Pennsylvania western boundary, the Ohio River separates West Virginia from the State of Ohio, passing a region which seems mournful from the many abandoned oil-derricks displayed near the banks for a long distance. The Ohio shore is Columbiana County, a name fancifully compounded by an early State Legislature from "Columbus" and "Anna;" and it is recorded that when the subject was pending one member proposed to add "Maria," so that the euphonious whole would be "Columbianamaria." His effort failed, however. At the various towns, the railroads come out from the mountain regions of West Virginia, bringing the bituminous coal for shipment. Ninety-four miles below Pittsburg is Wheeling, the metropolis of West Virginia, a busy manufacturing city of forty thousand people. Farther down, in the midst of the flats adjoining the river, at Moundsville, is the great Indian Mound, a relic of the prehistoric inhabitants of this region standing up eighty feet high and being eight hundred and twenty feet in circumference at the base. In this mound were found two sepulchral chambers containing three skeletons. At Benwood, near by, one branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad crosses the river to Bellaire in Ohio. The Muskingum River, coming out of the heart of the State, flows in at Marietta, a stream thus named by the Delaware Indians when they first came to this region, from the abundance of elk and deer who could be approached near enough to see their eyes, Muskingum meaning "elk's eyes." Marietta is the oldest town in Ohio, settled in 1788 by a colony sent out by the "Ohio Company" of New England, which had been granted many square miles of land along the river. This colony of forty-seven Yankee pioneers marched over the Alleghenies, floated down the Ohio on a flatboat which they called the "Mayflower," and landing at the mouth of the Muskingum, their first act was writing a set of laws and nailing them to a tree, and in this code naming their settlement in honor of Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France. A company of troops in a little stockade fort protected them from the Indians. Here they found a curious mass of ancient fortifications, relics of the prehistoric mound-builders—a square enclosed by a wall of earth ten feet high, having twelve entrances, a covered way, bulwarks to defend the gateways, and other elaborate works, including a moat fifteen feet wide defended by a parapet. Thirteen miles below, the Little Kanawha River flows in at Parkersburg, and here the other branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad crosses on a massive bridge, a mile and a half long, over the river and lowlands. This is the entrepot of a great petroleum district which gives the town a large trade, and they are said to be still striking in the Ritchie County oilfield thousand-barrel wells. In the river two miles below is the noted Blennerhassett's Island, where that gentleman, an Irishman of distinction, built himself a splendid mansion and made a fine estate in 1798. When Aaron Burr afterwards concocted his notorious conspiracy, he induced Blennerhassett to invest his fortune in the scheme. Whilst not convicted of treason, Burr's dupe was irretrievably ruined and his house and estate fell into decay.

The Great Kanawha flows in, the chief river of West Virginia, at Point Pleasant, the Indian "rapid river," and it is now the outlet of one of the leading coal-fields, the New River district, in its upper waters, the navigation being maintained by an elaborate system of locks and movable dams. At the mouth was fought the severest battle with the Indians in the Ohio Valley, the tribes from beyond the river attacking the troops, but being beaten off after great bloodshed. Huntington is beyond, where the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway comes out to the Ohio, after having passed Charleston, the West Virginia State capital, fifty miles up the Kanawha. The Big Sandy River enters below, the boundary of Kentucky, and beyond is the mouth of the Scioto on the Ohio bank, where the terminus of the Lake Erie and Ohio Canal gave the start to the city of Portsmouth, having twenty thousand people. Maysville, to the westward on the Kentucky shore, is a leading hemp-market, and one of the towns supplying the famous "Blue Grass Region." The river banks here are very attractive and are backed by ranges of hills. Stretching southward from the shores are extensive green parks, with few fences and only occasional green fields, displaying majestic trees, one of the best grazing districts in America, the wealth of the inhabitants being in their flocks. Some distance back from the river the blue grass begins, so named from its blue tinge when in blossom, the district occupying ten thousand square miles in five Kentucky counties, the soil being very rich and the extensive pastures lined by hemp and tobacco fields. Stock farms abound, and Lexington is the metropolis of the district, a thriving town of twenty-five thousand people, about eighty miles south of the Ohio, an important horse and cattle market, and also famous for its distilleries of the native Bourbon whiskies. Here is the noted race-track of the "Kentucky Horse-Breeders' Association," and in this district are raised the greatest racing horses of America. Probably the leading stock farm is at Ashland, a short distance out of town, where Henry Clay long had his home. Lexington received its name from having been founded in 1775 about the time of the battle of Lexington. It has a fine monument to Henry Clay, who died in 1852, and it is also the seat of the University of Kentucky, with eight hundred students.

THE CITY OF CINCINNATI.

Sixty miles below Maysville the Licking River flows out of Kentucky, and on the opposite Ohio shore, built upon the magnificent amphitheatre of hills rising tier upon tier, and surrounded by villa-crowned heights elevated five hundred feet as a background, is Ohio's metropolis, Cincinnati, the Queen City. It spreads fourteen miles along the river, one of the most important manufacturing and commercial centres of the West, and is fronted by Covington and Newport on the Kentucky shore, the Licking River dividing them. John Cleves Symmes, a prominent American in the eighteenth century, bought from the Government after the Revolution a large tract of land in Ohio between the Great and Little Miami Rivers, known as "Symmes' Purchase." His nephew and namesake was the noted author of the "Theory of Concentric Spheres," which was called in derision "Symmes's Hole," and he afterwards died on this tract, being buried there with a monument surmounted, according to his pet theory, by a globe open at the poles. The people interested in the land purchase decided to establish a settlement opposite the mouth of the Licking, and they gave it the pedantic name of Losantiville, a word ingeniously contrived to describe its position by using the "L" signifying Licking River, "os" the mouth, "anti" opposite, and "ville" a city. General St. Clair, however, came along afterwards to establish a military post in his campaign against the Indians, and being prominently identified with the Society of the Cincinnati, he gave the place that name. It was for many years a small collection of log cabins, and had only slow growth until steamboating began on the Ohio, when it rapidly expanded, receiving an additional impetus from the opening of the Miami Canal connecting with Lake Erie in 1830 and from the great development of the western railway systems after 1840. Its earlier inhabitants came largely from the Atlantic States and Kentucky, but subsequently there was a great German influx, so that a considerable district north of the Miami Canal is their special home, and is familiarly known as "Over the Rhine." The Civil War gave the city a serious set-back by