Part 11 (1/2)
”Away to the prairie! away!
Where the sun-gilt flowers are waving, When awaked fro of day, O'er the eay zephyrs play, And their pinions in dewdrops are laving”
On theof my arrival at Grafton, whileready for my necessities, I stepped out to survey the place, and availed myself of an hour of leisure to visit a so the cliffs, a little below the village, the entrance of which had caughtthe movements of the ferryman on the opposite bank of the Mississippi It is approached by a rough footpath along the {40} river-e masses of lis above: these, at this point, as before stated, are soht The orifice of the cave is elliptical in outline, and so of waters apparently in the surface of the smooth escarpment; it is about twenty feet in altitude, and asthe threshold of the entrance, an immediate expansion takes place into a spacious apartment some forty or fifty feet in depth, and about the sae perpendicular column of solid rock rears itself frothens itself away into a series of apartments to the distance of several hundred feet, with two lesser entrances in the saular intervals The walls of the cave, like everything of a geological character in this region, are co in testaceous fossils The spot exhibits conclusive evidence of having once been subject to diluvial action; and the cavern itself, as I have observed, seems little else than an excavation froe quantities of hu little doubt that, by the former dwellers in this fair land, the spot was employed as a catacomb I myself picked up the _sincipital_ section of a scull, which would have ecstasied a virtuoso beyond measure; and {41} several of the _lu else, abundantly deinal natives of North Amy race The spot is now desecrated by the presence of a party of sturdy coopers, who could not, however, have chosen a htful apartment for their handicraft; rather more taste than piety, however, has been betrayed in the selection
The view of the water and the opposite forest from the elevated mouth of the cavern is very fine, and three or four broad-leafed sycahtful shade The waters of the river floard in a deep current at the base, and the fish throw theht fro retreat from the fiery fervour of athe village, and over which winds the great road to the north, though not a little wearisome to surmount, command from the summit a vast and beautiful landscape A series of inclined planes are talked of by the worthy people of Grafton to overcoe less difficult of inland ingress and regress; and though the idea is not a little arees, yet e consider that this place, if it ever becohfare and depot on the route froions of the Missouri to the northern counties of Illinois, the design seeht be_ A charter, indeed, for a railroad {42} frofield, has been obtained, a coanized, and a portion of the stock subscribed;[180] while another corporation is to erect a splendid hotel The traveller over the bluffs, long before he stands upon their summit, heartily covets any species of locomotion other than the back of a quadruped But the scenery, as he ascends, caught at glily beautiful Upon one of the loftiest ee stone-heap; the tumulus, perchance, of some red-browed chieftain of other days It was a beautiful custom of these simple-hearted sons of the wilderness to lay away the relics of their loved and honoured ones even upon the loftiest, greenest spots of the whole earth; where the freed spirit lories of that pleasant forest-home where once it roved in the chase or bounded forth upon the path of war And it is a circumstance not a little worthy of notice, that veneration for the dead is a feeling universally betrayed by uncivilized nations The Indianof Florida annually despoils herself of her luxuriant tresses to wreathe the headstone beneath which reposes the bones of her husband The Canadian mother, when her infant is torn from her bosom by the chill hand of death, and, with a heart al, she has been forced to lay hi intensity of her affection, to bathe the toenial flood which Nature poured through her veins for his nourish The Oriental nations, it is well knohether civilized or savage, have ever, from deepest antiquity, manifested an eloquent solicitude for the sepulchres of their dead The expiring Israelite, we are always told, ”was gathered to his fathers;” and the tombs of the Jewish orgeously nificent The nations of modern Turkey and India wreathe the toayest and most beautiful flowers of the season; while the very atmosphere around is refreshed by fountains
From the site of the stone-heap of which I have spoken, and which may or may _not_ have been erected to the lorious cosion, miles in circumference, is unfolded to the eye At your feet, far below, flow on the checkered waters of the Mississippi, gliding in ripples a their emerald islands; while at intervals, as the broad strea sheen of its surface through the dense old woods that fringe its in Beyond these, to the south, lies spread the broad and beautiful Ma with the distant horizon laid open to the eye, rolling and heaving its heavy herbage in the breeze to the sunlight like the long wave of ocean And the bright green island-groves, the cape-like forest-strips swelling out upon its boso surface of lakes and water-sheets, aletation, with thousands of {44} aquatic birds wheeling their broad flight over them, all contribute to fill up the lineaments of a scene of beauty which fails not to