connections gave it renewed impetus; natural gas used as a manufacturing fuel was a wonderful stimulant; and it now conducts an enormous trade with all parts of the country, and is the seat of the greatest iron, steel and glass industries in America. Few views are more striking than that given from the high hills overlooking Pittsburg. Rising steeply, almost from the water's edge, on the southern bank of the Monongahela River, is Mount Washington, three hundred and fifty feet high. Inclined-plane railways are constructed up the face of this hill, and mounting to the top, there is a superb view over the town. The Allegheny River comes from the northeast and the Monongahela from the southeast, through deep and winding gorges cut into the rolling tableland, and uniting form the Ohio, flowing away to the northwest also through a deep gorge, although its bordering ridges of hills are more widely separated. Pittsburg stands upon the low flat surface of the peninsula, above the junction of the rivers, which has some elongated ridgy hills, stretching eastward through the centre. Its situation and appearance have thus not inaptly been compared to a flatiron, the point being at the head of the Ohio, and these ridgy hills making the handle. The city has overflowed into extensive suburbs across both rivers, the aggregate population being more than a half-million. Numerous bridges span the rivers, the narrow shores between the steep hills bearing a mixed maze of railways and factories. Countless chimney-smokes and steam-jets come up in all directions, overhanging the town like a pall; and so impressive is the obscuration, combined with the lurid glare of furnaces and the weird white gleam of electric lights, that the elevated view down into Pittsburg seems a veritable pandemonium. So startling is it on a lowering day that it has been pointedly described by one who thus for the first time looked upon the "Smoky City," far down in its deep basin among the high hills, as appearing like "Hell with the lid off." There are plenty of railways in the scene, and scores of odd-looking, stumpy-prowed little steamboats built high above the water, having huge stern-wheels to drive them, with their noses thrust up on the sloping levee along the river bank, whereon is piled the cargoes, chiefly of iron products. The swift current turns all the sterns down stream, so that they lie diagonally towards the shore. Fleets of flat, shallow coal barges are moored along, waiting to be made up into tows for their journey down the Ohio, as Pittsburg has an extensive river trade, covering over twenty thousand miles of Western waters. Out of the weird and animated scene there come all sorts of busy noises, forges and trip-hammers pounding, steam hissing, railroad trains running, whistles screeching, locomotives puffing, bells ringing, so that with the flame jets rising, and the smokes of all colors blowing about, there is got a