brought forth in the natural way, that is, the people preceded the
houses. When the honest Irish laborers came to work on the canal, they
according to custom built themselves cabins, about the spot where they
commenced their labors. As the land was neither cultivated nor enclosed,
they employed their leisure hours in digging ditches about a piece of
prairie large enough for a potato-patch, and sometimes a small patch of
wheat or corn. Here, with little labor, they raised as much as supplied
them with bread, or a substitute; and though the canal has for some
years been discontinued for lack of means, these people continue to
cultivate their little fields, which are wonderfully productive,
frequently making new enclosures, and sometimes erecting frame houses.
If the land belonged to the United States they were protected by the
right of preemption, and if to a private citizen, it was his interest to
let them alone, as there was no danger of the soil being exhausted, and
he was thus saved the labor of the first ploughing, which is the most
expensive of all the process of cultivation here. Thus these honest,
laborious people live quite comfortably, waiting the period of
recommencing the canal, and some of them perhaps able to purchase the
land on which they reside, provided it is not laid out in cities, which
is very probable, for you can hardly put down your foot without crushing
one of these mushrooms.
Ottawa, like La Salle, is a real _bona fide_ town, with houses and
inhabitants. Its age is some twelve or fifteen years, and the number of
its people from twelve to fifteen hundred. I found the situation so
peculiarly agreeable, and the hotel so comfortable, that I determined to
remain awhile, and amuse myself with making little excursions about the
neighborhood, than which nothing can be more beautiful. The town stands
at the junction of the Fox River with the Illinois. They are both clear,
limpid streams, and though coming from far distant lands, meet and
mingle together as quietly as if they had been friends from their birth.
The scenery is as gentle as the rivers, and as mild and mellow as one of
Claude’s pictures, that actually makes a real connoisseur yawn and
stretch to look at it. In one direction the eye passes over a long
narrow prairie, all one rich expanse of grass and flowers, through which
the Illinois sometimes hurries rapidly over a ledge of rocks, at others
meanders lazily along. On either side of the river, the prairie is
bounded by those remarkable terraces which form one of the more
beautiful features of this region. They rise abruptly from the green
level sward, to the height, I should imagine, of one hundred and fifty
feet, in some places presenting a smooth grassy bank, whose ascent is
dotted and their summits crowned with trees; in others, walls of
perpendicular rocks disposed in regular strata, of varied tints,
diversified with all sorts of verdure peeping from out the crevices.
These terraces seem created on purpose for houses, from the porches or
windows of which the proprietors of the rich fields and meadows beneath,
might overlook their beautiful possessions, and thank a bounteous
Providence for having cast their lot, not in Araby, but Illinois the
blest.
Looking toward the north, from my window at the hotel, the great rolling
prairie, extending from Ottawa to Chicago, presented itself in a
succession of gentle risings and waving lines, all green, yet of such
various shades, that there was nothing like sameness or dull insipidity.
The Fox River approaches in this direction, and may be seen stealing its
way with many windings of coy reluctance, toward that union with the
Illinois where it is to lose its name and identity forever. Indeed, in
all directions the views are almost unequaled for softness and delicacy,
and I hope I may be pardoned for this vain attempt to communicate to my
readers a portion of the pleasure I derived from their contemplation.
Travelers have a right to such indulgence, since nothing can be more
disinterested than for a man to undergo the fatigue of visiting distant
places, merely for the gratification of making others as wise as
himself.
Ottawa is a fine place for sportsmen, most especially those disciples of
Job and St. Anthony who deal with the fishes. The traditionary fishing
in the Illinois and Fox Rivers is capital, and there is scarcely a man
to be met with, who has not at least once in his life been eminently
successful. But it is certainly somewhat peculiar to the gentle science
of angling, that the best fishing is always the greatest way off. It is
never where you happen to be, but always somewhere else. It is never in
the present tense, but always in the past or the future. However
excellent it be on the spot, it is always better somewhere else: and the
farther you go, the farther off, to the end of the chapter. Then, ten to
one, it is too late, or too early; the sun shines too bright; the wind
blows too hard, or does not blow at all. In short, there is ever some
untoward circumstance in the way of success, and I know no school of
patience and philosophy superior to the noble apprenticeship to angling.
