ce, is wanting. I have seen more
beautiful women in one night, in a public assembly in America, than
during the seven months I have been on the Continent. Some of the young
Jewesses, in Frankfort, are considered handsome, but their features soon
become too strongly marked. In a public walk the number of positively
ugly faces is really astonishing.

About ten o'clock that night, I heard a noise of persons running in the
street, and going to the Romerberg, found the water had risen, all at
once, much higher, and was still rapidly increasing. People were setting
up torches and lengthening the rafts, which had been already formed. The
lower part of the city was a real Venice--the streets were full of boats
and people could even row about in their own houses; though it was not
quite so bad as the flood in Georgia, where they went _up stairs to bed_
in boats! I went to the bridge. Persons were calling around--"The water!
the water! it rises continually!" The river rushed through the arches,
foaming and dashing with a noise like thunder, and the red light of the
torches along the shore cost a flickering glare on the troubled waves.
It was then twenty-one feet above its usual level. Men were busy all
around, carrying boats and ladders to the places most threatened, or
emptying cellars into which it was penetrating. The sudden swelling was
occasioned by the coming down of the floods from the mountains of
Spessart.

Part of the upper quay cracked next morning and threatened to fall in,
and one of the projecting piers of the bridge sunk away from the main
body three or four inches. In Sachsenhausen the desolation occasioned by
the flood is absolutely frightful; several houses have fallen into total
ruin. All business was stopped for the day; the Exchange was even shut
up. As the city depends almost entirely on pumps for its supply of
water, and these were filled with the flood, we have been drinking the
muddy current of the Main ever since. The damage to goods is very great.
The fair was stopped at once, and the loss in this respect alone, must
be several millions of florins. The water began to fall on the 1st, and
has now sunk about ten feet, so that most of the houses are again
released, though in a bad condition.

Yesterday afternoon, as I was sitting in my room, writing, I heard all
at once an explosion like a cannon in the street, followed by loud and
continued screams. Looking out the window, I saw the people rushing by
w