STARTS FOR IOWA.
Finally making her adieu to her parents, to brother, sisters and relatives, she started westward about the 20th of March. A few days were spent with Mr. C. A. Bloomer, a brother of her husband, at Little Rock near Buffalo, and several more in the family of Mr. F. V. Chamberlain, in Chicago. That city was just then beginning to put on metropolitan airs and had a population of 40,000 or 50,000. Here Mrs. Bloomer bade good-bye to a niece who had accompanied her thus far, and who took the cars to meet a brother in the central part of the state. Leaving Chicago, the travelers proceeded by railroad to Alton. The country on either side of the road exhibited the vast prairies of the state in an almost unbroken condition for a great part of the way, and it is recollected that from the car windows deer and other game were frequently seen running at large. Springfield, the state capital, was then only a small village. The railroad terminated at Alton, and from thence the passage was by steamboat to St. Louis. At that city, then just beginning to loom up in importance among the great western towns, the halt was first at a hotel; but a call having been made at the hospitable home of Mrs. Frances D. Gage, her house thereafter became the home of the travelers until they embarked on a steamer on the Missouri River for their destination.
We now give Mrs. Bloomer’s reminiscences, written some years later by herself: