CHAPTER VI.
The northern part of Illinois is beautifully diversified with groves of timber and rolling prairies. The timber consists of the various kinds of oak, rock and white maple, beach, locust, walnut, mulberry, plum, elm, bass wood, buckeye, hackberry, sycamore, spice wood, sassafras, haws, crab apple, cherry, cucumber, pawpaw, &c. There is some cedar, but little pine. The shores of Michigan have a large supply of pine timber, and from this source the lumber for buildings at Chicago is obtained.
The prairies are sometimes level, sometimes gently undulating, and sometimes hilly; but no where mountainous. The soil is three or four feet deep; then you come to a bed of clay two or three feet in depth, and then gravel. The soil is a rich, black loam; and when wet, it sticks to the feet like clay. Manure has no beneficial effect upon it; but where it has been cultivated, it produces an abundant crop, the first year, not quite as good as succeeding years; and it seems to be quite inexhaustible.
The prairies are covered with a luxuriant growth of native grass, which, when it gets its full growth is generally about as high as a man's shoulders.--They are destitute of trees, shrubs, or stones; and although the surface may be undulating, yet it is so smooth, that they can be mown as well as the smoothest old field in New-England. In the spring of the year, a great variety of beautiful flowers shoot up among the grass; so that the face of nature exhibits the appearance of an extended flower garden. The prairie grass is unlike any kind I have seen at the north; but it affords excellent fodder for horses, neat cattle and sheep. A finer grazing country I had never seen. The grass appears to have more nourishment in it, than at the north. I saw beef cattle, fatted on the prairie grass alone, and I challenge Brighton to produce fatter beef, or finer flavored.
Towards the lake, the land is gently undulating; farther west, on Fox and Rock rivers, it is rolling; and as you approach Galena on the Mississippi, it becomes more hilly and broken. All this country seems to lack, is timber and water. There are rivers enough, but not many small streams and springs. But both of these defects can in a good measure be remedied. Good water can be obtained almost any where by digging wells from twenty to thirty feet in depth; and fuel must be supplied by the coal, which is found generally in abundance throughout the State. Bricks can be used for building; and hedge rows for fences.
The coal is excellent for the grate. It burns free, and emits such a brilliant light, that any other in a room is hardly necessary. It is now used in many places, in preference to wood, although that is now plenty. Blacksmiths use it for the forge; and at one shop, the man told me he could dig and haul enough in half a day to last him a month.
The government of the United States granted to the State of Illinois a tract of land ten miles in width and eighty miles in length, extending from Chicago to Ottawa, for the purpose of making a canal to connect the waters of the lake with the Illinois river, and within these limits, it is supposed the canal will pass. This tract has been surveyed, put into market and much of it sold; but most of the land in the northern part of the State had not even been surveyed when I was there. Not a survey had been made on Fox river. The settlers took as much land as they pleased, and where they pleased; and as there was an abundance for all, none found fault. Before this time, I presume, the land has been surveyed; and the peace and quietness of the Fox river settlement, may have been a little disturbed by the _carelessness_ of the United States' surveyors, in running lines somewhat diverging from the stakes and fences which its early settlers had set up as the bounds of their farms.
But a large portion of the northern half of the State, is not in the market, and perhaps may not be for two years to come. This very land, however, is settling every day. All a man has to do, is to select his land and settle down upon it. By this act he gains a _pre-emption right_ to one hundred and sixty acres; and before the auction sale, enters his land at the land office, pays a dollar and a quarter an acre, and receives his title. When land has once been through the auction and not sold, it can be taken at any time, by paying a dollar and a quarter an acre, and receive a title.
Upon the whole, I think the upper part of Illinois offers the greatest inducements to the emigrant, especially from the northern States. It is a high, healthy, beautiful country; and there are now plenty of good locations to be made. A young man, with nothing but his hands to work, may in a few years obtain a competency. The whole country produces great crops of wheat, corn and potatoes, and all the fruits and vegetables of the north. Apple and peach trees grow faster and more vigorous here than at the east; and there is a native plum tree, which bears excellent fruit.
I took much pains to ascertain whether it was subject to the fever and ague; and from the inquiries I made, and the healthy appearance of the people, I am persuaded it is not. I found only one person sick with that disease, in all the upper country, and she was an old woman from Indiana; and she told me she had it before she left that State.--There is plenty of game--the prairie hen, about the size of the northern hen, deer, ducks, wild turkies, and squirrels; also an abundance of wild honey.
There is another reason why the northern part of the State is preferable. Chicago of itself is, and will be, something of a market for produce; but it is the best spot in the whole State, to carry produce to be transported to a northern market. From this, it is carried all the way by water to New-York city; and the distance is no greater than from the middle and lower parts of the State to New-Orleans, and the expense of transportation the same.
But after all, there is no such place as a perfect elysium on earth; and to this bright picture of the new world, there must be added some slight shades. In the first place there are many prairie wolves all over the country, so that it is almost impossible to keep sheep. In travelling over the country, I have started half a dozen in a day; they did not appear to be very wild; but they seldom or never attack a man, unless retreat is cut off, or sorely pressed by hunger. They are of a brown color, and of the size of a large dog. The men have a good deal of sport in running them down, and killing them.--They take a stick, mount a fleet horse, soon come up with them, and knock them on the head.
