Part 7 (1/2)

Whoever will take upon himself the trouble to run his eye over the ”Tourist's Pocket Map of Illinois,” will perceive, stretching along the western border of the state, parallel with the river, a broad carriage highway, in a direction nearly north, to a little village called Carlinville; if then he glances to the east, he les to that section of the state Well, it is here, upon this pathway, just on theaway towards the town of Hillsborough,[137] that I findride The afternoon has been one of those dreary, drizzly, disagreeable seasons which relax the nerves and ride like an incubus upon the spirits; and my route has conducted me over a broad-spread, desolate plain; for, lovely as ht flowerets and its tall grass-tops {187} are nodding in the sunlight, it is a melancholy place when the sky is beclouded and the rain is falling There is a certain indescribable sensation of loneliness, which steals over the mind of the solitary traveller when he finds himself alone in the heart of these boundless plains, which he cannot aith; and the approach to a forest is hailed with pleasure, as serving to quiet, with the vague idea of _society_, this sense of dreariness and desertion Especially is this the case when rack andfrom the view those picturesque woodland-points and proroves which, when the sky is clear, swell out upon every side into the bosom of the plain Then all is fresh and joyous to the eye as a vision: change the scene, and the grand, gloonificence of old ocean presents itself on every side The relief to the picture afforded by the discovery of man's habitation can hardly be described

It was near nightfall, when, wearied by the fatigue of riding and drenched with inia, beneath whose lowly roof-tree I ah hardly the most sumptuous edifice of which it has been my lot to be an in forward to hearty refreshment and to sound slumber upon the couch by my side There are few objects to be met with in the backwoods of the West rant After selecting an elevated spot as {188} a site for building, a cabin or a log-house--which is somewhat of an i ht trees, of a size convenient for rehtly hewn upon the opposite sides, and the extremities notched or mortised with the axe They are then piled upon each other so that the extrele or double edifice is constructed, agreeable to the taste or ability of the builder

Ordinarily the cabin consists of two quadrangular apartments, separated by a broad area between, connected by a co a parallelograth of its width The better of these apartments is usually appropriated to the entertainuest, and is furnished with several beds and some articles of rude furniture to correspond The open area constitutes the ordinary sitting and eating apartment of the fahtful retreat The intervals between the logs are stuffed with fragments of wood or stone, and plastered with mud or mortar, and the chimney is constructed much in the same manner The roof is covered with thin clapboards of oak or ash, and, in lieu of nails, transverse pieces of timber retain them in their places Thousands of cabins are thus constructed, without a particle of iron or even a coive to the roof aly aspect of thatch at a little distance, but they render it impermeable to even the heaviest and {189} allery often extends along one or both sides of the building, adding much to its coolness in summer and to its warmth in winter by the protection afforded from sun and snow The floor is constructed of short, thick planks, technically terh hardly sh for a ballroo, and effectually resist moisture and cold The apertures are usually cut with a view to free ventilation, and the chimneys stand at the extremities, outside the walls of the cabin A few pounds of nails, a few boxes of glass, a few hundred feet of lumber, and a few days' assistance of a house-carpenter, would, of course, contribute not a little to the co_; but neither of these are indispensable In rear of the pres; stables, corn-crib, meat-house, &c, all of the itself, and quite as comfortable for residence If to all this we add a well, walled up with a section of a hollow cotton-wood, a cellar or cave in the earth for a pantry, a zigzag rail fence enclosing the whole clearing, a dozen acres of Indian corn bristling up beyond, a sarden and orchard, and a host of swine, cattle, poultry, and naked children about the door, and the _tout ensemble_ of a backwoods farmhouse is complete Minor circumstances vary, of course, with the peculiarities of the country and the origin of the settlers; but the principal features of the picture everywhere prevail The present mode of cultivation {190} sweeps off vast quantities of timber; but it must soon be superseded Houses of brick and stone will take the place of log-cabins; hedge-roill supply that of rail enclosures, while coal for fuel will be a substitute for wood

