State institutions are the Insane Hospital, containing fifteen hundred patients; Institute for the Education of the Blind, and a similar institution for deaf-mutes. The city has a large and handsomely equipped hospital, and there are two others well appointed. A new hotel building will this year take the place of the Bates House, at a cost of more than $2,000,000. The city is adorned with impressive statues of her favorite sons: Morton, Whitcomb, William Henry Harrison, and George Rogers Clark in Monument Place, Vice-President Colfax in University Park, and Vice-President Hendricks in the State House grounds. To these will be added in 1901 one of General Henry W. Lawton, a native Hoosier, who fell in battle in the Philippines, one of General Pleasant A. Hackleman, the only general officer from Indiana killed in the Civil War, and one sometime, of course, of the late ex-President Harrison. Except Philadelphia, it is doubtful if there is a city in the Union where a greater percentage of the wage-earners possess their own homes. Labor strikes or disturbances are here almost unknown, and the conditions of peace and prosperity are assured for many years to come. [Illustration] [Illustration] VINCENNES THE KEY TO THE NORTHWEST BY WILLIAM HENRY SMITH "On the banks of the Wabash" is one of the greater historic sites of the great Northwest. Of no great importance, at least commercially, to-day, it was once the seat of the empire of France in the Ohio Valley, and long before, possibly when Moses was leading his people out of bondage, the seat of an empire established by a race we now call prehistoric. When the Mound Builders came, whence they came, when they went away, or whither, will, in all probability never be determined; but they were surely here, and from the works they left behind, must have been here for centuries, and must have numbered millions. The site of their capital is not known, but if it was not on the spot where Vincennes now stands, certainly one of the most populous cities of their empire did stand here. In the immediate vicinity are several large mounds, and around them are hundreds of smaller mounds.