Sixty-three miles down the Ohio river, on its left bank, is Wheeling, the largest city in West Virginia. The business streets lie close to the Ohio, and the houses extend up the steep slope to the east, while over a high ridge comes the old National Road from the valley of Wheeling creek. Wheeling was the goal of many heavily laden wagons in the days of the pike, and because of the river and many railroads has a large trade to-day. It was settled in 1770 and is one of the oldest towns on the river. On the north bank of the great stream, in the southwest corner of Ohio, is the largest city on the river. As late as 1900 Cincinnati had a few thousand more people than Pittsburg, but a “greater Cincinnati” would not be so large as a “greater Pittsburg.” In Cincinnati, as in Pittsburg, men do business on the low grounds by the river, where offices and mills and shops crowd one another, and the smoke of soft coal hangs as a cloud above. Business hours over, the well-to-do merchants climb out of the grimy town to the top of the bluffs, and there find, in a clearer air and along open and beautiful avenues, their comfortable homes. Down town the turbulent river sometimes comes up forty or fifty feet beyond its usual level and makes trouble in the busy city, but Mt. Auburn and Walnut Hills are disturbed neither by smoke nor by floods. Rivers do not often flow in straight lines, and it is very common for them to change their courses along their flood plains. This habit of shifting belongs alike to great and small streams, whether the Mississippi or the brook in the meadow. The Ohio, like other rivers, often writes the letter S, and in so doing at this point has swung off from its old north bank, leaving a low plain with room enough for a hundred thousand people to carry on their business. There is always some good reason which has led to the settlement and growth of a town, and the history of Cincinnati shows no exception. It was in early winter, 1788, when cakes of ice were already floating on the river, that a number of men sailing downstream stopped here and began a settlement. The place was not readily named. It is said that the matter was left to a frontier schoolmaster, and he did not lose the chance to show how much he knew. He saw that the Licking river comes into the Ohio on the Kentucky side just opposite. So he set down an L. He next remembered an ancient word _os_, meaning “mouth,” and he put that down. Then he considered that _anti_ means “opposite” and that _ville_ means “town.” So he wrote the whole name,--_L-os-anti-ville_,--_Losantiville_,--“the town opposite the mouth of Licking.”