The fishing is however good, both in the Fox River and the Illinois.
There is a large species called trout, rather from its habits than
appearance, which frequents the rapids, and is a noble subject for the
angler; while the vulgar fisherman, who affects the still water, may now
and then luxuriate in a cat-fish weighing ten or fifteen pounds, and
ugly enough to frighten a member of a militia court-martial. There is
also the gar-fish, of great size, whose pleasure it is to let you toss
him up into the air, without ever catching him, and then see him plump
down into the water with the bait, perhaps hook and all, in his jaws. On
the whole, however, the sport is extremely agreeable, and the little
excursions to the various points renowned for angling, present such a
succession of charming scenes, that no one can complain he toiled all
day long and caught no fish, who has preserved the happy faculty of
enjoying the smiling earth and balmy air.
Add to this, the prairies abound in a species of grouse, affording equal
sport to the fowler and the epicure. I am no shot, but my excellent
host, who well deserves a passing notice, and who does credit to the
Empire state, of which he is a native, was both a capital shot and a
first rate angler. Indeed he could do almost any thing, and merited the
title of an universal genius as much as any man I have met with. He
would every morning rig out his little wagon, drawn by a rough
uncivilized Indian pony, which, like old Virginia, “never tires,” and
followed by a couple of dogs, sally out on the prairie, whence he never
returned without a supply of game. The summer climate is here by no
means oppressive; the storms never last a whole day; and, in short, I
know few places where a man fond of rural scenes, rural sports, and
quiet enjoyments, might spend his time more pleasantly than at the
comfortable quarters of mine host at Ottawa, whose name is Delano, and
whose house is on the margin of Fox River. “May he live a thousand
years, and his shadow never be less.”
Leaving Ottawa, I embarked on the sea of the prairie, and after
proceeding a few miles came to a settlement of Norwegians, consisting of
a little straggling village, encompassed by luxuriant fields of wheat
and corn, showing forth the rich rewards of industry operating in a
fertile soil. The buildings and other appendages indicated not only
comfort but competency, and I could not avoid being struck with the
singularity of a community from the remote regions of Northern Europe
planting itself in this secluded spot in the very bosom of the New
World. Yet this is by no means a solitary example. Go where we will in
the great region of the West, we perceive new evidence of the proud and
happy destiny of our country, in being above all others on the face of
the earth, the land toward which the eager and longing eye of hope is
cast from every corner of Christendom: the land to which poverty turns
for relief from its sufferings, and the oppressed for the enjoyment of
the rights bestowed by God and filched away by man; the land which alone
yields an adequate reward to labor, and gives to honest enterprise its
fair field for exertion; the land where pining wretchedness never
descends as an heir-loom from generation to generation, and want is not,
like wealth, hereditary; the New World, which a gracious Providence
seems to have reserved as a refuge and a home to the swarms of
industrious bees driven from the parent hive for want of room, want of
employment, and want of bread.
This, after all, is the crowning chaplet that adorns the brow of our
great republic, and long may it be before it withers. The triumphs of
arms, art and literature fade in comparison with those of humanity, and
that country which affords the greatest plenty of the necessaries and
comforts of life to the greatest proportion of human beings, may justly
challenge a pre-eminence over those which place their claims to that
distinction merely on the ground of arts and refinements, whose
influence is confined to a few, and contributes but little to the
happiness, and less to the virtues even of those who make it the sole
foundation of their assumptions of superiority. While our country
continues to be the refuge of the honest, industrious poor of Europe,
who cares for their boasts of those paltry refinements, those exquisite
effeminacies, which in all past ages, and in every nation of the world,
have been the sure precursors of decay and dissolution. When the
descendants of those who were driven to the United States by the
privations and discouragements they encountered at home, shall begin to
leave the land of their refuge, and return to the bosom of the country
of their forefathers in search of bread which they cannot procure here,
then, and not till then, may the renovated Old World justly boast of
that superiority which is now little more than a dream of long past
times.
