At last, however, experience had proved that these were inefficacious. A reliance on divine providence succeeded, and in the most terrible stage of the disorder the citizens discovered the most decent fortitude and the greatest resignation. These imaginary preventatives were therefore thrown aside.

From the 1st to the 7th of November, the mortality gradually decreased. On the 9th, the burials which had hitherto been so exceedingly numerous were reduced to six. The fugitive citizens now began to return, and the streets resumed their wonted life and activity.

During this awful calamity, as has been already observed, terror and dismay generally pervaded the citizens. Some were found, however, who at the risk of their own lives, were highly instrumental in saving the lives of their fellow-creatures. An hospital was

erected at Bushill, at the distance of about one mile from the inhabited part of the city. Thither the infected were sent in great numbers, but from a want of cleanliness and good order, the hospital and the grave were nearly the same thing.

A committee had been appointed to assist the guar dians of the poor in the legal discharge of their duty. It was one of the first objects of their care to remedy this evil. To search into the horrors of this dismal receptacle, required the fortitude of a Howard. Men, however, stepped forth, and voluntarily undertook the arduous task Stephen Girard, a native of France, a wealthy merchant of this city, and Peter Helm, a native of Philadelphia, both members of the committee, offered their assistance. Thanks to Heaven! their invaluable lives were preserved, and their generous labours crowned with success. The poor now no longer considered Bushill as the anti-chamber of the grave; but as a humane provision for the necessitous and sick and now many recovered.

So great a mortality, of course, left a great number of orphans in very destitute circumstances. Here again was a large field of labour open for the benevolent. The children were to be provided with nurses, provisions and other accommodations. The committee, however, to their former burthens undertook this, and procured

the Loganian library, which was fitted up as an orphan house, where about two hundred children were admitted, sixty of whom were infants

The accumulating expences of this institution, with that of Bushhlll, and many others, obviously required considerable sums of money. Liberal contributions were sent from different quarters amounting in the whole to 29,085 dollars.

During this melancholy period, the city lost ten of her most valuable physicians, and most of the others were sick at different times. The number of deaths in all, amounted to 4041."

Subsequent ravages of this terrible disorder, must be within the recollection of most of our readers.

MECHANICAL INVENTIONS PECULIAR TO AMERICA.

(The Editor, and Select Authorities)

SOME useful arts must be nearly coeval with the human race; for food, clothing, and habitation, even in their original simplicity require some art. Many other arts are of such antiquity as to place the inventors beyond the reach of tradition. Several have gradually crept into existence, without an inventor. The busy mind however, accustomed to a beginning in things cannot rest till it find or imagine a beginning to every art. Bacchus is said to have invented wine; and Staphylus the mixing water with wine; the bow and arrow are ascribed by tradition to Scythos, son of Jupiter, though a weapon all the world over. Spinning is so useful, that it must be honoured with some illustrious inventor: it was ascribed by the Egyptians to their goddess Isis; by the Greeks to Minerva; by the Peruvians to Mamma Ella, wife to their first sovereign Mango Capac; and by the Chinese to the wife of their Emperor Yao. We here may observe a connection of ideas; spinning is a female occupation, and it must have had a female inventor.

The Illinois are industrious above all their American neighbours. Their women are neat-handed: they

spin the wool of their horned cattle, which is as fine as that of English sheep. The stuffs made of it are dyed black, yellow, or red, and cut into garments sewed with roe-buck sinews. After drying the sinews in the sun, and beating them, they draw out threads as white and fine as any that are made of flax, but much tougher. The pottery of the ancient Indians, was in many respects equal, if not superior to that of modern European manufacture. The Indians of Maypure, in South America, and the natives of Lousiana and Florida, are, at this period, celebrated for their ingenuity in the manufacture of a species of Delf ware; on which are painted the figures of Crocodiles, Monkeys, &c.

In MECHANICS the United States Americans have been particularly inventive. The number of patents issued at the patent office, from the 1st of January 1812 to the 1st January 1813, amounted to 285. The machinery of flour-mills has several ingenious contrivances not known in Europe. The machines for making cottoncards, and for the manufacture of nails, are no less useful to the country than creditable to the inventors. The method employed of lighting the interior of American merchant vessels, and vessels of war, by means of cylinders of glass placed on the deck, is found to be very useful at sea. The American machinery for making boots and shoes by means of iron wire or nails is very ingenious; an idea may be formed of its economical advantages from the circumstance of its being able to furnish a pair of shoes in a quarter of an hour.