enrapture the spectator Now and then along the s cabin-smoke upon its border, and vast herds of dohbourhood, betray the presence of_his_ works with the wild and beautiful creations of Nature On the right, at a distance of two nificent bluffs in the back-ground stealing softly and quietly into the great river through the wooded islands at its mouth The day was a sultry one; the athts of the bluffs swept theair, fresh and cool from the distant prairie For some miles, as is invariably the case upon the banks of the Western rivers, the road winds along a bluffs and sink-holes; and so constantly does its course vary and diverge, that a pocket coe Indeed, all his calculations to the contrary notwithstanding, the traveller throughout the whole of this region describes with his route a coinia fence The road is not a little celebrated for its tortuosity At length the traveller ee beneath the forest stands a considerable settle on Macoupin Creek, from which it takes a name
In the latter part of 1816 this settlement was commenced, and was then the most northern location of whites in the Territory of Illinois[181]
{45} It was evening, at the close of a sultry day, that the village of Carrolton appeared beforethe trees[182] I was struck with the quiet air of sieneral outlines are those of every other Western village I have visited One broad, regular street extends through the town, upon either side of which stand the stores and better class of private residences; while in the back-ground, scattered pro-cabins surrounded by cornfields, es of the French Three sides of the town are bounded by forest, while the fourth opens upon the prairie called ”String Prairie” In the centre of the village, upon the principal street, is reserved a square, in the middle of which stands the courthouse, with other public structures adjacent, and the stores and hotels along its sides One thing in Carrolton which struck ious denominations
Of these there are not less than five or six; three of which have churches, and a fourth is setting itself in order to build; and all this in a village of hardly one thousand inhabitants The courthouse is a handsohbouring region is fertile and healthy; well proportioned with prairie and timber, atered by the Macoupin and Apple Creeks,[183] and well populated by a sturdy, thriving race of yeoe; and, so far as my own observation {46} extended, little attention is paid or tasteelse
About a dozen e of Whitehall, a flourishi+ng settlee, from the centre of which, soo the spot was an uncultivated waste; the town has noo houses of worshi+p, a school, an incorporation for a seminary, two taverns, six hundred inhabitants, and a steam mill to feed them withal A few miles from this place, on the outskirts of another srants from Western New-York The women and children were piled upon the top of the household stuff with about as much ceree luled suspended pots and kettles, dutch-ovens and tin-kitchens, cheese-roasters and bread-toasters, all in ad harsh discord The cart-wheels theates of Milton's hell on their hinges, ”grated harsh thunder” In the van of the cavalcade strode soberly on the patriarch of the family, with his elder sons, axe upon shoulder, rifle in hand, a veritable Israel Bush For six weeks had the wanderers been travelling, and a weary, bedusted-looking race were they, that ee goes forward, and begins to assu once been born and {47} christened, is aourd of Jonah, the astonishi+ng bean of the giant-killer, or the enchantrowth of the prairie-village of the Far West Of all this I was forcibly reh quite a town upon my route named Manchester, where I dined, and which, if my worthy landlord was not incorrect, two years before could hardly boast a log-cabin[185] It is now a thriving place, on the northern border of Mark's Prairie, fro its streets; it is surrounded by a body of excellent tinum desideratum_ in Illinois This scarcity of timber will not, however, be deemed such an insurmountable obstacle to a dense and early population of this state as may have been apprehended, e consider the unexarowth pushes itself forward into the prairies when once protected fro effects of the autumnal fires; the exhaustless masses of bituminous coal which may be thrown up from the ravines, and creeks, and bluffs of nearly every county in the state; the facility of ditching, by the assistance of blue grass to bind the friable soil, and the luxuriance of hedge-rows for enclosures, as practised alland, France, and the Netherlands; and, finally, the convenience of
There is not, probably, any quarter of the state destined to becoan county through which I was now passing On every side, wherever the traveller turns his eye, beautiful farms unfold their broad, wavy prairie-fields of maize and wheat, indicative of affluence and prosperity The _worst_ soil of the prairies is best adapted to wheat; it is _generally_ too fertile; the growth too rapid and luxuriant; the stalk so tall and the ear so heavy, that it is lodged before matured for the sickle Illinois, consequently, can never becorains it is now unequalled
The rapidity hich this state has been peopled is wonderful, especially its northern counties In the year 1821, that section of country ean county numbered but twenty families; in 1830 its population was nearly fourteen thousand, and cannot now be estimated at less than seventeen thousand!
