t, said of them: "No colony in America was ever
settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced
at the Muskingum. Information, property, and strength will be its
characteristics. I know many of the settlers personally, and there
never were men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a
community." And when, in 1825, La Fayette had read to him the list
of Marietta pioneers,--nearly fifty military officers among them,--he
cried: "I know them all! I saw them at Brandywine, Yorktown, and Rhode
Island. They were the bravest of the brave!"

Yet, for a long time, Marietta met with small measure of success.
Miasma, Indian ravages, and the conservative temperament of the people
combined to render slow the growth of this Western Plymouth. There
were, for a time, extensive ship-building yards here; but that
industry gradually declined, with the growth of railway systems. In
our day, Marietta, with its ten thousand inhabitants, prospers chiefly
as a market town and an educational center, with some manufacturing
interests. We were struck to-day, as we tarried there for an hour
or two, with the remarkable resemblance it has in public and private
architecture, and in general tone, to a typical New England town--say,
for example, Burlington, Vt. Omitting its river front, and its
Mound Cemetery, Marietta might be set bodily down almost anywhere in
Massachusetts, or Vermont, or Connecticut, and the chance traveler
would see little in the place to remind him of the West. I know of no
other town out of New England of which the same might be said.

Below Marietta, the river bottoms are, for miles together, edged with
broad stretches of sloping beach, either deep with sand or naturally
paved with pebbles--sometimes treeless, but often strewn with clumps
of willow and maple and scrub sycamore. The hills, now rounder, less
ambitious, and more widely separated, are checkered with fields and
forests, and the bottom lands are of more generous breadth. Pleasant
islands stud the peaceful stream. The sylvan foliage has by this time
attained very nearly its fullest size. The horse chestnut, the pawpaw,
the grape, and the willow are in bloom. A gentle pastoral scene is
this through which we glide.

It is evident that it would be a scalding day but for the gentle
breeze astern; setting sail, we gladly drop our oars, and, with the
water rippling at our prow, sweep blithely down the long southern
reach to Parkersburg, W.