some accounts this proximity to the river may be convenient; but for the sake of a broad arena for commerce; for the sake of a fresh and salubrious circulation of air from the water; for the sake of scenic beauty, or a noble promenade for pleasure, there should have been no encroachment upon the precincts {123} of the "eternal river." In view of the miserable _plan_ of St. Louis, if it may claim anything of the kind, and the irregular manner and singular taste with which it has been built, the regret has more than once been expressed, that, like Detroit,[106] a conflagration had not swept it in its earlier days, and given place to an arrangement at once more consistent with elegance and convenience. From the river bank to the elevated ground sweeping off in the rear of the city to the west is a distance of several hundred yards, and the height above the level of the water cannot be far from an hundred feet. The ascent is easy, however, and a noble view is obtained, from the cupola of the courthouse on its summit, of the Mississippi and the city below, of the broad American Bottom, with its bluffs in the distance, and a beautiful extent of natural scenery in the rear. Along the brow of this eminence once stood a line of military works, erected for the defence of the old town in 1780 by Don Francois de Cruzat, lieutenant governor "_de la partie occidentale des Illinois_," as the ancient chronicles style the region west of the Mississippi.[107] These fortifications consisted of several circular towers of stone, forty feet in diameter and half as many in altitude, planted at intervals in a line of stoccade, besides a small fort, embracing four demilunes and a parapet of mason-work. For many years these old works were in a dismantled and deserted state, excepting the fort, in one building of which was held {124} the court, and another superseded the necessity of a prison. Almost every vestige is now swept away. The great earthquakes of 1811 essentially assisted in toppling the old ruins to the ground. The whole city was powerfully shaken, and has since been subject to occasional shocks.[108]