Several respectable mercantile houses are established here, and much business is done on commission also. The site of the town is beautifully situated on an eminence, commanding an extensive view of the surrounding country and Tennessee River, from which it is three-quarters of a mile distant. It has two springs of excellent and never failing water. Florence has communication by water with Mississippi, Missouri, Louisiana, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, West Pennsylvania, West Virginia and East Tennessee, and very shortly will communicate with the Eastern States, through the great canal. The great military road that leads from Nashville to New Orleans, by way of Lake Ponchartrain, passes through this town, a number of people who travel through it, and the numerous droves of horses from the lower country, for market, are incredible. Florence contains one printing press, and publishes a paper weekly called the Florence Gazette; it is ably patronized, and edited by one of our first men, and said to be the best paper in the State. Florence is inhabited by people from almost all parts of Europe and the United States; here are English, Irish, Welsh, Scotch, French, Dutch, Germans and Grecians. The first Greek I ever saw was in this town. I conversed with him on the subject of his country, but found him grossly ignorant. He butchers for the town, and has taken to his arms a mullatto woman for a wife. He very often takes an airing on horseback of a Sunday afternoon, with his wife, riding by his side, and both arrayed in shining costumes. The river at Florence is upwards of five hundred yards wide; it is ferried in a large boat worked by four horses, and crosses in a few minutes. There are two large and well kept taverns in Florence, and several doggeries. A doggery is a place where spiritous liquors are sold; and where men get drunk, quarrel and fight, as often as they choose, but where there is nothing to eat for man or beast. Did you ever hear anything better named. “I swear!” said a Yankee pedler, one day, with both his eyes bunged up, “that are doggery be rightly named. Never seed the like on’t. If I get to hum agin it’l be a nice man’l catch me in these here parts. Awfullest place one could be at.” It appeared the inmates of the doggery enticed him under pretense of buying his wares, and forced him to drink; and then forced him to fight; but the poor little Yankee was sadly beaten. Not content with blackening his eyes, they overturned his tin cart, and scattered his tins to the forewinds, frightened his horse and tormented his very soul out about lasses, etc. He was a laughable object, but to hear his dialect in laying off the law, was a complete farce, particularly when Pat came to invite him into the same doggery to drink friends: “I ben’t a dog to go into that are dog house.”