Now everything is changed as by some magic touch. The growth of the city has always been solid, unspeculative, conservative in its business methods, with some persistence of the old French influence, only gradually parting from its ancient traditions, preserving always something of the aristocratic flavor of “old families,” accounted “slow” in the impatience of youth. But it has burst its old bounds, and grown with a rapidity that would be marvellous in any other country. The levee is comparatively deserted, although the trade on the lower river is actually very large. The traveller who enters the city from the east passes over the St. Louis Bridge, a magnificent structure and one of the engineering wonders of the modern world, plunges into a tunnel under the business portion of the old city, and emerges into a valley covered with a net-work of railway-tracks, and occupied by apparently interminable lines of passenger coaches and freight cars, out of the confusion of which he makes his way with difficulty to a carriage, impressed at once by the enormous railway traffic of the city. This is the site of the proposed Union Depot, which waits upon the halting action of the Missouri Pacific system. The eastern outlet for all this growing traffic is over the two tracks of the bridge; these are entirely inadequate, and during a portion of the year there is a serious blockade of freight. A second bridge over the Mississippi is already a necessity to the commerce of the city, and is certain to be built within a few years.