At Upper Alton athered upa narrow pathway through the forest The trees, ether their giant branches over the road, forhtful screen froinable task, after once entering upon the direct route, to continue upon it This is a peculiarity of Western roads The coh, but the traveller soon finds his path diverging all at once in several different directions, like the radii of a circle, with no assignable cause therefor, and not the slightest reason presenting itself why he should select one of theood or bad And the sequel often shows him that there in reality existed no more cause of preference than was apparent; for, after a few tortuosities through the forest, for variety's sake, the paths all terminate in the sa, or a sand-bank often splits the path as if it were a flowing stream; and then the traveller takes upon hi to any point of the compass he {191}the obstruction

Passing -cabins, such as I have described, with their extensive rant fro the heat of noon; and having luxuriated upon an excellent dinner, prepared and served up in right New-England fashi+on, I again betook myself to my solitary route But I little anticipated to have met, in the distant prairies of Illinois, the habitation of one who had passed his life in e Yet I know not why the occurrence should be a cause of surprise Such erations are of constant occurrence The farht years in the West; his farh cultivation characteristic of the Northern e around Yet was the eed hihed for his native northern hoion through which, for most of the day, I journeyed was that, of very extensive application in the West, styled ”Barrens,” by nounproductiveness of soil, but a species of surface of heterogeneous character, uniting prairie with _timber_ or forest, and usually a description of land as fertile, healthy, and atered as in from the early settlers of that section of Kentucky south of Green River, which, presenting {192} only a scanty, dwarfish growth of timber, was deemed of necessity _barren_, in the true acceptation of the term[138] This soil there and elsewhere is now considered better adapted to every variety of produce and the vicissitudes of climate than even the deep mould of the prairies and river-bottos forward, when the annual fires have once been stopped in this species of land, is said to be astonishi+ng; and the first appearance of tiives it the character, to some extent, of barrens Beneath the trees is spread out a audy petals of the heliotrope, and the bright crimson buds of the dwarf-sumach in the hollows Indeed, some of the most lovely scenery of the West is beheld in the landscapes of these barrens or ”oak openings,” as they are more appropriately styled For nificence of park scenery on every side, with all the diversity of the slope, and swell, and meadow of human taste and skill Interminable avenues stretch away farther than the eye can reach, while at intervals through the foliage flashes out the unruffled surface of a pellucid lake There are many of these circular lakes or ”sinkholes,” as they are termed in Western dialect, which, as they possess no inlet, sees or from the clouds The outline is that of an inverted cone, as if for waters; and, as sinkholes exist in great numbers in the vicinity of the rivers, and possess an outlet {193} at the bottoh a substratum of porous limestone, the idea is abundantly confirs are also observed Some of them in Greene county burst forth from the earth and the fissures of the rocks with sufficient force to whirl a _run_ of heavy buhrstones, and the power of the fountains seeht These sas are said to constitute one of thefeatures of the peninsula of Florida There, as here, the substratum is porous liives birth to the springs The volu fountains is said to be astonishi+ngly great; e ones, also, are known to exist in the beds of lakes and rivers Fros originated, doubtless, the tradition which Spanish chroniclers aver to have existed a the Lucayo Islands or in the interior of Florida there existed a fountain whose waters had the property of i perennial youth Only twenty years after the discoveries of Columbus, and more than three centuries since, did the romantic Juan Ponce de Leon, an associate of the Genoese and subsequent governor of Porto Rico, explore the peninsula of Florida in search of this traditionary fountain; of the success of the enterprise we have no account A the other poetic founts of the ”Land of {194} Flowers,” we are _told_ of one situated but a few miles from Fort Gaines, called ”Sappho's Fount,”[139] from the idea which prevails that its waters i sweet sounds to the voices of those who partake of the fro else, however beautiful, had, by continuous succession, begun to become somewhat in of a wide, undulating prairie I was struck, as is every traveller at first view of these vast plains, with the grandeur, and novelty, and loveliness of the scene beforeout upon the boundless landscape beforein the billowy beauty in the breeze; the narrow pathinding off like a serpent over the rolling surface, disappearing and reappearing till lost in the luxuriant herbage; the shadowy, cloud-like aspect of the far-off trees, loo the horizon, like the pyraroves besprinkled aetation, like islets in the waters; the cri in the sun--these features of inaniely beautiful to one born and bred aazed upon them ”for the first”

