eration, from the day that settlement actually commenced. There had been an unsurpassable basis on which to build a city, referring now, not to the soil on which buildings were erected, but having reference to the position, as commanding shipments from a broad area of agricultural lands, dotted with farms, villages and cities, stretching south and west from Chicago, and in the main, depending upon the city for supplies of all kinds, as well as expecting to find here a market for its variety and wealth of produce. From this point speedy transportation was possible to all parts of this continent and to the ports of Europe, even before railroads were multiplied as we now see them, hence the proverb, "all roads lead to Rome," which dealt with a time of universal conquest, during the centuries when the Roman legions were roadmakers as well as soldiers, came in the northwest to be applied to the rapidly expanding metropolis; and all roads really led to Chicago. The prairies were laughing with harvests in every section of the country, and all the produce, beyond what was demanded for home consumption, found its way to the city. Byron said: "One morning I awoke and found myself famous." That was the case many years ago with Chicago, but its fame will endure longer than that of the hero of Missolonghi, and the demon of Mrs. Stowe. The canal from Chicago to La Salle, the head of steamboat navigation on the Illinois river, which was opened for traffic in 1848, made the city the best outlet of the Mississippi valley; and the little bayou of Lake Michigan, on which Chicago was located, combined all the advantages that could be desired, for the site, upon which was to be transacted the transfer and exchange of commodities from all parts of the northwest, conveyed over the waters of the lake, or to be so conveyed, to distant ports in all parts of the world. Railroads came in due course to supplement the lake in building up the greatness of Chicago. The Chicago and Northwestern railroad came first, but then known as the Galena and Chicago Union, which was opened to the Fox river, a distance of forty miles, in 1850. The result of that trial announced that the multiplication of railroads would convert the whole of Illinois into a vast garden, sustaining an immense population, dependent upon the produce of her fruitful valleys. From that date, numerous competing companies have striven with

each other for the support which the merchants of Chicago can give or withhold, until it is hardly possible for men going from New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, or elsewhere on this continent, to India, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the islands of the Pacific, to avoid a visit to the metropolis of the northwest en route; and every man visiting this country from afar looks upon Chicago as one of the points of interest which must not be avoided; one of those places

"Which not to know, argues one's self unknown."

By and by, in a not very distant future, the whole passenger traffic, and very nearly all the more valuable merchandise, from Europe, intended for the other hemisphere, will be sent across this continent, coming by fast steamers over the Atlantic, traversing this vast area by the iron road, with a few days break of journey, to rest and see Chicago, then onward through Omaha to San Francisco, to cross the Pacific, by boats equal to the Cunard line, landing the passenger and his valuable effects in "Far Cathay," or upon the gold fields of Australia, with a saving of time equal to at least one month on every journey, and a gain of comfort, as well as of time, which cannot be assessed in coin. The future of Chicago will see wonders in this respect, and hundreds of thous ands of emigrants of the better class, making their way to the expensive lands of Australia, where one acre costs more than five in this country, and does not give better results, will conclude to rest here for the business of life, investing their capital in prosecuting our enterprises, and assisting to build up the greatest nation that has ever existed on this globe.

The lake navigation which is available for Chicago and for the cities and districts that find here their port of shipment, may be said to regulate railroad freights and travel over all parts of the continent, although such companies as the Michigan Central; the Chicago and Michigan Lake Shore; the Indianapolis, Peru and Chicago; the Lake Shore and Southern Michigan; the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago; the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis; the Louisville, New Albany and Chicago; the Chicago, Danville and Vincennes; the Illinois Central: the Chicago and Alton; the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy; the Chicago and

Iowa; the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific, and the Chicago and Northwestern, with their eight lines under one supreme direction, make their termini and stations at this point, connecting the city, by their several routes, with Pittsburgh, 468 miles away; with Indianapolis, at a distance of 161 miles; with. New York, 958 miles away on the Atlantic; with San Francisco, 2,407 miles away on the Pacific, and with Omaha, en route, at 493 miles distance. The lake and canal traffic of Chicago connects the city with every port on lake Michigan, and through the Welland canal, with all the world. With the Erie Canal and Hudson river at her service, she can send her produce and her people to New York, over a route which every traveler should desire to see. By the Illinois and Michigan canal, she has easy access to the Mississippi valley and along that course to the gulf of Mexico. Her steamboats and other vessels connect her with Canada in a commerce so large, that in the year 1873, there were 666 vessels, with a tonnage of 93,919 tons, constantly engaged in the traffic. The immense trade thus indicated, by quotations from her business intercourse with the Dominion of Canada alone, has been the growth of a very few years, as we have seen. In the year 1838, seventy-eight bushels of wheat were sent east from this city; in the year 1845, wheat and flour, equivalent to one million bushels of wheat, were shipped; and in the year when the canal before mentioned was opened, in 1848, three millions were sent. Railroads were advancing this way in 1852, and the results of such stimulation were seen in six millions of bushels of grain being exported, which had increased to twenty-one millions in 1856; and four years later, in 1860, the year preceding the outbreak of the great rebellion her shipments reached thirty-one millions. During the succeeding five years, the results in bushels annually shipped, increased from forty-six millions to fifty-six millions, reaching in 1866, the enormous aggregate of nearly sixty-five million five hundred thousand bushels. To continue the quotation of figures could serve no useful purpose; such growth as is here typified must be seen to be understood. In every branch of business the like evidence of expansion was visible. The trade in live stock increased in like proportion daily, and had done so ever since the year 1848. The receipts of cattle, which

had showed a gross total of 48,524 head in the year 1857, had, in the year 1870, increased to 532,964 head; and live hogs, which had been received in 1857, to the number of 200,000, had, in the year 1870, increased to 1,693,158, besides 260,000 or more slaughtered carcasses sent from the interior. The packing of hogs in Chicago, for the winter 1870-71, showed a total of 919,197 head against 500,066 head packed in Cincinnati. Other items of trade and commerce go on in the same gigantic proportion. In 1848, the lumber trade in this city showed a total of 60,000,000 feet; in 1870, the trade had increased to 1,000,000,000 feet, and since that date the increment has been enormous. The manufacturing interests in the city, in the year 1871, showed a capital invested of about $40,000,000, producing annually about $70,000,000, and supporting from its wages fund about sixty thous and souls; and since that date the vast rush of capital from all parts of the world to rebuild and to renew the life of Chicago has extended all such industries to an extent which forbids all attempts to estimate results. There was and there still is in this expanding city, an amount of intellectual development and art culture, which might hardly have been expected to coexist with so much attention to the "main chance," commercially and otherwise. Chicago has seen reduced to cinders, what might have been a mine of wealth, artistically considered, in many cities, but she is rebuilding her museums, extending her art galleries, and her annual exposition of industry shows her activity and her resources greater than at any former period in her history. The relics of her fire, which are now distributed over the world in almost every museum of curiosities, would, if they were collected in one spot, with brief addenda, showing from what cities, what kingdoms and what persons they had been brought together, supply the most singular and suggestive memoranda of the civilized and semicivilized world ever collected in one spot; and prove beyond question, that the fame of Chicago, even in her misfortune, is more extensively diffused than that of any other city, ancient or modern, on this globe. There was a time when it was truthfully said that Chicago was a good place in which to make money but not a good place in which to spend it; not because it resembled the modern representative of the ancient