on.
I entered into conversation with them: they complained bitterly of the
times, saying that their pay was not 2 shillings 6 pence of our money
per day, and that they could not live upon it. This was true, but the
distress had been communicated to all parts, and they were fortunate in
finding work at all, as most of the public works had been discontinued.
I mentioned to them that the price of labour in Ohio, Illinois, and the
West, was said to be two dollars a-day, and asked them, why they did not
go there? They replied, that such were the price quoted, to induce
people to go, but that they never could find it when they arrived; that
the clearing of new lands was attended with ague and fever; and that if
once down with these diseases there was no one to help them to rise
again. I looked for the pig, and there he was, sure enough, under the
bed.

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER TEN.

Troy, like a modern academy, is classical, as well as commercial, having
Mount Olympus on one side, and Mount Ida in its rear. The panorama from
the summit of the latter is splendid. A few years back a portion of
Mount Ida made a slip, and the avalanche destroyed several cottages and
five or six individuals. The avalanche took place on a dark night and
in a heavy snow storm. Two brick kilns were lighted at the time, and,
as the mountain swept them away, the blaze of the disturbed fires called
out the fire engines, otherwise more lives would have been lost.
Houses, stables, and sheds, were all hurled away together. Horses,
children, and women, rolled together in confusion. One child had a very
strange escape. It had been forced out of its bed, and was found on the
top of a huge mass of clay, weighing forty or fifty tons; he was crying,
and asking who had put him there. Had all the inhabitants of the
cottages been within, at least forty must have perished; but
notwithstanding the severity of the weather, the day being Sunday, they
had all gone to evening meeting, and thus, being good Christians, they
were for once rewarded for it on this side of the grave.

As I surveyed the busy scene below me, the gentleman who accompanied me
to the summit of the mountain, informed me that forty-three years ago
his father was the first settler, and that then there was but his one
hut in the place where now stood the splendid town.

But signs of the times were manifest here also. Commerce had stopped
for the present, and a long line of canal boats wa