237. Mount Pisgah Planes....... 238. Stratification of Vein...... 239. Open Quarry of the Lehigh.. 240. Section of Schuylkill Basin... 242. Price Wetherill Colliery. 243. Interior Plat of Coal Slope....... 250. Fossils found in Coal..... 251. Interior of Temple of Abou Simbal... 252. Shrine of Temple, Abou Simbal...... 253. Dome of the Rock, Mount Moriah.... 254. Interior of Mosque El Aksa......... 255. Interior of the Beautiful Gate....... 457 325. Gouge, Distiller.... 460 328. Tom Wilson's Cabin ...... 462 330. Summit of Mount Mitchell.. 463 332. Johnsey....... 464 333. Skull and Flowers.. 1 NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. No. LXXXV.-JUNE, 1857.-VOL. XV. CITIE BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE PALMETTO CITY. CHARLESTON, THE PALMETTO CITY. Revolution-in the formation of the Confederacy and the Constitution-in the noble contributions of intellect and valor which she has made to the common capital of the country-in her generous sacrifices at all times in the common cause-by the refinements of her society-by the polish of her people-the general propriety of her tastes-her lofty morals, and warm hospitality. She has her faults, no doubt, but with these we have nothing to do. We have no NITIES, like men, and because they are the regard with more satisfaction the more genial occupation of distinguishing only what is excel lent in the people; even as in heraldry we are required to recognize only the more noble characteristics of the animal whom we symbolize on the escutcheon, rejecting all the baser ones from consideration. Founded under peculiar circumstances, at a juncture of marked transition in European affairs, under the direct patronage of the most eminent among the British nobility, and subsequently taken under the immediate protection of the Crown, the colony of South Carolina-of which Charleston was at that period the very Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by Harper and Brothers, in the Clerk's Office of the Dis trict Court for the Southern District of New York. VOL. XV.-No. 85.-A borrowed from the practice in all the Spanish towns, where you might shake hands with your sweet-heart-nay, proceed to a loving familiarity with her lips-across the street from your mutual balconies. But the ancient plan and policy of Charleston need not have become a law for its modern population. The old city, according to the original design, covered less than a tenth of the present surface, on the southeast corner; yet, unhappily, the original mistake of the proprietors has been perpetuated by their successors, and they have been laying out new streets, within a recent period, but little wider than the mis soul-was always a much-favored province of the mother country. The richness and value of her products furnished substantial reasons why she should be a favorite. Her merchants were mostly British; her native sons of family were sent to Britain for education; and the affinities between the parent state and the colony were thus rendered doubly tenacious, making the struggle of the Revolution a much severer one in this than in any other colony of the whole continent. preferred two hundred years ago. We have given below the ground-plan of the present city, which covers, north and south, a corporate domain nearly three miles long, by something less than two miles at the widest, cast and west. The population within these limits is now estimated to range between fiftyfive and sixty-five thousand souls. But we must not be led too far from our immediate subject. We must not forget that it is not as a colonial town of Britain, but as the metropolis of an independent State, that Charles-erable lanes and gloomy avenues which were ton now claims our attention. But it may concern us still somewhat to mention that, as a pet city of the British nobility, Charleston tasked more than was common the care of the lords proprietors. The original plan of the town, forming a mere cantle of the plat, as exhibited above, of the present city, was sent out from England, and in that day was held to be a plan of great beauty and propriety. The streets You see that the Palmetto City is happily running at right angles, north and south, east placed within two spacious rivers, the Cooper and west, and without much heed to the topo- and Ashley-the Etiwan and Keawah of the graphical characteristics of the site, were as reg- Red men. These unite to form the harbor, ular in their squares as those of the good Quak- which is ample, and attractive to the eye in erly city of William Penn. Unhappily, they high degree, forming a beautiful ensemble, not were lanes rather than streets; and one of the less sweet than spacious. As you enter from chief obstacles to the proper improvement of the the sea, between the Islands of Sullivan and present city is due to this original error, the Morris, the city opens before you in the forefruits of a most wretched economy of space, or ground, five miles distant-rising, like another of a more wretched mistake as to sanatory ef- Venice, from the ocean. It is built, like Venice, fects. In that period, we are to remember, the upon flats and shoals of sand and mud. So low notion was entertained that a city in the low is the land, that the illusion that it is built dilatitudes was cool in degree with the narrow-rectly in the sea, continues till you approach The notion was naturally quite near it. This illusion is productive of a ness of its passages. picturesque effect, but not sufficient to compensate you for the relief which would be yielded by an elevated background, or by lofty eminences of land on either side. As you advance, the bay expands, wide and majestic, forming a harborage to which there can be no objection, were it not for the embarrassments of the bar at the entrance, which forbids the admission of ships of very heavy draught of water. It is a present project with the Charlestonians-supposed to be quite feasible-so to dredge this channel as to remove every difficulty. In that event, Charleston must necessarily acquire a large and imposing commercial marine of her own. In front of you, commanding the channel, is Fort Sumter, a formidable pile of fortress, with double tier of heavy cannon, rising upon a mole at the head of a sand-bar. In passing Sullivan's Island, the eye readily distinguishes the Moultrie House, famous as a local watering-place; and the still more famous fortress which also bears the name of Moultrie, distinguished in American history as the scene of one of the first and best-fought battles of the Revolution, when a few hundred native riflemen, who had never fired a cannon before, beat off and nearly destroyed a formidable British fleet, making such slaughter among them as, in proportion to the numbers engaged, was not even reached by that of Trafalgar and the Nile. On the right you see Haddrill's-Mount Pleasant village-which also constituted one of the fortresses of '76. On the left are the shores of James and Morris Islands, the latter bearing the light-house of the port; the former the site of old Fort Johnson, which was wrested from the British, prior to the battle of Fort Moultrie, by the en terprise of a small body of citizen soldiery. Here, at the very portals of the city, you encounter Castle Pinckney, covering an ancient mud reef; and here we propose to give you a bird's-eye view of the city itself. We are now in the ancient city itself-the Palmetto City! You see the tout ensemble at a glance, and perceive its two most prominent characteristicsthe verandas, balconies, piazzas, with the ample gardens and their foliage, which isolate every dwelling-house, and form a substitute for public squares, in which Charleston is lamentably deficient. But for the largeness of the several lots, and the taste of the people for shade trees, the deficiency would be fatal at once to the health and the beauty of the place. This city is one of many beauties, arising from this isolation of the dwellings, and from the ample verdure which girdles them; but we must not talk of its beauties, perhaps, in the presence of Monsieur Beauvallet. It is just possible, gentle reader, that you never heard of Monsieur Beauvallet? If so, let us counsel you to glance over the most comical of all ridiculous books, "Rachel in the New World." It is written by Monsieur Beauvallet (Query? Beau-valet ?). Beauvallet was one of the actors in Rachel's American troupe. Rachel, as we all know, did not fail in the new world: but the speculation did; and Monsieur Beauvallet was one of the sufferers by the failure. It is a sad thing to go forth to shear, and to come home shorn! This was just "the fix" of Monsieur Beauvallet-to use our expressive Yankee vulgarism. The Frenchmen were to fleece the Philistineswe mean the Yankees-and carry home such |