A man on Fox river told me he made a wolf pen over a cow that got accidentally killed, and caught twelve wolves in one week! As the country becomes settled they will disappear. There are but few bears; the country is too open for them. I had one or two meals of bear meat, but it is not at all to my taste. Then, there are the prairie rattlesnakes, about a foot long. Their bite is not considered very dangerous. There is a weed, growing universally on the prairie, that is a certain cure for it. They are not, however, plenty. Men told me, that they had passed a whole year without seeing one.
Then, to prey upon the fields of the husbandman, there are the blackbirds and squirrels. They are the same in kind with those of the north, and their rapacity seems to have lost nothing, by living at the west. The blackbird is not a bird of the forest; it only follows close upon the heels of population.
The winters are as cold, perhaps, as at the north, but of shorter duration. They commence later and end earlier. The Indians make their poneys get their living in the winter; and cattle will live if they can have a range in the woods; but the farmer can have as much hay as he chooses, only for the cutting; the good husbandman will, therefore, have enough to keep his cattle in good heart during the winter.
Men are apt to judge of a new country by the impulse of feeling. The enthusiastic admirer of nature, when he beholds the extended prairies, lofty groves and pellucid streams, represents it as a perfect paradise. But those who think more of good roads, good coaches, good houses and good eating, than they do of the beauties of nature, curse the whole country and quit it in disgust. But to prevent all mistakes, be it known to all whom it may concern, that in this new country, fields do not grow ready fenced and planted, and elegant houses beside them; pancakes are not found on trees, or roasted pigs, running about squealing to be eaten.
The jaundiced eye sees nothing in its true light.
----"The diff'rence is as great between The optics seeing, as the object seen; Or fancy's beam enlarges, multiplies, Contracts, inverts, and gives a thousand dyes."
Many anecdotes were told me, of the different views the same individual would have of the same place, under different circumstances. An emigrant from Vermont, with his wife, children and goods, started for the western world in a wagon. The country was new, and the roads so bad that their progress was slow and fatiguing. At length, after enduring many privations and hardships in a journey of twelve hundred miles, they safely arrived in Illinois, and located themselves on a fine, rich spot of ground, in the interior. He hastily threw up a temporary hut for their present accommodation; but they were all too much wearied and worn, vigorously to exert themselves. He became sad himself; his wife, unable to restrain her feelings, began to sob aloud, and the children joined the concert. They could not divert their thoughts from the home, neighbors and friends they had left. The prairie and wild wood had no charms for them. After three or four days of despondency, they picked up their goods, loaded their wagon, and trudged all the way back again to Vermont. Vermont had, however, lost _some_ of its charms. It did not appear quite so fine as they had expected. After spending another cold winter there, they began to think Illinois, upon the whole, was the better place; and that they had been very foolish in leaving it. So, they picked up their duds again, returned to the same spot they had left, and were satisfied, contented and happy. The man has now an excellent farm, good house, and an abundance of the necessaries and conveniences of life. In short, he is an independent farmer, and would not now, upon any consideration, return to Vermont.
An instance, in some respects similar to this, occurred some years ago, in an emigrant from the western part of the State of New-Hampshire.--He sold his farm, and started for Ohio. His wife and children, and a portion of his furniture, he put into a large wagon, drawn by three or four yoke of oxen; and three cows of a peculiar breed, he also took with him. They proceeded on about five hundred miles, probably as far as Buffalo, when they all became weary, and so excessively fatigued with their journey, that they lost all relish for the western country, and wished themselves back again. At this time, they held a council, and agreed, without a dissenting voice, to return to New-Hampshire. They accordingly wheeled about, cows and all, and trudged back to the town they had left; having performed a journey of a thousand miles with an ox-team, at great expense, and apparently to no beneficial purpose whatever. He did not, however, like the Vermonter, again return.
But the result of the trip was not so disastrous as had been anticipated. At the very time of their return, a much better farm than the one he had left was offered for sale for ready money. He bought it at a reduced price, and immediately settled upon it. He then made a calculation upon his present and former condition; and after taking into consideration the expenses of his journey, the sale of one farm and purchase of another, he found himself worth at least a thousand dollars more than he was previous to the transaction!
And here, I would give a caution to the emigrant who intends to settle in the western country, not to place implicit confidence in what the inhabitants of one section may say of other portions of it. If they mean to be honest in giving an opinion, self-interest as in other places, strangely warps their judgment. Land holders and actual settlers are anxious to build up their own village and neighborhood; and therefore, they praise their own section and decry the others. At Detroit, we are told that Monroe is a very sickly place; at Monroe, Detroit is unhealthy; and both will concur that Chicago is too unhealthy for an emigrant to think of enjoying life in it. In Michigan, that is the most healthy, pleasant and best portion of the West; in Illinois, that becomes the promised land. Indeed, so contradictory are their statements, that little reliance ought to be placed upon them; and the better way for the emigrant is, if he cannot obtain the necessary information from disinterested travellers, to go and examine for himself. Eastern people, who travel no farther than Michigan, generally form an unfavorable opinion of Chicago and Illinois; but were they to travel over that State, they would soon change their opinion.