Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/583

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LITTLE ROCK

"THE CITY OF ROSES"

By GEORGE B. ROSE


There are spots marked out by nature for the sites of cities, where they must spring up as soon as civilization is established and remain as long as it endures. Such a spot is Little Rock.

The southeastern half of Arkansas is low and flat, composed chiefly of alluvial plains; the northwestern half rugged and broken, rising toward the western border into the mountains, some three thousand feet in elevation, which gradually drop away toward the east till they disappear altogether. At the point, almost the exact center of the State, where the last foothills form the south bank of the principal river, it was inevitable that a city should be built and that that city should become the State's capital. Indeed, so manifest