extends back over a succession of gently sloping hills, whose substratum is a sandy marl, and through which no mephitic vapors arise, no dampness injurious to health or life. In the original construction of the city, these hills probably presented serious obstacles to our worthy forefathers. Some were steep and unsightly, and required much grading, but the gradual expansion of the town enabled its builders to trim the rough edges, and cut down only so much as would relieve their precipitous character, without impairing their beauty and picturesqueness. These hills rise one above another step by step, until, on the outer boundaries of the city as now constituted, at almost any point, magnificent views of Baltimore, its harbor and the Chesapeake Bay, can be obtained. It may be also added that
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THE CATHEDRAL.
because of its peculiar topography a person walking in any direction for three or four hundred yards, can obtain panoramic views of different sections of the city, such as can be had in few other places in the world. The Patapsco River with its inlets indents the land upon which Baltimore is built to a very considerable extent, forming natural extensions for wharf-fronts, and at the same time adding greatly to the beauty of the harbor, and the general landscape. Perhaps at some early period in the history of our city the marshes which formed at the head of these inlets, by their malaria may have produced those bilious diseases so frequent along the water courses of the Chesapeake, and a citizen of to-day feels doubtless a sensation of compassion, not unmixed however with self-congratulation, when he thinks of his ancestor, racked and tortured with the shaking-ague as he hurried from his morning meal to attend to the wants of his palsied customers. The marshes have long since been drained, the shores about the inlets converted into substantial wharves for the accomodation of our rapidly increasing commerce, and the miasma no longer rises from the lowlands, to disconcert the calculations of our citizens. Whether he dwells upon the
