his seemed on the increase. The
improvements made in the Faubourg were suggested by the necessities of
commerce, and this naturally went to these. There was a superior
enterprise in the American merchant, there was greater liberality in
his dealings: he granted hazardous accommodations to trade, and made
greater efforts to secure it. This had the effect of securing the
rapidly increasing commerce of the city to the American merchants, and
of course was promoting the settlement and improvement of the Faubourg
St. Mary. It excited, too, more and more the antipathies of the
ancient population. These, controlling the city government constantly
in a most envious spirit, refused to extend the public improvements of
the Faubourg.

There was not, forty years ago, or in 1828, a paving-stone above Canal
Street, nor could any necessity induce the government of the city to
pave a single street. Where now stands the great St. Charles Hotel,
there was an unsightly and disgusting pond of fetid water, and the
locations now occupied by the City Hotel and the St. James were
cattle-pens. There was not a wharf in the entire length of the city,
and the consequence was an enormous tax levied upon produce, in the
shape of drayage and repairs of injuries to packages, from the want of
these prime necessities.

The navigation of the Bayou St. John commanded for the lower portion
of the city the commerce crossing the lake, and to monopolize the
profits of travel, a railroad was proposed from the lake to the river,
and speedily completed. The people of the Faubourg, to counteract as
much as possible these advantages, constructed a canal from the city
to the lake, which was to enter the city, or Faubourg St. Mary, at the
foot of Julia Street, one of the broadest and best streets in that
quarter of the city. This was of sufficient capacity for schooners and
steamboats of two hundred tons burden. When this was completed, with
great difficulty the authorities were prevailed upon to pave Julia
Street; still the greatly increasing demands of commerce were
neglected, and while by these refusals the population of the city
proper was doing all it could to force down to the city this
increasing trade, they neglected to do anything there for its
accommodation. The streets were very narrow; the warehouses small and
inconvenient; the merchants close and unenterprising, seemingly
unconscious of the great revolution going on in their midst.

From the growing