”The prairies! I behold theht Takes in the encircling vastness”

{195} As I rode leisurely along upon the prairie's edge, I passed -cabins couched in a corner beneath the forest; and, verily, would a farasp” to behold the prairie cornfield of the Western erant; and yetluxuriance of the vegetable itself Descending a swell of the prairie near one of these farms, a buck with his doe leaped out from a thicket beside rass-tops, free as the wind They are often shot upon the prairies, I was informed by an old hunter, at whose cabin, in the ht, and hoht He was a pioneer froround_, and ed forests, where Boone, and Whitley, and Kenton once roved[140] Only fifty years ago, and for the first time were the beautiful fields of Kentucky turned up by the ploughshare of the Virginia eeneration we behold plunging deeper into the wilderness West Hoould the worthy old Governor Spotswood stand astounded, could he now rear his venerable bones fro-place, and look forth upon this lovely land, far away beyond the Blue Ridge of the Alleghany hills, the very passage of which he had deeold” and ”the order tramontane” ”_Sic juvat transcendere montes_” Twenty years before Daniel Boone, ”backwoodsovernor of Virginia, undertook, with great preparation, a passage of the Alleghany ridge For this expedition were provided a large number of horseshoes, an article not common in some sections of the ”Old Dominion;” and frolimpse of the Western Valley, was instituted the ”_Trahts of the Golden Horseshoe_,” with theolden horseshoe worn upon the breast Could the young man of that day have protracted the limits of life but a few years beyond his threescore and ten, what astonishment would not have filled hilorious West,” the region _then_ regarded as the unknown and howling _wilderness beyond theride over a dusty road, beneath a sultry sun,to retire to an early rest But in a few hoursand the crash of thunder For nearly five weeks had the prairies been refreshed by not a solitary shower; and the withered crops and the parched soil, baked to the consistency of stone or ground up to powder, betrayed alar evidence of the consequence Day had succeeded day The scorching sun had gone up in the firmament, blazed from his meridian throne, and in lurid sultriness descended to his rest The subtle fluid had been gathering and concentrating in the skies; and, early on the night of {197} which I speak, an inky cloud had been perceived rolling slowly up from the western horizon, until the whole heavens were enveloped in blackness Then the tempest burst forth Peal upon peal the hoarse thunder calare, and streaht sky, like Ossian's storth there was a hush of elements, and all was still--”still as the spirit's silence;” then ca, terrible crash and rattle, as if the concave of the firh the boundlessness of space; the next h the darkness I have witnessed thunder-stor the cliffs of ust upon the broad prairie-plains of the West is nificent spectacle have I never beheld than that, when one of these broad-sheetedthe black bosom of the cloud, quiver for an instant over the prairie arht, And stor, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woht!

Thou wert not sent for sluht, A portion of the tempest and of thee!”

