The second city in the United States, with a population approximating two millions, Chicago, the metropolis of the prairies, seems destined for unlimited growth. It has absorbed all the outlying towns, and now embraces nearly two hundred square miles. It has a water-front on Lake Michigan of twenty-six miles, and its trade constantly grows. It pushes ahead with boundless energy, attracting the shrewdest men of the West to take part in its vast and profitable enterprises, and is in such a complete manner the depot and storehouse for the products and supplies of goods for the enormous prairie region around it, and for the entire Northwest, and the country out to the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Ocean, that other Western cities cannot displace or even hope to rival it. Yet it is a youthful giant, of quick and marvellous development, but few of its leading spirits having been born within its limits, nearly all being attracted thither by its paramount advantages. The prominent characteristics of Chicago are an overhanging pall of smoke; streets crowded with quick-moving, busy people; a vast aggregation of railways, vessels, elevators and traffic of all kinds; a polyglot population drawn from almost all races; and an earnest devotion to the almighty dollar. Its name came from the river, and is of Indian origin, regarded as probably a corruption of "Cheecagua," the title of a dynasty of chiefs who controlled the country west and south of Lake Michigan. This also was a word applied in the Indian dialect to the wild onion growing luxuriantly on the banks of the river, and they gave a similar name to the thunder which they believed the voice of the Great Spirit, and to the odorous animal abounding in the neighborhood that the white man knew as the "polecat." These were rather incongruous uses for the same word, but the suggestion has been made that all can be harmonized if Chicago is interpreted as meaning "strong," the Indians, being poorly supplied with words, usually selecting the most prominent attribute in giving names. All these things are in one way or another "strong," and it is evident that prodigious strength exists in Chicago.