Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/203

various barracks and offices connected with the army. The town also contains the Senegal bank (1855), a Government printing-office (1855), a chamber of commerce (1869), a public library, and an agricultural society (1874). The round beehive huts of Guet N’dar are mainly inhabited by native fishermen. N’dar Toute consists of villas with gardens, and is frequented as a summer watering-place. There is a pleasant public garden in the town, and the neighbourhood is rendered attractive by alleys of date-palms. As there are no natural wells on the island, and the artesian well at the north side of the town gives only brackish water, St Louis used to be dependent on rain-tanks and the river (and except during the rainy season the water in the lower part of the river is salt); but in 1879 1,600,000 francs were appropriated to the construction of a reservoir at a height of 300 feet above the sea, 7$\scriptstyle {\frac {1}{2}}$ miles from the town. The mouth of the Senegal being closed by a bar of sand with extremely shifting entrances for small vessels, the steamships of the great European lines do not come up to St Louis, and passengers, in order to meet them, are obliged to proceed by rail to Dakar, on the other side of Cape Verd. Ordinary vessels have often to wait outside or inside the bar for days or weeks and partial unloading is often necessary. It is proposed to construct a pier opposite Guet N’dar. The population of St Louis was 15,980 in 1876 and 18,924 in 1883. Though founded in 1662, the town did not receive a municipal government till August 1872. See Senegal.

ST LOUIS, a city of the United States, chief city of the State of Missouri, is situated on the west bank of the Mississippi river, 20 miles below its confluence with the Missouri river and 200 miles above the influx of the Ohio, in 38° 38′ 3″·6 N. lat. and 90° 12′ 17″ W. long. It is distant by river about 1200 miles from New Orleans, and 729 from St Paul at the head of navigation on the Mississippi, and occupies a position near the centre of the great basin through which the mingled flood of the Mississippi and Missouri and their extensive system of tributaries is carried to the Gulf of Mexico. The site embraces a series of undulations extending westwards with a general direction nearly parallel to the river, which at this point makes a wide curve to the east. The extreme length in a straight line is 17 miles, the greatest width 6·60 miles, the length of river front 19·15 miles, and the area (including considerable territory at present suburban in character) 62$\scriptstyle {\frac {1}{2}}$ square miles. The elevation of the city directrix above the waters of the Gulf of Mexico is 428 feet, that of the highest point of ground in the city above the directrix is 203 feet; the extreme high-water mark above the directrix is 7 feet 7 inches, and the extreme low-water mark below the same is 33 feet 9$\scriptstyle {\frac {3}{4}}$ inches. The elevated site of the city prevents any serious interruption of business by high water, even in seasons of unusual floods.

Fig. 1.—Plan of St Louis (Central Part).
1. Four Courts.	7. Union Depot.
2. City Hall.	8. First Presbyterian Church.
3. Exposition Building.	9. Temple of the Gates of Truth.
4. Custom House.	10. St Peter and Paul Church.
5. Washington University.	11. Lindell Hotel.
6. Court House.	12. Southern Hotel.

The plan of the city is rectilinear, the ground being laid out in blocks about 300 feet square, with the general direction of street lines north-south and east-west. The wharf or river front is known as the Levee or Front Street, the next street west is Main Street, and the next Second, and thence the streets going north-south are, with few exceptions, in numerical order (Third, Fourth, &c.). Fifth Street has recently been named Broadway. The east-west streets bear regular names (Chestnut, Pine, Washington, Franklin, and the like). Market Street is regarded as the middle of the city, and the numbering on the intersecting streets commences at that line, north and south respectively. One hundred house numbers are allotted to each block, and the blocks follow in numerical order. The total length of paved streets in St Louis is 316 miles, of unpaved streets and roads 427, total 743 miles. In the central streets, subject to heavy traffic, the pavement is of granite blocks; wood, asphalt, and limestone blocks and Telford pavements are also used. There are nearly 300 miles of macadamized streets, including the roadways in the new limits. The length of paved alleys is about 66 miles. The city has an extensive sewer system (total length 223 miles), and, owing to the elevation of the residence and business districts above the river, the drainage is admirable. The largest sewer, Mill Creek (20 feet wide and 15 feet high), runs through the middle of the city, from west to east, following the course of a stream that existed in earlier days. The water-supply is derived from the Mississippi; the water is pumped into settling basins at Bissell’s Point, and thence into the distributing pipes, the surplus flowing to the storage reservoir on Compton Hill, which has a capacity of 60,000,000 gallons. The length of water-pipe is nearly 250 miles; the capacity of the low-service engines which pump the water into the settling basins is 56,000,000 gallons in twenty-four hours, and that of the high-service engines which supply the distributing system 70,000,000 gallons. The average daily consumption in twenty-four hours is nearly 28,000,000 gallons. The works, which are owned by the city, cost over $6,000,000. Among the more