During the business season, which continues from the first of November to July, the levee, for an extent of five miles, is crowded with vessels of all sizes, but more especially ships, from every part of the world--with hundreds of immense floating castles and palaces, called steamboats; and barges and flat-boats innumerable. No place can present a more busy, bustling scene. The loading and unloading of vessels and steamboats--the transportation, by some three thousand drays, of cotton, sugar, tobacco, and the various and extensive produce of the great west, strikes the stranger with wonder and admiration. The levee and piers that range along the whole length of the city, extending back on an average of some two hundred feet, are continually covered with moving merchandise. This was once a pleasant promenade, where the citizen enjoyed his delightful morning and evening walk; but now there is scarcely room, amid hogsheads, bales and boxes, for the business man to crowd along, without a sharp look out for his personal safety. The position of New Orleans, as a vast commercial emporium, is unrivalled--as will be seen by a single glance at the map of the United States. As the depot of the west, and the half-way-house of foreign trade, it is almost impossible to anticipate its future magnitude. Take a view, for instance, of the immense regions known under the name of the Mississippi valley. Its boundaries on the west are the Rocky Mountains, and Mexico; on the south, the Gulf of Mexico; on the east the Alleghany mountains; and, on the north, the lakes and the British possessions. It contains nearly as many square miles, and more tillable ground, than all continental Europe, and, if peopled as densely as England, would sustain a population of five hundred millions--more than half of the present inhabitants of the earth. Its surface is generally cultivable, and its soil rich, with a climate varying to suit all products, for home consumption or a foreign market. The Mississippi is navigable twenty one hundred miles--passing a small portage, three thousand may be achieved. It embraces the productions of many climates, and a mining country abounding in coal, lead, iron and copper ore, all found in veins of wonderful richness. The Missouri stretches thirty nine hundred miles to the Great Falls, among the Flat Foot Indians, and five thousand from New Orleans. The Yellow Stone, navigable for eleven hundred miles, the Platte for sixteen hundred, and the Kanzas for twelve hundred, are only tributaries to the latter river. The Ohio is two thousand miles to Pittsburgh, receiving into her bosom from numerous streams, the products of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Western Virginia, Tennessee, Indiana and Illinois. The Arkansas, Big Black, Yazoo, Red River, and many others, all pouring their wealth into the main artery, the Mississippi, upon whose mighty current it floats down to the grand reservoir, New Orleans.