I have lately seen in some of the English papers exaggerated pictures of
the condition of the United States, founded, probably, in the policy of
encouraging emigration to her own possessions, or derived from the
reports of some few disappointed emigrants who have returned home. It
was proclaimed that the country was crushed with debts it never could
repay without impoverishing the people by taxation; that labor could
neither find employment nor receive adequate reward; that an universal
blight had come over the land, and every where withered its prosperity;
that the states were bankrupt and the people beggars. All this is sheer
declamation. There never has been any thing like widely extended, much
less general distress in the United States, arising from a deprivation
or curtailment of the necessaries or comforts of life. There never was a
time when any class, or any considerable proportion of a class,
approached within a thousand degrees, that poverty and destitution which
is the common lot of so large a portion of the laboring people of the
Old World. The country has at all times been blessed with a plenty, a
superfluity, an exuberance of every product essential to human
existence, and those who could not obtain them, were either unwilling to
make the necessary exertions, or unable to do so by sickness or some
other untoward circumstance. The distress complained of is not positive,
but comparative. We may be restricted in our luxuries, but the land,
from one wide extreme to the other, is absolutely flowing with milk and
honey, and it is little less than flying in the face of the bounties of
Heaven to complain of hard times, which can only be traced to a
superabundance of every thing, and shrink to the earth under the
pressure of a debt, the whole of which could be paid is less time than
it was contracted, without incurring one-fourth of the burden sustained
by the people of England. But we have been spoiled by prosperity
_Fortuna nisirium quem foret stultum facit_. Fifty years of almost
uninterrupted prosperity had turned our heads, and it is to be hoped a
few years of wholesome reaction will restore us to reason. The sudden
cessation of a favorable gale often saves the vessel from running on the
rocks and being dashed to pieces.
The prairies have already been described as well perhaps as they ever
will be, because they are a sort of _lusus naturæ_, and there is nothing
with which to compare them. To tell of what ingredients they are
composed is easy enough, but to give a just idea of the effects of their
combination, requires analogies not to be found in the other productions
of nature, nor in the imagery of the mind. Although substantial
realities, they present nothing but deceptions, and I believe it is
beyond the power of language, almost imagination, to exaggerate the
strange and beautiful combination of what is, and what is not, sporting
together in perfect harmony on these boundless plains. The eye becomes
at length wearied with being thus perpetually the dupe of imaginary
forms, and imaginary distances, while the mind involuntary revolts at
the deceptions practiced on the senses. Mr. Bryant in poetry, and Mr.
Hoffman and Mr. Catlin in prose, have done all that can be done to
convey to those who have never seen them an impression of the effect of
these happy eccentricities of nature, and the beautiful phantasmagoria
they exhibit forth to the senses and the imagination.
