was there, and the grass was growing in the streets.

Louisville is the commercial city of the State, and stands on the
Ohio. It is another great town, like all the others, built with
high stores, and great houses and stone-faced blocks. I have no
doubt that all the building speculations have been failures, and
that the men engaged in them were all ruined. But there, as the
result of their labor, stands a fair great city on the southern
banks of the Ohio. Here General Buell held his headquarters, but
his army lay at a distance. On my return from the West I visited
one of the camps of this army, and will speak of it as I speak of my
backward journey. I had already at this time begun to conceive an
opinion that the armies in Kentucky and in Missouri would do at any
rate as much for the Northern cause as that of the Potomac, of which
so much more had been heard in England.

While I was at Louisville the Ohio was flooded. It had begun to
rise when I was at Cincinnati, and since then had gone on increasing
hourly, rising inch by inch up into the towns upon its bank. I
visited two suburbs of Louisville, both of which were submerged, as
to the streets and ground floors of the houses. At Shipping Port,
one of these suburbs, I saw the women and children clustering in the
up-stairs room, while the men were going about in punts and
wherries, collecting drift-wood from the river for their winter's
firing. In some places bedding and furniture had been brought over
to the high ground, and the women were sitting, guarding their
little property. That village, amid the waters, was a sad sight to
see; but I heard no complaints. There was no tearing of hair and no
gnashing of teeth; no bitter tears or moans of sorrow. The men who
were not at work in the boats stood loafing about in clusters,