LETTER VII.

PHILADELPHIA-SITUATION-EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL APPEAR

ANCE-PUBLIC BUILDINGS-WATER WORKS-PENITENTIARYPENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL-PEALE'S MUSEUM-SKELETON OF

THE MAMMOTH-ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS-LIBRARIES

LITERATURE-ENGRAVING-UNIVERSITY-RELIGIOUS ASPECT

—QUAKER MEETING HOUSE AND BURYING GROUND-CHURCHES AND SERMONS-SABBATH SCHOOLS-NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE CITY-JOSEPH BONAPARTE-MOREAU-GENERAL VANDAMME -WOODEN BRIDGES-PROJECTED IMPROVEMENTS.

Philadelphia, September, 1818.

THE position of Philadelphia, although not equal to that of New York, is yet well chosen in reference to to the character of the surrounding country. The city stands upon an isthmus about two miles wide, between the Delaware. and the Schuylkill, five miles above their confluence, and about an hundred and twenty miles from the sea. Both rivers are navigable up to the city by the largest merchantmen. The Delaware is here about a mile in width; the tide rises and falls about six feet, and vessels of 1200 tons can come up to the wharfs. In severe winters, the communication with the sea is still occasionally intérrupted; but not so frequently as formerly, nor

for so long at one time, and as the surrounding country becomes cleared of its forests the severity of the winters will be still farther mitigated.

The course of the two rivers at the city is very nearly north and south, but almost immediately above, they diverge; the Delaware to the northeast, and the Schuylkill to the north-west, thus materially facilitating the commercial communication with the interior of the State, and the adjoining one of New Jersey. The Delaware is navigable by large sloops and steam boats to Trenton, about thirty miles above, and the Schuylkill, although above the city comparatively shallow and disturbed with rapids, is navigable by small vessels and rafts to a considerable distance. A little deepening of this river in some places, and the cutting of short canals from one stream to another, would open a communication for some hundreds of miles into the interior. The ground on which the city stands, is covered with a stratum of fine clay; the banks of the Schuylkill furnish a plentiful supply of marble, and the country around is rich in timber, so that materials for building are most abundant.

The appearance of the city from the river is by no means imposing; rather the opposite. The ground is generally level, and the mass of buildings present a dull heavy uniformity; most of those along the bank are by no means elegant, and only a solitary steeple rises above the dense horizon.

LOCAL CHARACTERISTICS.

187

The aspect however improves amazingly when you enter the streets, which are wide, straight, and clean, and, with only one exception, cross each other at right angles. The houses are in general of painted brick, but some of the more modern have a flight of marble steps in front, and the lintels of the doors and windows, and even the side walk in front, are of the same beautiful materials.

When Penn laid out the ground for his city, he intended that it should occupy a parallelogram one mile in width, between the two rivers, and that the buildings should be kept within the parallel lines till the intervening space was filled; but the inhabitants found that the bank of the Delaware was a more desirable situation than that of the Schuylkill, and in consequence, buildings have stretched along the former river, above and below the assigned boundary, till the city is here about four miles long, while the streets are not compactly built much farther than half way across to the other river. On both banks of the Schuylkill however a considerable number of buildings have been erected. The populous suburb on the Delaware to the south of the original boundary is called Southwark, that to the north the Northern Liberties, and closer to the river Kensington.1

The venerable elm under which according to tradition Penn negociated his celebrated treaty with the Indians, stood at Kensington; and the decayed trunk after being spared by the British army in the Revolutionary war, and weathering many a hard gale, was at

Market street, 100 feet wide, stretches through the centre of the city, from the one river to the other; it is crossed, rather nearer the Schuylkill than midway, by Broad Street, 113 feet wide, and the other streets are at right angles to one or other of these. The cross streets are from 50 to 60 feet wide; those running parallel to the rivers are, with a quaker-like simplicity, which however affords a stranger important facilities in finding his way, named North and South, Front, Second, Third, Fourth, and so on, as they recede from each river; those parallel to Market Street are with more elegance, named after the various kinds of timber with which the ground was formerly covered, Vine, Sassafras, Mulberry, Chesnut, Walnut, Spruce, Pine and Cedar. Water Street, between Front Street and the Delaware, which should have been called Mud Lane, and the wharfs which project into the stream, are deviations from the original plan of the city. Dock Street, the only crooked one in the city, was originally the bed of a sluggish stream, which generated

last levelled a few years ago by a hurricane.

Portions of it are now

eagerly sought after by relic hunters, to be converted, like the Cruickstone Yew and the rafters of Alloway Kirk, into snuff boxes and other toys. I lately discovered in an old Baltimore newspaper, what is said to be a copy of Penn's treaty; it is in the form of an indenture, and the following are the articles which it specifies as having been given to the Indians, in exchange for the ground between the two rivers, as far as a man can ride in two days with a horse.' "20 guns, 20 fathoms matchcoat, 20 fathoms stroud