Part 14 (1/2)
The close of the day found me once more upon the banks of the Kaskaskia; and early on the succeeding reat national road towards Terre Haute
This road is projected eighty feet in breadth, with a central carriage-path of thirty feet, elevated above all standing water, and in no instance to exceed three degrees fro the whole {114} line, and is under various stages of advancement; for es are to be of limestone, and ofequal in depth to one third their altitude The as for a while suspended, for the purpose of investigating forh failure of an appropriation frorant has since been voted sufficient to co so far as it is now projected[211] West of Vandalia the route is not yet located, though repeated surveys with reference to this object have been made St
Louis, Alton, Beardstown, and divers other places upon the Mississippi and its branches present claims to become the favoured point of its destination Upon this road I journeyed soives evidence of its enorrand national ith the cru relics of the mound-builders scattered over the land, and remark the contrast: yet how, think you, reader, would an hundred thousand th, to les fro woods and creeks As I rode along through the country I was so people fro to some rendezvous, all ar suspended fro-cabin, around which {115} were assembled about a hundred ether for the purpose of ”shooting a beeve,”[212] as the ulations I found to be chiefly these: A bull's-eye, with a centre nail, stands at a distance variously of from forty to seventy yards; and those five who, at the close of the contest, have most frequently _driven the nail_, are entitled to a fat ox divided into five portions Many of the marksmen in the vicinity, I was informed, could drive the nail twice out of every three trials Reluctantly I was forced to decline a civil invitation to join the party, and to leave before the sport coion of prairie and woodland interspersed, I reached near nightfall the village of Salem[213] This place, with its dark, weather-beaten edifices, forcibly recalled tothe iron-bound coast of New-England, over sole shrieked for more than two centuries The town is situated on the eastern border of the Grand Prairie, upon the stage-route from St Louis to Vincennes; and, as approached from one quarter, is co into the plain It is a quiet, innocent, gossiping little place as ever was, no doubt; never did any harm in all its life, and probably never will do any
This sage conclusion is predicated upon certain ite-school; at which, ever-notable place, the traveller, agreeable to invitation {116} attended, and carolled away most vehemently with about a dozen others of either sex, under the cognizance of a certain worthy personage styled _the Major_, whose vocation seemed to be to wander over these parts for the purpose of ”_building up_” the good people in psalhted with the fruits of the honest songster's efforts in Salem, and that I was, moreover, marvellously edified by the brisk airs of the ”Missouri Hares operations were performed, surely need not be done; therefore, prithee reader, question me not
_Mt Vernon, Ill_
xxxII
”After we are exhausted by a long course of application to business, how delightful are the first moments of indolence and repose! _O che bella coza di far niente!_”--STEWART
”Shall I not take uished ald Stewart, in his treatise upon the ”Active and Moral Powers,” has, in the language of my motto, somewhere[214] observed, that leisure after continued exertion is a source of happiness perfect in its kind; and {117} surely, at the s abundantly testify to the force of the re e and froh woodland, and over prairie, river, and rivulet, with almost the celerity of an _avant courier_, and hardly with closer regard to passing scenes and events My purpose, reader, for I may as well tell you, has been to accoree limited, a ”tour over the prairies” previously laid out This, within the prescribed period, I ath ”taking mine ease in e Kaskaskia
It is evening now The long su away in beauty fro up the frag the pathway of the week that is gone Last evening at this hour I was entering the town of Pinkneyville, andmyself upon the hare of Saleh resus in Illinois I have more than once referred to the frequency and violence of the thunder-gusts by which it is visited I had travelled notSalem when I was assailed by one of the most terrific stor the atmosphere had been , and the livid exhalations quivered along the parched-up soil of the prairies, as if over the auzy th diffused itself over the landscape; an inky cloud ca up in the northern horizon, and soon the thunder-peal began to bellow and reverberate along the darkened prairie, and the great raindrops caround Fortunately, a shelter was at hand; but hardly had the traveller availed hiain lighted up by the sunbeams; the sable cloud rolled off to the east, and all was beautiful and calht had but for a , and had then swept onward to acco With a reflection like this I was about re, terrible crash--as if the wild idea of heathen y was indeed about to be realized, and the thunder-car of Olyh the concave above--caused me to falter with foot in stirrup, and almost involuntarily to turn my eye in the direction from which the bolt seemed to have burst A few hundred yards froe el; and its enorled, shattered frohastly fragly impressive; one of those few scenes in a man's life the remembrance {119} of which years cannot wholly efface; which he never _forgets_ As I gazed upon this giant forest-son, which the lapse of centuries had perhaps hardly sufficed to rear to perfection, now, even though a ruin, noble, that celebrated passage of the poet Gray, when describing his _bard_, recurred with some force to my mind: in this description Gray is supposed to have had the painting of Raphael at Florence, representing Deity in the vision of Ezekiel, before him:
”Loose his beard and hoary hair Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air,” &c