If ever miser were pardoned for coveting his neighbors land, it might be
such land as the prairies of Illinois, where man labors almost without
the sweat of his brow, and the crops are so abundant that all I heard
the good people complain of was having more than they knew what to do
with. This is indeed a lamentable state of things, and it were I think
much to be wished that some of our philosophical lecturers would discuss
the relative advantages of having too much and too little of a good
thing. The case of an individual being overburthened with superfluity,
is easily disposed of, as he has only to turn it over to his neighbors
who may be in want; but when entire communities, states and
confederations of states, labor under this inconvenience, where nobody
wants, and all have plenty to bestow; in other words, where all wish to
sell and nobody cares to buy, it must be confessed there occurs a crisis
of such deplorable difficulty, that I can conceive no effectual remedy
except two or three years of famine like those which succeeded the seven
years of plenty in Egypt. This would consume the mischievous surplus,
and rid them of an evil which as it never before occurred, has never
been provided against by the wisdom of legislation, which most people
believe can perform impossibilities. But be this as it may, I passed
over a vast region where the table of every man groaned under
superfluities, and every brood of swine wasted more corn than would
supply bread to a family of English manufacturers. Yet I found all,
without exception, in the last stage of hopeless despondency, until one
day I entered the log-cabin of an old negro woman, a slave, who was
enjoying her pipe at ease, and upon asking the usual commonplace
question of “how times went with her,” was answered with the most
cheerful alacrity—“_O bravely, massa. Hens ’gin to lay finely._” We
hear of nations suffering from famine, but my unfortunate countrymen
complain of nothing but plenty. Whence comes this strange paradox? Is it
because men have sought to invent artificial means of prosperity which
act in direct opposition to the great general laws of Providence, and
are thus punished for their presumptuous folly by a new, unheard of
infliction?
After riding a distance of some seventy or eighty miles on the prairie,
over the best natural roads in the world, I halted at the house of a
Dutch farmer from the banks of the Hudson, where I heard that old
patriarchal language spoken for the first time in many years. There are
several descendants of the ancient Hollanders settled in this quarter,
to which they are tempted by the broad rich flats, and the easiness of
their cultivation. I have observed that those who partake largely in
this blood, though almost uniformly steady and industrious in their
habits, don’t much like hard, fatiguing work. They prefer labor where
there is no violent exertion or straining, no heavy burthens to lift or
carry, and no call for extraordinary efforts to achieve what may be
accomplished in the ordinary way without them. Hence they are great
amateurs in good land, easy to cultivate and yielding liberal returns.
In this I think they are perfectly right. Without doubt, it is the
destiny of civilized man to labor, that is in moderation. But to labor
without the rewards of labor; to be for ever toiling, and panting, and
sweating over a piece of rough, stony land, on which the malediction of
eternal barrenness has been denounced ever since the creation of the
world; to be ever sowing wheat and reaping nothing but tares, is in my
opinion, utterly unphilosophical, and unworthy of all men who can go
farther and fare better.
A particular occasion had drawn together at this spot a large cavalcade
of both sexes, gayly caparisoned and well-mounted, many of the females
being equipped in riding-habits, hats with feathers, and all more or
less picturesque in their appearance. They chose to accompany the
carriage to a little town about six or seven miles distant, over a
beautiful expanse of prairie, or as it might be aptly termed, “faerie
land,” exhibiting a succession of grassy lawns and beds of flowers of
hundreds of acres, marshaled under different colors, some were red, some
blue, and others entirely yellow. It is difficult to imagine a more gay
and beautiful spectacle than that presented on this occasion. The sky
was sufficiently obscured to temper the glare of sunshine, which is
sometimes here painful to the eye, and the playful cavalcade, consisting
of perhaps an hundred, indulged in a thousand careless, graceful
evolutions on the level greensward, that seemed without beginning or
end, and offered no obstruction in any direction. Sometimes a pair of
riders of both sexes would dash out from the throng, and scamper away
until they appeared like shadows against the distant horizon; and at
others, the whole mass would separate in different directions, skimming
over the plain like Arabs on their winged steeds, their different
colored dresses and picturesque costumes rendering the scene
indescribably gay and animating. The females all without exception sat
and managed their horses with that perfect skill and grace arising from
constant habit, and upon the whole, I never witnessed any exhibition
that could compare with this ride on the prairie of Illinois in romantic
interest and novelty.
