First and foremost among these was John J. Audubon who came in 1809, previous to the opening of navigation by steamboat. Reports of the happy wilds of Kentucky had reached him in his Pennsylvania home subsequent to his return from Paris, where he had been sojourning as an art student. His passion for ornithology drove him to the West, and the hour he left Pittsburg marked the beginning of a new era in his wonderful career as a naturalist. The Ohio charmed him, and, locating at Louisville, he collected specimens of every bird that could be found in forest or field. In 1810, Alexander Wilson, the distinguished Scotch-American ornithologist, traversed the Ohio and Mississippi valleys on a mission similar to Audubon’s. Stopping for a season at the Falls city he chanced to become acquainted with Audubon, and in the course of conversation the two exchanged ideas and were astonished to discover that they were pursuing the same line of work. This meeting was memorable, for it awakened Audubon to a full realization of his genius and helped Wilson unspeakably. Indeed, so far-reaching were its results that in order to appreciate them one has first to familiarize himself with some of the subtlest tendencies and movements of the nineteenth century. [Illustration: THE CITY HALL.] When steamboat navigation began on the Ohio (1812-16) the rush of emigration commenced anew. Thirty-nine English families sent Henry Bradshaw Fearon over in 1816 to make a careful study of places and people in the Ohio Valley. He was an intelligent, practical observer, and his descriptions of the inhabitants and social conditions of Louisville are strikingly suggestive of Dickens. There is a vein of sarcasm in his observations, due to the fact that he has little sympathy with the commercial ambition that seemed to possess the people to the exclusion of higher pursuits. Every one seemed self-absorbed and bent on money-making; even the best hotels were conducted on the crowding policy. The people had unparalleled appetites, according to Mr. Fearon, for his description of a tavern meal in Louisville is similar to Dickens’s report of the fast-eating Americans he met while among us.