A ride of a few hours, after the storht me to the pleasant little town of Mt Vernon[215] This place is the seat of justice for Jefferson county, and has a courthouse of brick, decent enough to the eye, to be sure, but said to have been so miserably constructed that it is a perilous feat for his honour here to poise the scales The town itself is an inconsiderable place, but pleasantly situated, in the edge of a prairie, if I forget not, and in every other respect is exactly what every traveller has seen a dozen times elsewhere in Illinois Like Shelbyville, it is chiefly noted for a rehly medicinal How this latter item may stand I know not, but I am quite sure that all of the _pure elereeable necessity to partake of duringakin Epsom salts and alum seemed the chief substances in solution; and with these ed
{120} It was awhen I left Mt Vernon; and as h a dense ti froetation, and fro but agreeable To endure the pitiless drenching of a summer-shoith equanimity demands but a brief exercise of stoicism: but it is not in the nature of _ of a drizzling, penetrating, everlasting fog, be it of sea origin or of land At length a thunder-gust--the usual remedy for these desperate cases in Illinois--dissipated the vapour, and the glorious sunlight streae of which I stood The route was, in the language ofreceived special instructions thereupon, I hesitated not to press onward over the swelling, pathless plain towards the _east_ After a fewcrossed an arht and received, by which the route becah a tract of woodland rearing itself fro perfectly Serbonian ”Muddy Prairie” indeed On every side rose the enormous shafts of the cypress, the water-oak, and the ray, pensile, parasiticalfunereal fibres into a dusky les in thedown from above
It was here for the first ti-necked, long-legged, long-toed, long-tailed gentry called wild-turkeys: and, verily, here was a host aainlycuriously doith outstretched necks and querulous piping, from their lofty perches on the traveller below It is by a skilful i of the obble that always succeeds it, that the sportsman decoys these sentimental bipeds within his reach The sa the deer--an i away the gentle enerous impulses; a most diabolical _ at length, by a circuitous path, once ht for the _direct_ route to Pinkneyville, and a course nearly _north_ was now pointed out Think of that; _east_, _south_, _north_, in regular succession too, over a tract of country perfectly uniforiven points! This was past all endurance To a moral certainty with me, the place of my destination lay away just southwest fro, therefore, my pocket-map and pocket-compass, by means of a little calculation I had soon laid down the prescribed course, determined to pursue none other, the reations ofPushi+ng {122} boldly forth into the prairie, I had not travelledoff in the direction I had chosen, and which _proved_ the direct route to Pinkneyville! Thus had I been forced to cross, recross, and cross again, a prairie h a swa of the _depth_, and all because of the utter ignorance of the worthy souls who took upon theiven this instance in detail for the special edification and benefit of all future wayfarers in Illinois
The only unerring guide on the prairies is the map and the compass
Half famished, and so, I found inian, and was ere long placed in a fair way to relieveat the safety-riband ofentleht, and warer_” _” for that _fixen_, a proposition which said stranger by no , therefore, before the old far's ramble, he readily perceived that withbut a superlative My evening ride was a delightful one along the edge of an extended prairie; but, though repeatedly assured by the worthy settlers upon the route that I could ”_catch no diffick_ulty on uide At length, crossing ”Mud River” upon a lofty bridge of logs, the town of Pinkneyville was before me just at sunset[216]
Pinkneyville has but little to coard beauty of location, regularity of structure, elegance, size, or proportion of edifices, or the cultivation of the fare It would, perhaps, be a pleasant town enough were its site er, and disposed with a little more of mathematical exactness, or its streets less lanelike and less filthy As it is, it will require so its fellows It is laid out on the roll of a small prairie of moderate fertility, but has quite an extensive settle farmers, a circumstance which will conduce far more to the ultimate prosperity of the place The most pro near the centre of the village; rather a savage-looking concern, and, doubtless, so designed by its sagacious architect for the purpose of frightening evil doers
Having taken these _observations_ froht, the traveller retired to his cha loath, after a ride of nearly fifty miles, to bestow his tired frame to rest But, alas! that verity compels him to declare it--
”'Tis true, and pity 'tis 'tis true,”
the ”_Traveller's Inn_” was anything, nay, _every_thing but the co fronpost seemed to imply Ah! the fond visions of quietude and repose, {124} of plentiful feeding and hearty sleeping, which those ic words, ”_Traveller's Inn_,” had conjured up in the weary traveller's fancy when they first delightfully swung before his eye
”But human pleasure, what art thou, in sooth!
The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below!!”
Well--exhausted, worn down, tired out, the traveller yet found it as utterly impossible quietly to rest, as does, doubtless, ”a half-assoilzed soul in purgatory;” and, hours before the day had begun to break, he arose and ordered out his horse Kind reader, hast ever, in the varyings of thy pilgrih this troublous world of ours, when faint, and languid, and weary with exertion, by any untoward circus of ”quiet nature's sweet restorer, bal night till thy very existence became a burden to thee; till thy brain whirled and thy nerves twanged like the tense harp-string? And didst thou not, then--didst thou not, from the very depths of thy soul, assever this ill, of all ills mortality is heir to, that one most utterly and unutterably intolerable patiently to endure? 'Tis no very pitiful thing, sure, to consuh it be: we commiserate the sacrifice, but we fail not to appreciate the reward Around the couch of suffering humanity, who could not outwatch the stars? the recompense is not of _this_ world
”When youth and pleasurefeet,”