Thus, toward evening, I reached the pleasant town which was to be my
resting-place for the night. By some strange perversion of ignorance, or
freak of vanity, it is nicknamed Juliet, instead of _Joliet_, from the
old pioneer of that name, who established his quarters here in olden
time on a mount, which, fortunately, has escaped being travestied into
Juliet, and still preserves his name. This mount is one of the most
remarkable, as well as beautiful objects in nature. It rises directly
from the prairie to the height, I should judge, of more than an hundred
feet; is clothed with a rich velvet coat of grass on all sides, as well
as at the summit; is entirely distinct from any other eminence;
comprises an area of six or eight acres, and is as regular and perfect
in construction, form, and outline, as any work of art I ever saw. It
has been generally taken by travelers for a creation of those mysterious
mound-builders, whose name and history have passed into oblivion, and
who have left no memorials of their existence but such as render it only
more inexplicable. It is, however, as I ascertained, a production of the
cunning hand of Nature, who sometimes, it would seem, amuses herself by
showing how much she can excel her illegitimate sister, Art, even in her
most successful attempts at imitation. The canal connecting the Illinois
with the lakes, runs directly at the foot of this mount, which with
something like Gothic barbarity has been deeply excavated on one side,
in order to form the outward bank. This process has disclosed a
succession of different strata of earth, clay, and gravel, all regularly
defined, and evidently not the work of man, but of the world of craters,
which beyond doubt covered all the surrounding country, long posterior
to the subsiding of the great deluge.
The Sieur Joliet, who tradition says, once resided on the top of this
mount, which is flat and comprises several acres of rich meadow, was one
of the adventurous heroes who first found their way from Canada to the
Valley of the West. Little is known of him, except that he preceded or
accompanied La Salle in some of his discoveries on the Mississippi, for
which, says Charleroix, “he received a grant of the island of Anticosti,
which extends about forty degrees north-west and south-east, and lies at
the mouth of the River St. Lawrence. But they made him no great present;
it is absolutely good for nothing. It is poorly wooded, its soil is
barren, and it has not a single harbor where a ship can lie in safety.”
I regret to differ with the good father, whose description shows it to
be eminently calculated for the site of a great emporium, and am
surprised that it has hitherto escaped the notice of our illustrious
founders of cities in places where it is all rocks and no water. But be
this as it may, the Sieur Joliet is particularly unfortunate in having
been rewarded for his services by an island worth nothing, and defrauded
by ignorance or vanity of the honor of giving his name to a beautiful
and thriving town.
Some fifteen years ago the place occupied by the town of Joliet was the
seat of Black Hawk’s power. It now contains twelve or fifteen hundred
white people, and is a busy, growing place, with reasonable
anticipations of becoming considerably larger in good time. The frank,
hospitable, spirited, and intelligent people of this noble region of the
West, must not, however, calculate too confidently on all their towns
becoming great cities because they grow with astonishing rapidity at the
first starting. Great cities, like great men, do not spring up in all
places and every where. A large portion of these towns, like children,
will probably increase in size the first few years, more than in all
their lives afterward. Many will stop short in their growth, and many
will gradually be swallowed up by some neighboring rival, whose natural
advantages, or some fortunate concurrence of circumstances, will enable
it to secure the ascendancy, and render all the others tributary to its
prosperity. When this ascendency is permanently acquired, nothing but
inferior towns can flourish in its immediate vicinity, and like all
great bodies, they will become the centre of attraction.
The canal connecting the Mississippi with the Lakes runs through the
town, and is here finished in a most admirable and substantial manner.
It is identified with the River Des Planes, which has been circumscribed
by a wall to prevent its overflowing. There are here two locks, and a
basin, equal to any I have ever seen, and indeed, all the permanent
stonework of this canal appears to have been done in the most
substantial and perfect style. A canal completing a line of inland water
communication to the extent of from three to four thousand miles, by a
cut of scarcely more than a hundred, through a region which is almost an
apparent level, and presents perhaps fewer natural obstructions than any
other of the same extent to be found elsewhere, is not only a noble, but
a feasible undertaking. Its advantages are too obvious to require
enumeration; it is in fact, essentially a national work, and stands a
monument of rational foresight, among a thousand visionary schemes of
sanguine folly, or selfish fraud. It is already more than two-thirds
completed, and I conceive that New York is almost as deeply interested
in the final issue as Illinois.