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/ Simpson 184 Memphis is on a bluff of the Mississippi. How strange does this juxtaposition of the names of hoar antiquity + of yesterday sound in the ears of an European! And it will also seem strange to many that this strikeout city, whose name they had never heard mentioned, except as being that of a great city of the Pharoahs, has already a population of 84.000 inhabitants + is so well-situated that it is destined to become, under the reign of Freedom, one of the largest of the second class cities of the Union. A Bluff is a river-cliff. It may be either an old + abandoned one. (many miles of such Bluffs are to be seen in the Valley of the Platte, at considerable distances from the existing channel of the river) Or it may be one at the foot of which the stream still runs. To the latter class, belongs the Bluff on which Memphis is built. It is of a soft sand, + large spaces of it have been escarped + graded between the city + the waters edge in such a manner as to enable the traffic to be carried on easily. A great many cotton bales were standing ready for shipment on the great river steamers. strikeout As these bales were spread out over the Quays, occupying thus strikeout 'a great deal of ground' insert much space, they suggested the idea of a great deal of traffic. One might perhaps have counted a thousand of them. But then I remembered that the whole of them w/d be but a very sorry cargo for one of the enormous steamers, the General Robert Lee, or the General Putman, on board of which I had lately been, + which were the largest vessels, excepting the Great Eastern I had