Flint's Letters from America, 1818-1820Flint, James, active 19th century
History
Flint's Letters from America, 1818-1820
Flint, James, active 19th century
Ohio River Valley -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
Cincinnati has a city court, occasional sittings of the Supreme and
Federal Courts, and a court of common pleas; a museum of natural
history; a library; a reading room; a theatre; three newspapers; five
banks; an insurance company; three fire engines; a humane society
for the resuscitation of persons submersed in water; an agricultural
society; two Bible societies; two tract societies, (one of them for
distributing Bibles and tracts amongst boatmen on the river;) four
Sunday school societies; and three charitable societies. There are
twenty-five lawyers and twenty-two doctors in town.
Of four provincial banks in town, the paper of three is reduced to
about one-third part of the specie sums on the face of their notes,
and the people are making a brisk run on the fourth. This paper shop
is not paying in specie, but merely giving _money like its own_. When
the barter can be no longer continued, the house must be shut, and the
holders of the _pictures_ find them of no value.
The laws of the country, as formerly explained to you, give no redress.
The balance of trade in favour of England and India, together with the
exorbitant premiums to be paid in exchanging bad money for specie, or
bills of the United States Bank, are quite unfavourable to commerce
with foreign countries. The debts due to the merchants of England, and
to those in the Eastern States, might give little {215} annoyance, if
creditors were indulgent as to the past, and as liberal as usual in
future transactions. Property laws give full security in the meantime,
and the bankrupt laws of some States form a complete protection against
foreign claims. It is only to be feared, that foreign merchants will
not be sufficiently accommodating hereafter. The increasing numbers of
their agents in the seaports of America, augur no good to enterprizing
traders in this part.
The climate of this country, like that of other parts of North America,
is subject to extremes of heat and cold. We experience something like
the summer of tropical regions; the winter of Russia; the spring of
England; and the autumn of Egypt. The range of the thermometer is
well exemplified by a compilation from the register kept by Colonel
Mansfield, near Cincinnati, for eight years; 1806 and 1813 included.
_Lowest_ _Highest_ _Range_
1806, 9° 94 85°
1807, 11° below zero, 95 106
1808, 4 do. 98 102
1809, 2 do. 94 96
1810, 7 do. 91 98
1811, 8 do. 96 104
1812, 5 do. 96 101
1813, 10 do. 97 107
Mean range nearly 100°.
The greatest range known at Cincinnati is 116°. At Salem, in
Massachussets, a range of 100° was long ago deducted from observations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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