XXVI

"When breath and sense have left this clay,

In yon damp vault, oh lay me not;

But kindly bear my bones away

To some lone, green, and sunny spot."

"Away to the prairie! away!

Where the sun-gilt flowers are waving,

When awaked from their couch at the breaking of day,

O'er the emerald lawn the gay zephyrs play,

And their pinions in dewdrops are laving."

On the morning of my arrival at Grafton, while my brisk little hostess

was making ready for my necessities, I stepped out to survey the

place, and availed myself of an hour of leisure to visit a somewhat

remarkable cavern among the cliffs, a little below the village, the

entrance of which had caught my attention while awaiting the movements

of the ferryman on the opposite bank of the Mississippi. It is

approached by a rough footpath along the {40} river-margin, piled up

with huge masses of limestone, which have been toppled from the

beetling crags above: these, at this point, as before stated, are some

hundred feet in perpendicular height. The orifice of the cave is

elliptical in outline, and somewhat regular, being an excavation by

the whirling of waters apparently in the surface of the smooth

escarpment; it is about twenty feet in altitude, and as many in width.

Passing the threshold of the entrance, an immediate expansion takes

place into a spacious apartment some forty or fifty feet in depth, and

about the same in extreme height: nearly in the centre a huge

perpendicular column of solid rock rears itself from the floor to the

roof. From this point the cavern lengthens itself away into a series

of apartments to the distance of several hundred feet, with two lesser

entrances in the same line with that in the middle, and at regular

intervals. The walls of the cave, like everything of a geological

character in this region, are composed of a secondary limestone,

abounding 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 from the

heart of an enormous mass of marine petrifaction. Large quantities of

human bones of all sizes have been found in this cavern, leaving

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 _lumbar vertebræ_, which, if they

prove nothing else, abundantly demonstrate the aboriginal natives of

North America to have been no pigmy race. The spot is now desecrated

by the presence of a party of sturdy coopers, who could not, however,

have chosen a more delightful 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 sycamores

fling over the whole a delightful shade. The waters of the river flow

onward in a deep current at the base, and the fish throw themselves

into the warm sunlight from the surface. What a charming retreat from

the fiery fervour of a midsummer noon!

The heavy bluffs which overhang the 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

overcome these bluffs, and render their village less difficult of

inland ingress and regress; and though the idea is not a little

amusing, of rail-cars running off at an angle of forty-five degrees,

yet when we consider that this place, if it ever becomes of _any_

importance, must become a grand thoroughfare and dépôt on the route

from St. Louis and the agricultural regions of the Missouri to the

northern counties of Illinois, the design seems less chimerical _than

it might be_. A charter, indeed, for a railroad {42} from Grafton,

through Carrolton to Springfield, has been obtained, a company

organized, 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 glimpses through the forest, is

increasingly beautiful. Upon one of the loftiest eminences to the

right stand the ruins of a huge 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 might often rise to look

abroad over the glories 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

Indian widow of 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 almost breaking,

she has been forced to lay him away beneath the sod, is said, in the

touching intensity of her affection, to bathe the tombstone of her

little one with that genial flood which Nature poured through her

veins for his nourishment {43} while living. The Oriental nations, it

is well known, whether 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 monarchs, some of which

exist even to the present day, were gorgeously magnificent. The

nations of modern Turkey and India wreathe the tombs of their departed

friends with the gayest 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 memory of some Indian chieftain,

a glorious cosmorama of the whole adjacent region, miles in

circumference, is unfolded to the eye. At your feet, far below, flow

on the checkered waters of the Mississippi, gliding in ripples among

their emerald islands; while at intervals, as the broad stream comes

winding on from the west, is caught the flashing sheen of its surface

through the dense old woods that fringe its margin. Beyond these, to

the south, lies spread the broad and beautiful Mamelle Prairie, even

to its faint blue blending 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

bosom, the flashing surface of lakes and water-sheets, almost buried

in the luxuriance of vegetation, 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 smooth meadow, a darker luxuriance

