314
��Town and City Histories.
��[May,
��history was found in a pamphlet on the Manufacturing Interests of the City of Buffalo, published in 1866. In it were historical sketches, covering about twenty-five pages, — verbose, with little meat, written in the flowery style so dear to the heart of the American editor or " Honorable " when extolling the virtues of his constituency. Tur- ner's History of the Holland Purchase, published in 1S49, and containing six hundred and sixty -six pages, would have been more useful, had it not been composed for the greater part of the biographies of insignificant pioneers, and had not the rest related in the main to the early history of the section. A book promising much on the outside was Hotchkin's History of Western New York. An examination of the title-page, however, dampened our expectations, for there was added the rest of the title, namely, "And of the Rise, Progress, and Present State of the Presbyterian Church." The book proved indeed a delusion and a snare, for of its six hundred pages more than nine tenths pertained to church affairs, — were part and parcel of the cahiers of the clergy. As for the magazine articles on Buffalo, they are few and, from the historical point of view, insignificant.
Of far more interest than the histo- ries of either Cleveland or Buffalo, though perhaps no more nnportant, is that of their nearest common neighbor of equal rank, — Pittsburgh. In very many respects this is one of the most interesting cities in the Union, which is mostly due to the fact that it has such a remarkable location, and that its topography is picturesquely unique. Here we have the strange combination of the blackest, smuttiest, dirtiest hole in the United States, — at night, as Par- ton said : " All hell with the lid taken
��off," — with surroundings half rural, half urban, which for loveliness can scarcely be rivaled by any other city in the land. Sir Henry Holland, who was of the Prince of Wales's suite, when he visited Pittsburgh, remarked to one of the committee of reception that he had, in 1845, spent a week in an equestrian exploration of the suburbs of Pittsburgh ; that he had traveled through all the degrees of the earth's longitude, and had not elsewhere found any scenery so diversified, picturesque, and beautiful as that around Pittsburgh. He likened it to a vast panorama, from which, as he rode along, the curtain was dropping behind and rising before him, revealing new beauties continually, " If the business portion of Pittsburgh is a city, half enchanted, of fire and smoke, inhabited by demons playing with fire, the surrounding portion is also under enchantment, of a different kind, and smiles a land of beauty, brightness, and quiet. The one section might be a picture by Tintoretto, and the other by Claude Lorraine,"
On the twenty-fourth of November, 1753, no human habitation stood on the peninsula between the Alleghany and Monongahela Rivers. On that day Washington recorded in his journal : " I think it extremely well situated for a fort, as it has absolute command of both rivers," In the following spring the English began the erection of a stockade here, which, on the twenty-fourth of April, was surren- dered to the French under Captain Contrecceur who at once proceeded to the erection of Fort Du Quesne,
Round this name centres a wealth of incident, romance, and history, but no one has risen to do it justice, Braddock's ill-starred expedition was followed by the abandonment of the
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