Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
Thus we come to Cleveland, the second city in Ohio, having four
hundred thousand people, and extensive manufacturing industries. It is
the capital of the "Western Reserve" and the chief city of Northern
Ohio, its commanding position upon a high bluff, falling off
precipitously to the edge of the water, giving it the most attractive
situation on the shore of Lake Erie. Shade trees embower it, including
many elms planted by the early settlers, who learned to love them in
New England, and hence it delights in the popular title of the "Forest
City." Were not the streets so wide, the profusion of foliage might
make Cleveland seem like a town in the woods. The little Cuyahoga
River, its name meaning "the crooked stream," flows with wayward
course down a deeply washed and winding ravine, making a valley in the
centre of the city, known as "the Flats," and this, with the tributary
ravines of some smaller streams, is packed with factories and
foundries, oil refineries and lumber mills, their chimneys keeping the
business section constantly under a cloud of smoke. Railways run in
all directions over these flats and through the ravines, while, high
above, the city has built a stone viaduct nearly a half-mile long,
crossing the valley. Here are the great works of the Standard Oil
Company, controlling that trade, and several of the petroleum magnates
have their palaces in the city.
Old Moses Cleaveland, a shrewd but unsatisfied Puritan of the town of
Windham, Connecticut, became the agent of the Connecticut Lead
Company, who brought out the first colony in 1796 that landed at
Conneaut. They explored the lake shore, and selecting as a good
location the mouth of Cuyahoga River, Moses wrote back to his former
home that they had found a spot "on the bank of Lake Erie which was
called by my name, and I believe the child is now born that may live
to see that place as large as old Windham." In little over a century
the town has grown far beyond his wildest dreams, although it did not
begin to expand until the era of canals and railways, and it was not
so long ago that the people in grateful memory erected a bronze statue
of the founder. One of the local antiquaries, delving into the
records, has found why various original settlers made their homes at
Cleveland. He learned that "one man, on his way farther West, was laid
up with the ague and had to stop; another ran out of money and could
get no farther; another had been to St. Louis and wanted to get back
home, but saw a chance to make money in ferrying people across the
river; another had $200 over, and started a bank; while yet another
thought he could make a living by manufacturing ox-yokes, and he
stayed." This earnest investigator continues: "A man with an
agricultural eye would look at the soil and kick his toe into it, and
then would shake his head and declare that it would not grow white
beans--but he knew not what this soil would bring forth; his hope and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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