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an excellent house, affording more comfort than the more expensive hotels of fashionable celebrity -- St Louis is a city of rapidly increasing importance, it is entirely a commercial city commanding the great produce trade of Illinois, Iowa, {unclear] & Missouri -- It receives produce from these states & ships it to N. Orleans - It also supplies Missouri & the neighboring states with goods of all sorts - It is on the road to the improving regions of the "far-west"-- All these advantages combine to make it a place of great trade - The effect of its peculiar condition is evidenced in the appearance of the city and its inhabitants who all wear the anxious and careworn looks of "men of business" not unmixed, I regret to say, with that restless & irreligious spirit which seems induced by the easy acquirement of the means of support & the selfish, heedless pursuit of wealth. The city has the appearance of a place xxx the progress of erection, nothing appears completely xxx-ing built, sewers dug & crowds of busy anxious xxxx hurrying to & fro. So rapid & [unclear} seen the increase of the population of this city, that time has not been sufficient to keep up with the demands for its extension. The old or French section of the town is closely built or rather built since the great fire of 1849, which destroyed almost the entire business portion of the town -- This extends along the river which runs at the foot of a wide "levee" which affords {unclear] for at least 100 steamboats nearly that number being always moored to the bank, taking in & discharging freight, letting off steam, & pushing out or arriving