"Loose his beard and hoary hair
Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air," &c.
A ride of a few hours, after the storm had died away, brought 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 remarkable spring in its vicinity, said to be highly medicinal. How this latter item may stand I know not, but I am quite sure that all of the pure element it was my own disagreeable necessity to partake of during my brief tarry savoured mightily of medicine or of something akin. Epsom salts and alum seemed the chief substances in solution; and with these minerals all the water in the region appeared heavily charged.
[120] It was a misty, miserable morning when I left Mt. Vernon; and as my route lay chiefly through a dense timbered tract, the dank, heavy atmosphere exhaling from the soil, from the luxuriant vegetation, and from the dense foliage of the over-hanging boughs, was anything but agreeable. To endure the pitiless drenching of a summer-shower with equanimity demands but a brief exercise of stoicism: but it is not in the nature of man amiably to withstand the equally pitiless drenching 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 streamed far and wide athwart a broad prairie, in the edge of which I stood. The route was, in the language of my director, indeed a blind one; but, having received special instructions thereupon, I hesitated not to press onward over the swelling, pathless plain towards the east. After a few miles, having crossed an arm of the prairie, directions were again sought and received, by which the route became due south, pathless as before, and through a tract of woodland rearing itself from a bog perfectly Serbonian. "Muddy Prairie" indeed. On every side rose the enormous shafts of the cypress, the water-oak, and the maple, flinging from their giant branches that gray, pensile, parasitical moss, which, weaving its long funereal fibres into a dusky mantle, almost entangles in the meshes the thin threads of sunlight struggling down from above. It was here for the first time that I met in any considerable numbers [121] with that long-necked, long-legged, long-toed, long-tailed gentry called wild-turkeys: and, verily, here was a host ample to atone for all former deficiency, parading in ungainly magnificence through the forest upon every side, or peeping curiously down, with outstretched necks and querulous piping, from their lofty perches on the traveller below. It is by a skilful imitation of this same piping, to say nothing of the melodious gobble that always succeeds it, that the sportsman decoys these sentimental bipeds within his reach. The same method is sometimes employed in hunting the deer—an imitated bleating of the fawn when in distress—thus taking away the gentle mother's life through the medium of her most generous impulses; a most diabolical modus operandi, reader, permit me to say.
Emerging at length, by a circuitous path, once more upon the prairie, instructions were again sought 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 uniform, in order to run a right line between two given points! This was past all endurance. To a moral certainty with me, the place of my destination lay away just southwest from the spot on which I was then standing. Producing, 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 remonstrances, and protestations, and objurgations of men, women, and children to the contrary notwithstanding. Pushing [122] boldly forth into the prairie, I had not travelled many miles when I struck a path leading off 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 miles in breadth, and to flounder through a swamp other miles in extent, to say nothing of the depth, and all because of the utter ignorance of the worthy souls who took upon them to direct. I have given 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 somewhat more than half vexed at the adventures of the morning, I found myself, near noon, at the cabin-door of an honest old Virginian, and was ere long placed in a fair way to relieve my craving appetite. With the little compass which hung at the safety-riband of my watch, and which had done me such rare service during my wanderings, the worthy old gentleman seemed heart-stricken at first sight, and warmly protested that he and the "stranger" must have "a small bit of a tug" for that fixen, a proposition which said stranger by no means as warmly relished. Laying, therefore, before the old farmer a slight outline of my morning's ramble, he readily perceived that with me the "pretty leetle fixen" was anything but 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 diffickulty on my way no how," my compass was [123] my only safe guide. 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 commend it to the passing traveller, whether we regard beauty of location, regularity of structure, elegance, size, or proportion of edifices, or the cultivation of the farms in its vicinage. It would, perhaps, be a pleasant town enough were its site more elevated, its buildings larger, and disposed with a little more of mathematical exactness, or its streets less lanelike and less filthy. As it is, it will require some years to give it a standing among its fellows. It is laid out on the roll of a small prairie of moderate fertility, but has quite an extensive settlement of enterprising farmers, a circumstance which will conduce far more to the ultimate prosperity of the place. The most prominent structure is a blood-red jail of brick, standing 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 from the tavern door during twilight, the traveller retired to his chamber, nothing 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, everything but the comfort-giving spot the hospitable cognomen swinging from its signpost seemed to imply. Ah! the fond visions of quietude and repose, [124] of plentiful feeding and hearty sleeping, which those magic 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 pilgrimage through this troublous world of ours, when faint, and languid, and weary with exertion, by any untoward circumstance, been forced to resist the gentle promptings of "quiet nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," and to count away the tedious hours of the livelong 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 consume the midnight taper, "sickly" though 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.