The Sun.
London, England, 1860-10-18 00:00:00

went on at a pace which made following it a matter
of impossibility, so that his Royal Highness and
party were enabled to take their view of the city
comparatively undisturbed, if rather hastily. Of
the city and its appearance, however, I have now
no time to write ; indeed, owing to the failure of the
trains, I must trust to sending this by hand.
HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA, OCT. 2.
I am almost quite glad that I had not time on my
first arrival in Cincinnati to record my impression
of that proud city of the west, for it requires at least
24 abstractions for the visitor to free his mind from

the greasy images al ways produced by the porcine
element in its population which meet you at every
turn, in every form, size, age, or colour in which

pigs are capable of walking, rolling, or lying about
the streets. Cincinnati will always be in my mind
what it is in the minds of most Americans—a syno-

nyme for pigs—a synonyme which makes the Queen
City far more generally known by the derisive nick-
name of Porkopolis than by its lordly Roman title.
Pigs are to this city, in fact, what negroes are to
Mobile, Charleston, or New Orleans. They pervade
the whole place—the very gutters are congested
with them, and a sort of dull monotony of pigs is
visible everywhere. They come against you wher-
ever you turn, from huge, black, muddy, unsightly
monsters down to little sucklings not much bigger
than kittens, on which you inadvertently tread and
stumble, amid shrill squeakings almost enough to
blow you off your legs, and quite enough to alarm
the neighbourhood, if it had not long ago got used
to every possible variation of noise in which swine
can convey their thrilling protests of resentment or
alarm. They come down in muddy droves, skipping
in uncouth merriment, relieving their minds and
giving vent to their gaiety in the most dismal out-
pourings and interchange of shriekings, as if they
were the swine" possessed" of old. Even the quietest
grope about with hideous gruntings, as if something
weighed upon their hearts, and will only consent to
seek repose for their perturbed feelings by lying full
length across the footways of arched hilly streets,
which somehow irresistibly remind one of spareribs
set on end and built upon. You don't object
to these last orderly specimens of the Cincinnati
staple, though rather in the way, to be sure—it is
the tusky, fat, unwieldy monsters who complicate
themselves with passing carts, and get entangled
amid the wheels of drays, and who, as the retribu-
tion of cartwhips overtakes them, make the very
heavens echo.with their shrill-sustained la mentings.
With the first sound denoting swinish tribulation
and mishap whole troops of other pigs come running
round the corners, adding their piercing mite to the
general tocsin of alarm till a stranger, unacquainted
with the obstinacy of character peculiar to the Cin-
cinnati pig, and his rapid transition from aggression
to loud repentance, might imagine that the city had
been taken by storm and an universal massacre was
going forward. Nor are these failings, I regret to
say, the only ones which render Cincinnati pigs
an objectionable institution there. Their naturally
aggressive habits have been developed to the utmost
by the turmoils and annoyances of a great city, and
at the first start the visitor is apt to imagine that
the bigger pigs are supported almost entirely on
the ears of the little ones. The appalling outbreak
of screams that ensue when a big pig lunches in
this wise might be heard over half the town. When
to these facts I add that the slaughter-houses are in
the suburbs, and that some hundreds of pigs are
daily killed there amid that terrific outcry with
which a pig always meets his fate, I have pretty
well given the elements of a state of things at Cin-
cinnati. Apart from these drawbacks the city it-
self is one of the finest, if not the finest, I have seen
in the West. It is situate on a ridge of most pic-
turesque hills on the banks of the Ohio. The
streets are wide and very hilly, which keeps them
tolerably clean even in spite of the pigs. The
houses are nearly all of red brick, and are fine and
spacious structures, though nothing approaching in
size to the gigantic blocks which have been built
and are still building on every side at Chicago. It
is not all gold that glitters, however, and I am told
that Cincinnati is infinitely richer and more thriving
than the newly risen and commercial capital of Illi-
nois. The latter, lam told, is rather of the kind that
poets call " the gilded index of far-reaching ruin," for
I am sorry to say, for the value of my first impres-
sions, that Chicago is stated to have rather consi-
derably overbuilt itself, and that per consequence a
very large proportion of the rising town is pretty
deeply mortgaged. There are no symptoms of this
in Cincinnati, which, on the contrary, has an air of
quiet industry and solid wealth which is unmistake-
able, and which but that it is newer and has rather
less smoke reminds one much of such towns as Leeds,
where there is great wealth and business with but
small delay.
The private and exclusively quiet programme of
visits arranged for his Royal Highness during his
one day's stay at Cincinnati would, of course, have
required rather more than a week to perform, so, as
may be expected, it was not adhered to strictly.
The Prince, therefore, contented himself with
driving over the hills amid the suburban scenery
of Cincinnati, and such scenery for rich, quiet, cul-
tivated beauty I have not yet seen in the West.
WASHINGTON, OCT. 4.
The Prince has arrived in this strange city, where
streets of ill-built houses connect the most noble
public buildings, and where one has to admire the
city as a city always in the future tense. It will and
must in history be one of the greatest capitals that
the world has seen, but as yet it seems to want a
deal of building, alterations, and improvements
bfeore it can be a worthy legislative centre of this
great empire. Another hour, however, must suffice
for recording my impression of this great, strange,
unequal city, for I have barely time now to do
more than jot down a few incidents of the Prince's
reception.
That there was a great crowd at the station must
of course be taken for granted, but it was well railed
off, and no hustling, as with the mobs of Detroit and
St. Louis, was allowed at any time. General Cass,
Secretary of State, with Mr. James Buchanan and
James Buchanan Henry, nephews of the President,
were on the platform, and received his Royal High-
ness as he alighted from the train. There was a
very brief pause while General Cass, on the part of
the chief magistrate of the United States, cordially
welcomed the Royal visitor to Washington, and a
few introductions took place, but there was no cere-
mony or delay of any kind, and the party at once
entered the President's carriages and drove to the
White House. They arrived at the executive man-
sion soon after 4 o'clock. The President, as regal
and as venerable in his appearance as any king who
ever wore a crown, stood just inside the portal of
the White House, and as the Prince stepped forward
shook him by the hand with a cordiality of welcome
that was unmistakeable. It was more a meeting
between private friends and gentlemen than a really
historical reception given by the chief of the greatest
republic to the heir of the greatest monarchy
in the world. The President led his guest at once
to the Blue Drawing-room, where he introduced
Miss Lane, his niece, and Mrs. Ellis, niece of
the late Vice-President King. But beyond these
few facts I know nothing, except that all the guests
at the White House are staying there without for-
mality, and as any other party of distinguished
travellers whom it might please the President
to entertain. Only one exception is made to the
general rule of affairs at the executive mansion,
and that is that while the Prince stays there it is
no longer an open house to all, but police are "sta-
tioned round it, and none except those invited are
allowed to enter. Many persons of the Royal
suite who could not be accommodated at the Pre-
sident's mansion are staying with Lord Lyons.
This morning his Rcyal Highness went over the
Capitol and visited the Senate Chamber and
Chamber of the Hall of Representatives, with
some other of the magnificent public buildings
here. Afterwards there was a levee, at which every-
body came that wanted, and to which many came
that were not wanted, if one might judge from
their extremely negligee costume. There were plenty
of ladies there in bonnets and shaws, and some in-
dividuals who sauntered into the room with their
hands in their pockets, and who otherwise conducted
themselves in a way which, certainly; as far as I
have seen, is not usual among the American gentle-
men who unfortunately do chew tobacco. The
President did not remain in any special place, or
take a prominent part in the reception at all. Like