were lined with nearly 100 boats of all descriptions, steam-boats, barges, keels, and arks or flats, all impatiently and anxiously waiting the rise of the Ohio, which was now too low to descend above the town of Wheeling. A bridge was at this time nearly completed across this stream, and one of the piers of another across the Alleghany was also laid.

The day after my arrival I went through the flint-glass works of Mr. Bakewell, and was surprised to see the beauty of this manufacture, in the interior of the United States, in which the expensive decorations of cutting and engraving (amidst every discouragement incident to a want of taste and wealth) were carried to such perfection. The productions of this manufacture find their way to New Orleans, and even to some of the islands of the West Indies.

The president Monroe, as a liberal encourager of domestic manufactures, had on his visit to those works given orders for a service of glass, which might indeed be exhibited as a superb specimen of this elegant art.

Mr. Bakewell was now beginning to employ the beautiful white and friable sandstone which had been observed