of verdure, with the curling cabin-smoke upon its border, and vast

herds of domestic cattle in its neighbourhood, betray the presence of

man, blending _his_ works with the wild and beautiful creations of

Nature. On the right, at a distance of two miles, come in the placid

waters of the Illinois, from the magnificent 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 atmosphere was

like the breath of a furnace; but over the heights of the bluffs swept

the morning air, 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 among bluffs and sink-holes; and so constantly

does its course vary and diverge, that a pocket compass is anything

but a needless appendage. Indeed, all his calculations to the contrary

notwithstanding, the traveller throughout the whole of this region

describes with his route a complete Virginia fence. The road is not a

little celebrated for its tortuosity. At length the traveller emerges

upon a prairie. On its edge beneath the forest stands a considerable

settlement, bordering 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 before me among the trees.[182] I was struck

with the quiet air of simple elegance which seemed to pervade the

place, though its general 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 promiscuously

along the transverse avenues, are log-cabins surrounded by cornfields,

much like those in the villages 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 me as a

little singular, was the unusual diversity of religious 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 handsome edifice of brick, two stories, with a neat spire. The

neighbouring region is fertile and healthy; well proportioned with

prairie and timber, well watered by the Macoupin and Apple

Creeks,[183] and well populated by a sturdy, thriving race of

yeomanry. This is, indeed, strictly an agricultural village; and, so

far as my own observation {46} extended, little attention is paid or

taste manifested for anything else.

About a dozen miles north of Carrolton is situated the village of

Whitehall, a flourishing settlement in the prairie's edge, from the

centre of which, some miles distant, it may be seen.[184] Three years

ago the spot was an uncultivated waste; the town has now two houses of

worship, 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 small settlement, I was

met by a company of emigrants from Western New-York. The women and

children were piled upon the top of the household stuff with about as

much ceremony as if they constituted a portion thereof, in a huge

lumbering baggage-wagon, around which dangled suspended pots and

kettles, dutch-ovens and tin-kitchens, cheese-roasters and

bread-toasters, all in admired confusion, jangling harsh discord. The

cart-wheels themselves, as they gyrated upon the parched axles, like

the gates 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

emigrant family.

The rapidity with which a Western village goes forward, and begins to

assume importance among the nations, after having once been born and

{47} christened, is amazing. The mushrooms of a summer's night, the

wondrous gourd of Jonah, the astonishing bean of the giant-killer, or

the enchantments of the Arabian Nights, are but fit parallels to the

growth of the prairie-village of the Far West. Of all this I was

forcibly reminded in passing through 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, from

which it may be seen four or five miles before entering its streets;

it is surrounded by a body of excellent timber, always the _magnum

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, when we

consider the unexampled rapidity with which a young growth pushes

itself forward into the prairies when once protected from the

devastating 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 almost

solely in England, France, and the Netherlands; and, finally, the

convenience of manufacturing brick for all the purposes of building.

There is not, probably, any quarter of the state destined to become

more populous and powerful {48} than that section of Morgan 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 become a celebrated wheat

region, though for corn and coarser grains it is now unequalled.

The rapidity with which this state has been peopled is wonderful,

especially its northern counties. In the year 1821, that section of

country embraced within the present limits of Morgan 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

them have brought 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 human condition and the

advancement of civilization, religion, 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 meadow, have leaped forth into being, to bless and to

gladden 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 more finished structure of the houses, the

regularity 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 reminded me that I was

drawing nigh 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 name,[186]

and environed by flourishing farms, the traveller catches a view of

the distant village stretching away along the northern horizon. He

soon enters an extended avenue, perfectly uniform for several miles,

leading 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 enamelled foliage. To the left, upon a

swelling upland at the distance of some miles, are beheld the brick

edifices of "Illinois College," relieved by a dark grove of oaks

resting against the western sky.[187] These large buildings, together

with the numerous other public structures, imposingly situated and

strongly relieved, give to the place a dignified, city-like aspect in

distant {50} view. After a ride of more than a mile within the

immediate suburbs of the town, the traveller ascends a slight

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._