and Smoky island at the mouth of the Allegheny on the right.
The eye still keeping its circuit, looks over a fine level of three thousand acres, once intended as the scite of a town to be called Allegheny, to be the capital of the county, but the situation of Pittsburgh being very properly judged more convenient, it has eventually become the seat of justice of the county, and the most flourishing inland town in the United States. A chain of irregular hills, not so steep, but nearly as high as Coal hill, bounds this level, and completes the Panorama.
The plan of Pittsburgh by being designed to suit both the rivers, is in consequence irregular. The ground plot is a triangle. Some of the streets run parallel to each river, until they meet at the point, and they again are intersected by others at right angles, meeting at acute angles in the centre. At one of those acute angles at a corner of Wood street, is the Episcopal church, an octagonal building of brick not yet finished, and nearly opposite on the other side of the same street is a Presbyterian meeting-house of brick also, well built, neat, and roomy. In a remote street near Grant's hill, is a small old framed Presbyterian meeting-house, used by a sect a little differing from the other, and the German Lutherans {231} have a small house of worship near it—at the N. E. end of the town is a very good brick meeting-house for a large congregation of Covenanters—and without the town, near Mr. Woods's handsome seat, a handsome brick church is building for a society of Roman Catholicks. The court-house in the centre of the town is the only publick building which remains to be mentioned.
It is well built of brick, is spacious, and convenient for judiciary purposes, and serves for a place of worship for the Episcopal society until their own church is finished, as
