Spring and summer and autumn must be delightful seasons here, and
bring with them the sweetest tranquillity. Nor are the people shut out
from the world in winter; for then there is travel and intercourse and
traffic. So are there pleasures and recreation peculiar to the season.
But the serene and quiet age of the settlement is near its close.
Enterprise and speculation, with their bustle and turmoil, have laid
hold of it. The clank of the hammer, the whistle of steamboats, the
rattling of carts, heaps of lumber and of bricks, excavations and
gratings, short corners and rough unshapen walks, will usurp the quiet
and the regularity of the place. Indeed a man ought to make a fortune
to compensate for residing in a town during the first years of its
rapid building. The streets appear, on the map, to be well laid out. A
number of purchasers of lots are preparing to build; and a few new
buildings are already going up. As near as I am able to learn, the
things which conduce to its availability as a business place are
these-- First, it is the beginning of the Upper Mississippi
navigation.
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