If any of our cousins german of the quill should intimate, that a great amount of sage counsel of this sort, as of poetry, is thrown to the winds, and upon a community, which is little apt to erect statues to its benefactors, we admit, that we have already pressed many a cheese for the ungrateful city; that we do not ask them to take, but merely to read our prescriptions. We have had the comfort of giving, what we consider an im portant hint, which we did not intend should die with us. Let the readers of fish stories, and the western lovers of good shad, look to it. It is to us a feast in anticipation to have uttered our oracular enunciation, and to have done our duty.

CLIMATE WEST OF THE ALLEGHANIES.

It would seem, that enough had already been written upon this subject. But of the succession of travellers from the Atlantic country, with whom we are continually meeting, and most of whom have read all upon this subject, which they could procure, we find scarcely one, who has clear and precise ideas upon the point. It is rather for the information of such, than for western readers, that we have thrown together a few facts and observations, the result of our own experience, during a period of nearly fifteen years, in various points of this valley.

In point of salubrity, every part of the western country is visibly becoming more favorable to health. The same circumstances, in regard to marshy districts, and contiguity to stagnant waters continue to take place, as in the Atlantic country. Though we have an undoubting impression, that the marshy lands of Ohio do not generate fever and ague, as certainly, or as severely, as in the level and wet districts of New York, in the vicinage of the lakes; 'nor do we think intermittents so common or stubborn in the southern vicinity of the state, that slopes towards the Ohio, as in the northern division, which descends to the lakes.

In the forest regions, wherever the country has been cleared, and settled for a length of time, it becomes visibly more healthy. Cases of intermittent fever are exceedingly rare in this city and vicinity; nor do we hear much of it in the thickly settled district between the two Miamies. The fertile valley of the Scioto, in its first settlement the grave of so many of its early inhabitants, has now become comparatively healthy. The terrific tales of the sufferings of former years from sickness, in all directions, have passed away. Some imagine, that our atmosphere is more humid, than that of the Atlantic country. As we have a greater elevation, than that country above the level of the sea-and as the free course of the winds is less impeded, than there, by mountains, and as ventilation is more perfect, we should doubt the fact. But if it be so, the cause, in our view, must be sought in the deeper and more loamy soil, evidently more retentive of moisture. In proof of this, it is said, that cellars in this region are visibly damper than that.

In regard to the comparative chances of health and exposure of life, we imagine, few portions of the Atlantic country, can be found, where health and life are less exposed, take all the seasons, and all classes of constitutions, and all the conditions of society into the account, than in the country between the two Miamies, or the interior of Kentucky and Tennessee. Indiana, Illinois and Missouri are still in the fresher and more exposed stages of habitancy, and the chances of health cannot be so strongly and confidently asserted, as in the districts cited above. In regard to St. Louis, we well remember, that it used to have its sickly season; and we have witnessed more than one, in which that season was marked with malignant and sweeping disease. The character of its atmosphere seems to have been changed for a number of past years. It is now pronounced by adequate and impartial judges a healthy town; and certainly the ravages of autumnal fever are less frequent and sweeping, than formerly. The general health of that city through the summer and autumn has been excellent for two or three past years. The same may be emphatically pronounced of Louisville, formerly noted for any thing, rather than health through the summer and autumn. The fact can hardly fail to have forced itself upon general observation among us, that our climate is becoming more salubrious, either from the advance of cultivation, or from the acclimation of the people to the atmosphere; and, probably, more than all from the general possession of ampler means of comfort, better food, houses and clothing, more experimental acquaintance with the requirements of the climate, and a more judicious adaptation of the modes of life to those requirements. Even the American bottom, we are told, now shows many healthy families through the autumn, a remark, that would hardly have been warranted, but a few years since. One fact is clear; the people expose themselves in the west to the vicissitudes of temperature and the weather, to night air, and to sleeping under the open sky much more recklessly, than in the Atlantic. The general impression is, that it can be done with better chances of impunity.