{198} And a sharer in the teri-cabin of the prairie Unhappily for his repose or quiet, had he desired either, the worthy host, in laudable zeal for a hen erecting his hut, had thought proper to neglect or to forget one of the indispensables for such a convenience in shape of sundry panes of glass Wherefore, as is easy to perceive, said aperture cori elements without found abundant entrance for a by-skirrireeable to Falstaff's _discretionary_ views of valour, seizing upon personal effects, he beat a retreat to more hospitable realms

_Greene County, Ill_

XVIII

”What earthly feeling unabash'd can dwell In Nature'shills, the roar of floods, And frown of rocks and porandeur on the soul iness”

HEMANS

”La grace est toujours unie a la nificence, dans les scenes de la nature”--CHATEAUBRIAND'S ”_Atala_”

It was ht was strealoriously over the fresh landscape The at cool and free a in the clouds above its grassy nest; the deer was rising fro heavily inthe skirts of the prairie woodlands, as I mounted my horse at the door of the cabin beneath whose roof I had passed the night Before e of the plain, rose an open park of lofty oaks, with a hted up by the sunbeaeous spectacle The entire wilderness of green; every bough, spray, leaf; every blade of grass, eed, and floweret, was hung with tre and refracting the sun-rays, threw back all the hues of the iris It was indeed aof beauty after the tempest; and Nature see in all their own

Constituted as we all naturally are, there exist, bound up within the secresies of the bosoned by our Creator to leap forth in joyousness in view of the s of exquisite delicacy deep hidden in the chambers of the breast, but which, touched or breathed upon never so lightly, strike the keys of feeling and fill the heart with hars of that lories of this visible world,” can stand a passionless beholder; who feels not his pulses thrill with quickened vibration, and his heart to heave in fuller gush as he views the beneficence of his Maker in the nificence of his works; who fro accents of Atheis of blind fatality, the resultant of less chance!

When we look abroad upon the panorama of creation, so palpable is the impress of an omnipotent hand, and so deeply upon all its features is planted the den, that it would almost seem, in the absence of reason and revelation, we need but contemplate the scenery of nature to be satisfied of the existence of an all-wise, all-powerful Being, whose workmanshi+p it is The {201} fir hosts; the earth, spread out in boundlessness at our feet, now draperied in the verdant freshness of springtiain tee, and then slu in the chill, cheerless desolation of winter, all proclaiht The mountain that rears its bald forehead to the clouds; the boo ocean; the nificent sweep of the Western prairie; the eternal flow of the Western river, proclaim, in tones extensive as the universe--tones not to be misunderstood, that their CREATOR lives

It is a circumstance in the character of the human mind, which not the most careless or casual observer of its operations can fail to have rerand and ie and elevate the understanding, lend a loftier tone to the feelings, and, agreeable to the hts and his emotions directly to their Author, ”froe son of the wilderness, as he roaloomy forests, which for centuries have veiled the soil at their base fro over hi the heavy branches; and in Nature's sis, he believes that ”the Great Spirit is whispering in {202} the tree tops”

He stands by the side of Niagara With subdued eazes upon the majestic world of floods as they hurry on They reach the barrier!

they leap its precipice! they are lost in thunder and in foa waters disappear in the black abyss; as the bow of the covenant, ”like hope upon a deathbed,” flings its irised arch in horrible beauty athwart the hell of elements, the bewildered child of nature feels his soul sithin his bosoht rises solemnly upon him, ”the Great Spirit is here;” and with tih the forest shades around him for some palpable demonstration of His presence And such is the effect of all the grand scenes of nature upon the e: they lead it up to the ”Great Spirit” Upon this principle is the fact alone to be accounted for, that no race of beings has yet been discovered destitute of _all_ idea of a Supree and obedience It is _His_ voice they hear in the deep hour ofthe bosoh the firht orb of day, as he blazes from the eastern horizon; or, ”like a monarch on a funeral pile,” sinks to his rest

_He_ is beheld in the pale queen of night, as in silvery radiance she walks the fir as it sinks behind his native hills In the soft breathing of the ”summer wind”

and in the terrible sublientle dew of heaven and {203} the su rivulet and the wide, wild river; in the delicate prairie-flower and the gnarledminnow and the le; in each and in all of the creations of universal nature, the e sees, feels, _realizes_ the presence of a Deity

”Earth with her thousand voices praises God!”