Many of the settlers are natives of the New-England States; and with theht those habits of industrious sobriety for which the North has ever been distinguished In all the enterprise of the age, professing for its object the amelioration of huion, and the arts, Morgan county stands in advance of all others in the state What a wonderful revolution have a few fleeting years of active enterprise induced throughout a region once luxuriating in all the savageness of nature; while the wild prairie-rose ”blushed unseen,” and the wilder forest-son pursued the deer! Fair villages, {49} like spring violets along the ladden the land, and to render even this beautiful portion of God's beautiful world--though for ages a profitless waste--at length the abode of intelligence, virtue, and peace
It was near the close of the day that the extent and frequency of the farms on either side, the ularity of enclosures, the multitude of vehicles of every description by which I was encountered, and the dusty, hoof-beaten thoroughfare over which I was travelling, all reh to Jacksonville, the principal town in Illinois Passing ”Diamond Grove,” a beautiful forest-island of nearly a thousand acres, elevated above the surrounding prairie to which it gives a na fare stretching away along the northern horizon He soon enters an extended avenue, perfectly unifor on to the town Beautiful meadows and harvest-fields on either side sweep off beyond the reach of the eye, their neat white cottages and palings peeping through the ena upland at the distance of soe,” relieved by a dark grove of oaks resting against the western sky[187] These large buildings, together with the nuly relieved, give to the place a dignified, city-like aspect in distant {50} view After a ride of more than a mile within the iht elevation, and the next moment finds himself in the public square, surrounded on every side by stores and dwellings, carts and carriages, market-people, horses, and hotels
_Jacksonville, Ill_
XXVII
”What a large volurasped in this little span of life by hi his eyes to see what ti out to hi he can _fairly_ lay his hands on”--STERNE'S _Sentiood part, whosoever thou be, And wish me no worse than I wish unto thee”
TURNER
It was a remark of that celebrated British statesman, Horace Walpole, that the vicissitudes of no , if detailed in the siinated with the poet Gray, if an idea which has suggested itself to the mind of everythe sentiment as true, the author of these SKETCHES has alone presumed to lay his observations and adventures as a traveller before the _majesty of the public_; and upon this principle _solely_ lance at those which have preceded must convince the reader that their object has been by no raphical and statistical information
Errors and omissions have, doubtless, often occurred in the hasty viehich has been taken: partially through negligence, soe, h aforethought or malice prepense Upon the whole, the writer admits himself completely laid open to criticism; and, should any public-spirited worthy dees of literature and the coht so to do: nathless, he is ather up his ”labour for his pains!” But _allons_
It is only ten or twelve years since the town site of Jacksonville, now, perhaps, the e in Illinois, was first _laid off_; and it is but within the past five years that its present unprecedented advancement can be dated[188] Its site is a broad elevated roll in the midst of a beautiful prairie; and, from whatever point it is approached, few places present a htful prospect The spot seehbouring prairie is undulating, and the soil uncommonly rich, even in this land of fertility It is h cultivation, and upon its northern and western edge is environed by pleasant groves, watered by many a ”sweet and curious brook” The public square in the centre of the town is of noble dimensions, {52} occupied by a handsome courthouse and a -houses, stores, law-offices, a church, bank, and hotel From this point radiate streets and avenues in all directions: one through each side of every angle near its vertex, and one through the middle of every side; so that the town-plat is coles If I mistake not in my description, it will be perceived that the public square of Jacksonville may be entered at no less than twelve distinct avenues In addition to the spacious courthouse, the public buildings consist of three or four churches One of these, belonging to the Congregational order, betrays ant I remember ever to have seen It consists , richly carpeted; a dark hly polished; and a neat sofa of the saround The outline and proportion are perfect; and, like the doctrines of the sect which worshi+ps here, there is an air of severe, dignified elegance about the whole structure, pleasing as it is rare The nuly ser in a strange land to meet the peculiarities of that worshi+p to which frorateful to the New-England enise in this distant spot the siely ht with them many of their customs and peculiarities The State of Illinois land of the West In enial than any other to the character and prejudices of the Northern erant It is not a slave state; internal irand feature of its civil polity; and measures for the universal diffusion of intellectual, ression In Henry county, in the northern section of the state, tn-plats have within the past year been laid off for colonies of e in the ensuing fall, accompanied each by their minister, physician, lawyer, and with all the various artisans of mechanical labour necessary for such communities The settlements are to be called Wethersfield and Andover[189] Active ion, temperance, etc, have already been taken[190]