The Sun.
London, England, 1867-08-26 00:00:00

711 E GROWTH OF Si'. LOUIS.

(New York Evening Post.)
Sixty-two years ago, remarked a writer in the
Galaxy, the adventurous explorers, Lewis and Clark,
bade farewell to civilisation at the village of St.
Louis, and began their journey through the vast
unknown wilderness which lay between the Missis-
sippi and the Pacific Ocean.
Sixty-two years ago St. Louis was a village, and
an outpost of civilisation ; to-day it is the sixth city
in the Union in point of population, and one of the
most important centres of commerce in the country.
It has behind it a State containing over a million
of inhabitants ; and west of that the wilderness into
which Lewis and Clark penetrated, and of whose
wonders and riches they told tales which were not
believed, though the tenth-part was not known to
them, is dotted with States, spanned by telegraph
wires, and has a railroad laid nearly across its whole
extent. There is a general anxiety for good crops this
year, and the rainy weather which we have had on
the seaboard for several weeks has led many persons
to fear that the crops all over the country may be
injured by rains. But a correspondent of the
Evening Post at Niles, in Michigan, wrote, a few
days ago, that in his neighbourhood the country is
suffering from drought, and rain is urgently desired.
Our country is so vast that no reasoning founded
upon the condition of one part of it will apply to
the whole ; and its intercourse is so unobstructed,
trade is free over so great a region, that the people
are able to remedy, very quickly, any mishap in one
section. West of the Mississippi, in lowa and
Kansas, the Colorado potato bug has appeared in
such numbers that farmers can no longer plant the
potato with any hope of a crop. An ingenious
fellow contrived a machine, drawn by a horse,
which shakes the bug of the vine into a box, where
they are crushed by a cylinder ; but even this ma-
chine does not save the potatoes. Will the farmers
and mechanics of lowa and Kansas have to do with-
out potatoes therefore ? Not at all ; Congress,
fortunately, cannot make the roots dearer by a pro-
tective tariff upon those imported from the neigh-
bouring States ; and the lowa farmer, under free
trade with the States east of the Mississippi, will get
his potatoes at a cheap rate in exchange for pro-
ducts which he can raise.

Our population, reinforced by an enormous im-
migration from Europe, is spreading over the con-
tinent with marvellous rapidity. There is no longer
a " far West ;" the arts and customs of civilisation
are already naturalised over nearly the whole of the
great region through which Louis and Clark jour-
neyed at the hazard of their lives, little more than
half a century ago, and which was then as utterly
unknown as a great part of Africa. The Rocky
Mountains no longer oppose their barrier to our
progress ; the western frontiersman ridicules them
instead of fearing them ; and a Western wit ex-
presses, in the peculiar manner of the men who
" sleep on the prairie and drink out of its rivers,"
his contempt for such slight obstructions by the
remark, "We are already levelling the Rocky
Mountains and carting the dirt out west ; I had a
letter last week from my cousin, who is living two
hun3red miles west of the Pacific shore, on made
land."

THE YORK CUP.—The trophy for 1867 is designed in
the Italian style, and rests on au ebony stand, its height
being 36 inches. At the base of the richly gilt cup are
winged horses in frosted silver, and the cover is sur-
mounted with:a. figure of Victory. The bas-rolievi aro in
frosted silver, and aro placed on the stand. They repre-
sent two evouts in the history of York. Ono the memor-
able occasion when, in 1289, King Richard 11. presented
his sword to William do Selby, then Mayor of York, with
permission .and authority for the chief magistrate on all
future times to have the said sword borne before him with
the point erect, except in the King's presence, and with
this privilege granted a charter to the city, from which time
the dignity of Lord Mayor has always been enjoyed by
the chief magistrate. The other reliovo is in the time of
Edward IV., A.D. 1478, when the Lord Mayor, John For-
riby, conducted that monarch into the city, on the occasion
of his Majesty's visit " To his loving subjects, the citizens
of York." On each side of the stand are groups of armour
and weapons of war in burnished gold, with a banner bear-
ing the city arms. •