The STEAM-ENGINE of Evans, now employed in the United States, is considered both more economical and more simple than that of Bolton and Watt; but that of Perkins, should its pretensions be realized, will exceed every other, of this we shall probably speak in our succeeding volume ON EUROPE, as well as on the application of steam to the purposes of navigation.

The great number of rivers in the United States, and the great breadth and depth of these rivers, render the erection of stone bridges in general far too expensive for the means of a thin population. But the want of these has been extremely well supplied by wooden structures,

as previously described, which are made so solid, durable, and even beautiful, as to answer every useful purpose. Very great mechanical skill has been displayed in this species of carpentry. The Schuylkill bridge is 550 feet long, 42 feet wide, and is supported by two solid piers 195 feet apart. The middle arch is 1942 feet; the smaller arches 150. The height, from the surface of the water to the carriage-way, is thirty-one feet. The breadth of the carriage-way is eight feet. This bridge, which was erected by a company, cost 300,000 dollars, and was finished in 1808. The Trenton bridge, across the Delaware, thirty miles above Philadelphia, was finished in 1806. It is a quarter of a mile in length, and thirty-six feet wide. The distance between the abutments is 1008 feet; the piers are of cut stone, and there are about 16,000 perches of masonry. The su

perstructure consists of five arches, or series of arches, each of five sections or ribs, rising from the chord line in the proportion of 13 to 100. The sections are formed of white pine plank, from thirty-five to fifty feet in length, four inches thick, and twelve inches wide, forming a depth of three feet. These sections leave a breadth of eleven feet on each side for carriages, and four and a half for foot passengers. The platform is suspended from wing arches by means of iron chains.

An invention, or rather establishment of the first utility, is

THE MERCHANT MANUFACTURING MILL, at Louisville, in the state of Kentucky, described by Doctor M'Murtrie, and is remarkable, not only for its size and the quantity of flour it is calculated to manufacture when completed, but for the beauty of its machinery, which is said to be the most perfect of the millwright's abilities to be found in America or any other country. The foundations were commenced in June, 1815, and were ready to receive the enormous superstructure only in the spring of 1817. The building is divided into six stories, considerably higher than is usual, there being 102 feet from the first to the sixth.

* See page 215.

Waggons, containing the wheat or other grain for the mill, are driven under an arch, which commands the hopper of a scale, into which it is discharged and weighed, at the rate of seventy-five bushels in ten minutes; from this it is conveyed by elevators, to the sixth story, where, after passing through a screen, it is deposited in the garners; if manufacturing, from thence into a rubber of a new construction, whence it is conveyed into a large screen, and thence to the stones; when ground, it is reconveyed by elevators to to the hopper boy, in the sixth story; whence, after being cooled, it descends to the bolting cloths, the bran being deposited in a gallery on the left, and the shorts in another to the right. The flour being divided into fine, superfine, and middlings, is precipitated into the packing chests, whence it is delivered to the barrels, which are filled with great rapidity by a packing press.

This noble and useful establishment is not yet finished, and has already cost its owner, Mr. Tarascon, 150,000 dollars, and when completed, it will manufacture 500 barrels of flour per day. Immediately above, is a line of mill seats extending 2,662 feet, affording sites for works of that description, which, if erected, would be able jointly to produce 2,000 barrels in the twenty-four hours. Some experiments are now making by the owner, in order to determine the possibility of having a series of undershot wheels placed in the race above, to be propelled by the force of the current only. Should he succeed, he intends extending his works, and to employ this power for cotton spinning, fulling, weaving, &c.

THE FULTON STEAM FRIGATE,

So called from its inventor Mr Fulton, may be consisidered as a most formidable floating Battery.

The author of the "Picture of New York," gives the following account of her: "On the 20th of June, 1814, the keel of this novel and mighty engine was laid, and in little more than nine months, that is, on the 29th of October, she was launched from the yard of Adam and Noah Brown, her able and active architects. The scene exhibited on that occasion was magnificent. It happened