Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/567

 The tide of emigration from England swelled enormously in the decades succeeding 1820-40, and swindlers reaped so rich a harvest by selling imaginary land bargains in imaginary towns of the Ohio Valley that an investigation became necessary. A leading purpose with Charles Dickens in coming to America on his first tour in 1842 was to examine into and expose these frauds, which he did with fearless sarcasm and irresistible irony. The whole plot of Martin Chuzzlewit hinges on real-estate speculations at Cairo, Ill., at the mouth of the Ohio, the original of the city of "Eden," which Scadder, the real-estate agent, so eulogistically described to Martin that the credulous young Englishman forthwith invested all his funds in the hope of reaping an ample fortune by the day he set foot in the place. Pittsburg, Cincinnati and Louisville are realistically, and in some respects ridiculously, portrayed in chapters xxi.-xxiii., and if the reader will compare these with Dickens's American Notes, the actual scenes and experiences that suggested the story may be found.

As an offset to the severity of this inimitable satire, the reader should peruse the article