>>>>>>At length, upon the morning of the third day, we arrived at a spot so much more desolate than any we had yet beheld…At the junction of the two rivers lies a breeding place of fever, ague, and death—vaunted in England as a mine of golden hope and speculated in on the faith of monstrous representations, to many people’s ruin. A dismal swamp on which half-built houses rot away, teeming with rank, unwholesome vegetation in whose baleful shade the wretched wanderers who area tempted thither droop and die and lay their bones; the hateful Mississippi circling and eddying before it, …a slimy monster, hideous to behold, a hotbed of disease, an ugly sepulcher, a grave uncheered by any promise; a placer without a single quality in earth or air or water to commend it; such is the dismal Cairo. <<<<<<<<<<
wow. I tend to give people the benefit of doubt on their towns, but Dickens is a talented writer.
Maybe I like dismal places.