travel between Mobile and New Orleans,
across the Lake, consisted of one or two schooners, as regular weekly
packets, plying between the two cities. It was about this time that
the tide of emigration which had peopled the West, and the rapid
increase of production, was stimulating the commerce of New Orleans.
It was obeying the impulse, and increasing in equal ratio its
population. This commerce was chiefly conducted by Americans, and most
of these were of recent establishment in the city. That portion of the
city above Canal Street, and then known as the Faubourg St. Mary, was
little better than a marsh in its greater portion. Along the river and
Canal Street, there was something of a city appearance, in the
improvements and business, where there were buildings. In every other
part there were shanties, and these were filled with a most miserable
population.

About this time, too, steamboats were accumulating upon the Western
waters--a new necessity induced by the increase of travel and
commerce--affording facilities to the growing population and
increasing production of the vast regions developing under the energy
of enterprise upon the Mississippi and her numerous great tributaries.
It seemed that at this juncture the whole world was moved by a new
impulse. The difficulties of navigating the Mississippi River had been
overcome, and the consequences of this new triumph of science and
man's ingenuity were beginning to assume a more vigorous growth.

The Ohio and its tributaries were peopling with a hardy and
industrious race; the Missouri, Arkansas, and Red rivers, too, were
filling with a population which was sweeping away the great wild
forests, and fields of teeming production were smiling in their stead.
New Orleans was the market-point for all that was, and all that was to
be, the growth of these almost illimitable regions. It was, as it ever
is, the exigencies of man answered by the inspirations of God. The
necessities of this extending population along the great rivers
demanded means of transportation. These means were to be devised, by
whom? The genius of Fulton was inspired, and the steamboat sprang into
existence. The necessity existed no longer, and the flood of
population poured in and subdued the earth to man's will, to man's
wants. Over the hills and valleys, far away it went, crowding back the
savage, demanding and taking for civilized uses his domain of
wilderness, and creating new necessities--and aga