The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-08-21

memorable food of fss6. Dickens, yho had seen or heard of the City of Eden during his American tour. several years hefore the great overflow of that year to which "a passing reference Is nade Tn ....Amerlcan Notes.s went more into detail I'm .iAfartln ChuxzIewit'' and gave ux somsthing of a picture of the city, which was evidently not altogether a. fancy sketch. ; If It, erred it did not err on the side of feKaggeration, and 1t IS safe 10 as- surna that the City of Eden was larger at The time Martin Chuzzlewit is said to have 4visited 1t tthaH Dickens. Ind ieates. For inc visit was one of disailusio sionmefit, The City Of Eden was to fall far below the expectations of the visitors who had been Induced {. to- make an investment there, and, accordingly. the scene was to be made as desolate as possible.
 Immortalized by Dickens.
 Yet there Is no denying that 1t was des- olate enough. There was not much there at the time Martin Chuzzlewit and his friend called to see their property, but there are accounts informing us that there was more than Dickens tells us of A year or two later the flood of 1SA came and reduced the visible assets to lower point even than they appear in the novel. The flood reduced them to Gpch point, in matter of fact. that little or no effort was afterward made to resurrect the town. Practically it was plotted off the maps not only of the government. but Of the real estate boomers themselves, who had made everything out of 1t that It was possible to make. They had done their best before the flood. The interest ing point in the case is the one of what were the dimensions of the place in It's palmiest days. There is no one living now on that part of the Missouri shore above Hannibal where the City of Eden stood who can give anything like an in- telligent opinion on the point. There was considerable property bought by eastern and foreign investors on which no i'm provements were ever made. and to which the owners never came for residence. The town was not populous. for this and ether reasons. The probability is that when 1t had it's largest population there were 300 people there, but 300 was about the aver age. Not much, but great city when compared with what now remains. From the deck of a steamboat the tourist who is familiar with the upper Mississippi will point out to you little group Of houses on the shore and laugh when he tells you that they are all that is left of the City ot Eden.' It Is plain that if the English marquis wins his suit he will get about as much as fell to poor Richard when the final disposition was mad0 of the great chancery case in Bleak House"-a bill of costs.
 Gilgal Once F1ourished.
 Somewhere on the other side of the river from the City of Eden, and not so very far away from the site of that de- parted metropolis. is a spot where once stood the town of Gilgal. Ill. Gilgal was never exploited on real estate maps or blue prints as the coming metropolis of the Mississippi valley. It was never rec commended to investors. either eastern or foreign, as the place to get their money back. with several hundred per cent. interest. Yet there are natives of the Shy bottoms and beyond who will tell you that Gilgal was always much more of a business point than the City of Eden ever was or ever could have become. There seems to be no reason for doubt on this point. Gllgal was consid- erable of business point. Not only did it have some shipping industries of its own, but 1t was the entrepot for two fiourishing towns further inland. One of these was called Atlas, which has now vanished from the maps. What Atlas might have boasted of in the way of com mercial industry cannot now be stated with positiveness, but that the town had industries of some sort, and these found port at Gilgal, is beyond question. As to another town of which Gilgal was the entrepot there is more assurance. It was Rockport and there is still not only postoff1ce of that name. but a dot on any detail map you look at. In the days of Gilgal, Rockport and Atlas were close together. Rockport had large Touring mills the product of which was shipped away on the steamboats which landed at Gilgal There was a lively traffic at nearly all times along the road leading out of the river port toward these two places as far as the point where 1t branched.
 C.IleaI has been innnnortalized bv Iohn Hays poems. Taggart had his store