We have, it must be allowed, our full share of sudden transitions in temperature, particularly during winter, and the first two months of spring.But we experienced last autumn in New England, (we think it was on the eighth of September) a more rapid change of temperature, and a greater range of the mercury, than we have ever noted in this valley. Our vicissitudes of cold and heat, however, in winter and spring, are sufficiently trying to sensitive constitutions, and require, that great care should be bestowed upon corresponding changes of dress. Indeed, from the Gulf of Mexico to Wheeling and St. Louis, the greater part of winter is a series of successive changes. In New Orleans the temperature is generally sufficient to bring various species of roses into blossom, in mid-winter, in the open gardens. We have seen daffodils and green peas in bloom on newyear's day. The bland south generally prevails there for two grthree days in succession at that period. It is comfortable then, while the sun shines, to sit in the piazza or at the open window. A white frost ensues, followed by rain, and three or four days, in which a breeze down the Mississippi' predominates, and it is, of course, cold and uncomfortable, requiring closed rooms and a fire. Such, with a change of temperature, corresponding to latitude, is the most common alternation of weather, over the whole Vol. III.--No. 12. 3

valley to wit, two or three days of south west wind, followed by frost, rain, and two or three cold days. Every one must know, that there are exceptions. But all attentive observers have remarked, that this is the general order. Of course, our winters are a continued succession of freezes and thaws; and,in point of muddiness and unpleasantness of travelling, compare very nearly, in the middle regions of the valley, with the lower slope of the country between the Delaware and the Potomac.— Cincinnati, through the winter, in point of mud, is the exact counterpart of Washington-though the latter place has the most snow and cold weather.

From our having no mountains to change the direction, or impede the free course of the wind, our country is remarkable for feeling the influence of a full ventilation. The number of days, in which we have not a breeze, is very small. We have almost constantly a pleasant and cooling air through the summer. But high winds, as far as our knowledge extends, are much less general and frequent, than along the Atlantic shore. We have experienced nothing to compare with the Atlantic gale of the autumn of 1815. We were in Florida, during the gale of autumn, we think, 1823. It did not compare with the former, either in violence or duration.

It is true, we have had terrific instances of the force of the wind this spring, at Urbanna, and near Pittsburgh. But the prevalence was but for a few minutes; and the desolation was inflicted only on a surface of a few rods in width, and a few miles in length. The tracts of land, every where in the western country, known by the common name 'hurricane,' evince the same result;-narrow and limited extents, where every thing has been swept before the wind.

It would be a desirable point, to compare the mean annual temperature of different towns along the Atlantic shore, with places in corresponding latitudes in our valley. We are of the opinion, that our temperature is, on the whole, more equable and rather higher than theirs. We imagine, that, under the same circumstances, green peas are brought to the market at Cincinnati and Norfolk at the same time. From our having no mountains, and from the generally equable surface of the country, climate corresponds to latitude, probably, more accurately, than in the Atlantic country. Though, in ascending from Cincinnati to the table height between the waters of the Ohio and the lakes, in the same parallel, we find the same results, as in travelling elsewhere from the south toward the north.— There is a difference of a week in the forwardness of the seasons between these two points, where the latitude is the same.

The circumstance, that climate in this valley corresponds to latitude, affords facilities to note one of the most delightful physical pictures of nature, that can be contemplated, in ascending in a steam-boat from New Orleans to Cincinnati, or St. Louis. The boat departs, for example, on the first of April. At that time, green corn, new potatoes, squashes and cucumbers are abundant in the New Orleans market. The cane shows in luxuriant beauty. Nature in every aspect wears the livery of high summer. At Natchez, the trees are only in full leaf, and the foliage has a fragile and tender aspect, as if just formed. At the Walnut Hills, the trees are not yet in full leaf, and in ascending, every bend of the river shows, that you are outtravelling the onward course of spring, and you reach the

mouth of the Ohio, as the half formed leaves begin to tremble in the breeze. This living calendar, this graduated picture of the progress of spring, we have always found one of the most interesting circumstances of a steamboat passage up these rivers, in the month of April.

There is a great difference between the number of cloudy and fair days in the eastern and western divisions of this valley. Take the States of West Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, in the line westward from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati, and we are not sure, that there are not as many cloudy days, as in New England. Our autumns are evidently dryer; and September and October are, for the most part, cloudless and without rain. But we have much cloudy weather in November, December and March-with the true leaden sky, characteristic of the English banging month; and travelling, the while, is any thing, rather than pleasant. But we have never witnessed that long succession of gloomy and cloudy days, during which, along the Atlantic shore, the weather-cock seerns fixed to the northeast, and in which blue lips are the temporary heritage of even the young and beautiful. We have, however, it must be admitted, a sufficient number of gloomy days, from November to April, to try the patience and constitution of nervous invalids.

