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
destroying its extensive Southern trade, but it has since greatly
grown, and now has a population of four hundred thousand. The
immediate advantage of location comes from having around it a district
of a hundred miles radius which is one of the most fertile in America.
The Fountain Square at Fifth Street may be regarded as the business
centre of Cincinnati, this being an expansion of the street, having
upon a spacious esplanade the grand bronze Tyler-Davidson Fountain,
the gift of a prominent townsman, which was cast at the Royal Bronze
Foundry in Munich and is one of the noblest fountains existing. To the
northward is the granite United States Government Building which cost
$5,000,000, while farther inland is the red Romanesque City Hall, with
a lofty tower, erected at an expense of $1,600,000. The high hills
enclosing Cincinnati give grand outlooks, and upon them are the finest
parts of the city. They are reached by inclined-plane railways from
the lower grounds, as well as by winding roadways. Upon these hills to
the eastward is Eden Park, a fine pleasure-ground of over two hundred
acres containing the water reservoirs and an elaborate Art Museum, of
handsome architecture, surmounted by a red-tiled roof. The famous
Rookwood Pottery is also on these eastern hills. To the northward
is Mount Auburn, and beyond, the Clifton Heights with the Burnet
Woods Park, a fine natural forest. These high encircling hills,
diversified by ravines, give to suburban Cincinnati a singularly
picturesque and beautiful environment, being covered by attractive and
costly villas surrounded by lawns and gardens, making throughout a
most delicious park. The Spring Grove Cemetery, about five miles to
the northwest, covers a square mile, and is an appropriate home of the
dead, having elaborate monuments, of which the finest is the Dexter
Mausoleum, a Gothic chapel of grand proportions and splendid
decoration. Five great bridges span the Ohio in front of Cincinnati,
crossing over to the Kentucky shore at Covington and Newport, where
there are seventy thousand people, the United States military post of
Fort Thomas being upon the hills behind Newport. Up the Great Miami,
sixty miles to the northward, and at its confluence with Mad River, is
Dayton, a busy manufacturing and railway centre, having seventy
thousand people. It is the location of the Central National Soldiers'
Home, where there are several thousand old soldiers, the spacious
buildings, in an attractive park of seven hundred acres, standing
prominently on the hills sloping up from the Miami River to the
westward of the city.
[Illustration: Tyler-Davidson Fountain, Cincinnati, O.]