ornate in their design. The Maumee river is a wide estuary which affords one of the best harbors on the shores of the lake, but the intricacy of the passage is such, that a stranger unacquainted with the buoys, which warn the initiated how to steer, would almost inevitably find his vessel aground, just when he seemed to be in the act of realizing the desired haven. What was once known as "Middle Ground," a low island which was generally awash at high tide, has been reclaimed to the extent of about fifty acres, and is now used for the storage of freights and for other similar purposes. Several elevators have been erected here, and railroad depots are here concentrated in positions which facilitate connection between the steamers on the lake and the iron roads which traverse terra firma.

The extent of the grain trade in Toledo can be best understood from the fact that there are nine elevators in the city, the least of which has a storage capacity of one hundred and twenty-five thousand bushels. The canal system, of which Toledo is the outlet, is very extensive, probably the largest on this continent. The Toledo and Wabash canal runs through the White river and Wabash valleys until it joins the Ohio river at Evansville, Ind., and about fifty miles from Toledo, at Defiance, the canal just named intersects the Miami canal, which is cut through the valley of the Great Miami river, to join the Ohio river at Cincinnati. The lines of traffic thus prepared aggregate more than seven hundred miles, through some of the finest agricultural land in the world, and two states are thus enabled to convey their produce to Toledo at a minimum of cost. Lake steamers and boats of various tonnage continue the traffic, distributing the cereals and other products in the eastern ports, and bringing back to Toledo, as the headquarters of the wide range of country named, the luxuries and necessaries required by the agriculturists and traders, whose welfare is bound up in these argosies. In the old civilizations, vast bodies of water were barriers to the race; they are now the highways of the foremost nations. Toledo is for that reason. the nearest neighbor to many of the ports, which would have been in the days of canoe navigation, or still more in the days of the wicker work, skin covered coracle, at a distance impossible to be traversed. The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad

joins the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana divisions at Toledo, and they are here also the termini of the Toledo, Wabash, and Western Railroad; the Toledo and Detroit, and the Dayton and Michigan lines. There are numerous manufactories established in Toledo, such as tobacco factories, manufactories of edge tools, saws, files, sashes, doors, blinds, steam boilers and engines, agricultural implements, carriages, and a vast variety of other industries, which defy enumeration. There are numerous banks in the city, three savings banks, four national banks, and a number of private institutions. The evidences of growth, presented by Toledo, meet the observer at every step. The city was incorporated in the year 1836, and three years later the population exceeded one thousand; in the year 1840, the residents numbered one thousand three hundred; in 1850, three thousand eight hundred; in 1860, thirteen thousand eight hundred, and in 1870, thirty-one thousand six hundred; a rate of progression seldom equalled. There are sixteen newspapers published in Toledo, all of them well worthy of support, and the dailies are known for their racy compositions all over the northwest.

SANDUSKY. This city is the seat of Erie county, Ohio, and a port of entry, standing on the margin of Sandusky bay, Lake Erie. The ground on which Sandusky city stands, rises as it recedes from the water line, sloping south from the bay, and the buildings on the higher grounds have a fine view of the lake. The houses generally have a fine appearance, having been constructed from the beds of limestone which underlie the city, and which afford a supply at once cheap, immediately available and exhaustless. The position of Sandusky enables the merchants of that city to command the best facilities for commerce with all the leading towns and ports opening on the lake, and its trade is extensive and profitable. Inland the business of Sandusky is also considerable, as it is the northern terminus of the Cincinnati, Sandusky and Cleveland Railroad, and contains also termini of the Lake Erie division of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and of the Sandusky line of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad. There are in Sandusky seven newspapers published, mostly well supported; there are many churches, some of them de

cidedly handsome edifices; the streets are lined with shade trees; a handsome square occupies the centre of the city, and the manufactures, which employ the population in addition to the large commercial interests, are rapidly increasing. The city is about five miles from Lake Erie, its population in the year 1860, was a little over eight thousand, and in the next decade it had increased to thirteen thousand. It is now estimated at about eighteen thousand.

SPRINGFIELD.-Springfield is the county seat of Clark county, Ohio, and it is built at the confluence of Mad river and Lagonda creek, about forty-three miles from Columbus. It would be diffi cult to imagine a site better adapted for a great inland city, than that on which Springfield rises, and the city itself is very fine, many of the edifices seeming to have been suggested by the exceptional loveliness of the situation in which they are placed. The Lutheran college of Wittenberg is located near this city, and the hardy Teutons avail themselves of its advantages as though the spirit of the great monk reformer, as well as his name, attached to them and their institution. The devil, at whose head brave Martin Luther flung his inkstand, was beyond doubt the demon of ignorant superstition, whose ghost he exorcised when making his free and able translation of the Bible into the vernacular for his countrymen, and his followers could hardly render a more essential service to his name than by associating his reputation with the enlargement and multiplication of their means for training, which will, better than all devices, lift them high and dry beyond the reach of the old sea of darkness. The college is well conducted, and its curriculum is moderately high. The two streams on which the city is built, Lagonda creek and Mad river, afford excellent water powers for driving machinery, and very many sites have been improved by the establishment of flouring mills, factories for the production of agricultural implements, water wheels, and other mechanical contrivances, the manufacture of which affords employment to a large section of the people. Commerce, as well as manufactures, flourishes in this favored spot, as the town has been made the terminus of some lines of road, and a station on others, which exercise great influences in its favor.