But as we recede west from this city, the sky constantly becomes more cloudless. We have, we are confident, one third more cloudy days, than the inhabitants of St. Louis. The balance, however, is as advantageous for us in summer, as unfavorable in winter. The recurrence of cloudy days tempers the heat of our summer days. The remarkably regular distribution of showers procures us a verdant turf, an excellence and abun dance of garden vegetables, and an ample supply of grazing and cultivated grass, which on the whole leaves the balance of climate in our favor. We have not seen in this region such long droughts, such a sear and scorched summer surface, as there; and we think, there is no part of America, where summer rains are more seasonable, and at more regular intervals, than in the middle regions of the Ohio valley.

The summers on the banks of the Ohio are certainly, at some periods, uncomfortably warm. The river travels along a deep valley; and the sun's rays are powerfully reflected from the shelving Ohio hills. But reach the summits of those hills, and travel, where the air is unobstructed, and one could scarcely ask a pleasanter temperature, than we experience, during the greater portion of the summer. The mornings after our frequent thunder showers, even in July and August, are often uncomfortably cool to an invalid-though to others elastic and refreshing. On the table summits of the hills above Cincinnati, the mercury in Fahrenheit gener ally stands some degrees lower through the summer, than in the city, which is built in a basin, surrounded by a circular range of hills, of a general elevation of three hundred feet.

Northerners, on their first arriving here, generally complain, that they feel more languid and unelastic, and less disposed to motion and exercise, than in their natal climate. In the same manner, the English complain of New-England, compared with Old England. In the same manner, we imagine, emigrants almost always find things wrong, and for the worse, when they shift their position. We suspect, however, that there may be something in the allegation, in regard to the western country. The south

wind prevails much more, than in the Atlantic country. It inspires a luxurious indolence and listlessness, less frequently felt at the north. If more adverse to labor and movement and vigor, it is, we conceive, take one constitution with another, more friendly to health and life; and certainly more congenial with enjoyment. Our mild autumnal days, fanned with the south-west, have a temperature of deliciousness, which words do not reach; and the sensation is as of bathing in the breeze.

In regard to the phenomena of storms and thunder; thunder storms are far more frequent in this valley, than in the country north of the Delaware, in the Atlantic regions. They commence, in Louisiana, early in February; and from that month to June, almost every night brings thunder. They commence here early in April. At St. Louis they come from the west and the north, and are borne down the Missouri and the upper Mississip pi. At New-Orleans they come down the Mississippi, and from the south-west. At Alexandria, on Red river, and at Cincinnati, they come alike from every point of the compass; and when a thunder cloud is seen forming, no calculation can be made from its direction, whether it will visit us or not. Thunder clouds rise more rapidly with us, than in NewEngland, and pass quicker away, watering less extents of country. The lightning is more frequently vivid. But we remember severer thunder storms and heavier thunder there, than we have witnessed in this valley; except, perhaps, once at St. Louis, once on the Missouri, and twice in the Pine woods of Louisiana. The unfrequency of recorded fatal accidents from lightning may have resulted from the sparseness of the population; and, until lately, the more unfrequent and uncertain communications, and the small number and remoteness from each other of the journals. We have known fatalities from this cause at St. Charles, St. Louis and New-Orleans, though not in numbers proportionate to the commonness of thunder showers. A number have occurred within the few past years in this city; and the greater number in a particular part of it, although most of the considerable houses have electric rods. But the Atlantic papers bring to us much greater numbers of recorded accidents of this kind, as it seems to us, in a given space, than are known to happen even in the thickly peopled regions of this vicinity.

Of other atmospheric phenomena, we seldom witness those extraordinary meteoric appearances, that so frequently eke out a paragraph in the Atlantic papers. We have never seen in a single instance any thing like Aurora Borealis. The face of the sky seems content with a uniform fashion of decoration, and less disposed to gratify the curiosity of star-gazers. With regard to the transparency of our atmosphere, during an unclouded sky, and the intensity of the cerulean, there seems to be a concurrent opinion, that it is comparatively great. It may result from our elevation above the level of the sea. It may be owing to the perfection of ventilation in our atmosphere. We believe the fact to be, that objects are seen here in a stronger light, and through a more perfect atmospheric transparency of medium. Our men of taste have supposed, that it is owing to this circumstance, that children seem to be more generally born with the aptitude to painting, and to those imitative arts, that depend upon vision, than in the Atlantic region. This valley, in the coming periods of greater refinement, will be the Italy of America, in regard to this science