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 the streets—quays at which steamboats of fairy architecture are ever lying—massive warehouses and rich stores—the side walks a perfect throng of foot-passengers—the roadways crowded with light carriages, horsemen with palmetto hats and high-peaked saddles, galloping about on the magnificent horses of Kentucky—an air of life, wealth, bustle, and progress—are some of the characteristics of a city which stands upon ground where sixty years ago an unarmed white man would have been tomahawked as he stood. The human aspect is also curious. Palmetto hats, light blouses, and white trowsers form the prevailing costume even of the clergy, while Germans smoke chibouks and luxuriate in their shirt-sleeves—southerners, with the enervated look arising from residence in a hot climate, lounge about the streets—dark-browed Mexicans, in sombreras and high slashed boots, dash about on small active horses with Mamelouk bits—rovers and adventurers from California and the Far West, with massive rings in their ears, swagger about in a manner which shows their country and calling, and females richly dressed are seen driving and walking about, from the fair-complexioned European to the negress or mulatto. The windows of the stores are arranged with articles of gaudy attire and heavy jewellery, suited to the barbaric taste of many of their customers; but inside I was surprised to find the richest and most elegant manufactures of Paris and London. A bookseller's store, an aggregate of two or three of our largest, indicated that the culture of the mind was not neglected.

The number of carriages, invariably drawn by two horses, astonished me. They were the "red horses" of