Peoria, July 8th.
My dear E.—We were detained during the night by a heavy fog, and instead of reaching Peoria at six, found at breakfast we were many miles this side of it. Breakfast over, I have seated myself upon the guards, a sort of balcony which runs around the outside of the steamboat, and with note-book in hand am prepared to give you a faithful picture of all I see. The river is still and bright, reflecting every little twig and leaf. There is no villa, or ruins, or lordly mansion to embellish the scenery, but it is indebted to its wild forests alone for its loveliness. It flows and bends in a very graceful manner around the soft green islets, or low points fringed with trees of new and unknown form and beauty. Frowning above the trees in the back ground are the cliffs, waterworn as if once the river’s ancient bound. Occasionally our track lay close to the shore, and we gazed into the forest’s deep recesses; now a dark jungle is before us, haunt of the wolf and the panther; and again, a noble grove of witch elms, or long vistas through which the early morning sun was streaming, or a patch of brilliant smooth sward surrounded by a circle of trees, the papaw, or the silvery barked white maple, its bright green leaves turning up their silver lining to the breeze. Sometimes a little bay appeared between two promontories, covered with yellow and white water lillies, and the perfumed nymphea odorata, the home of the swan or the wild fowl. The willow here occurs frequently, dipping its leaves in the stream; sometimes the shining willow with its long and slender brilliant leaves. The locust is frequent; many varieties of oak, the red bud, cotton wood, and many other trees festooned with vines of every tint and variety.
I wished much to see a prairie wolf, and looked out eagerly among the forests in vain. Just now a man who was looking to the shore exclaimed ‘There’s a wolf!’ he pointed to the spot, where some dark animal was cowering under a log. My companion declared it was a pig, and some one else a dog, whatever it was, it soon run away into the forest. I declared it should be a wolf, and to please me, it was unanimously voted a prairie wolf. A deer I looked for in vain; the noise made by our puffing high pressure engine, being sufficient to scare every animal away from our path. We passed Hennepin during the night, and this morning Lacon and Rome, both small places, situated upon those elevated banks or plateaus, which alternate with the woodlands along the river. The two first are both in Putman county containing two hundred and fifty-two square miles, and a population of two thousand one hundred and thirty-one. The stream which had become narrower, about a quarter of a mile in width; now swelled out in an expanse two miles broad and twenty long, called Peoria lake, by the indians Pin-a-ta-wee. It abounds with fish we were told, as sturgeon, buffalo, perch, pickerel, and cat fish and the alligator, garr, seven feet long, covered with scales, the former we had often seen during the morning, spring from the water, and plunge back again leaving a silvery circle growing wider and wider upon the polished surface of the river. The water was now unruffled by a ripple, the shore at our left covered with forests throwing their shadows over the water while upon a high bank at our right, was the pretty town of Peoria. It was a very sweet and tranquil picture. This has ever been a favorite haunt of the Indians and French. In 1779 a village stood here called La Ville de Maillet, inhabited by French courier des bois, Indian hunters, and fur traders, a stopping place for the French upon the lakes and their settlements on the Mississippi. Subsequently Fort Clarke was erected here for the United States troops, and now a pretty town with six houses of worship, several acadamies, market houses, shops, hotels, breweries, mills, and dwellings and a handsome court-house with pillared portico and tin covered cupola have arisen upon the bank. The shore is composed of pebbles, about twenty feet high, extending back one quarter of a mile, where another step of six or ten feet brings you to a fine prairie, leading to the bluffs. A row of buildings surmounted the banks principally shops, but among them we observed several small taverns, as the Napoleon Coffee House, Union Hotel, and Washington Hall. Upon a brick house farther in town my companion espied the sign of the Clinton Hotel, which being the house to which he had been recommended, he accepted the services of the porters of that establishment, who with those of the other houses had been soliciting his custom. How to land, was the next consideration, for upon rivers which have so great a rise and fall, it is difficult to construct wharves. After grounding, backing fastening a stake in the mud for a rope, which immediately came out again, we were at last stationary. A plank was then projected to the shore, down which we were all trundled. We had now reached the end of our journey, one hundred and seventy miles from Chicago, and took leave of the Chicago line, being left to our own devices to wander farther. We found the Clinton hotel a good house, and charges low, being only one dollar and twenty-five cents a day each. The host is a very gentlemanly person, and the ladies of the family well educated and agreeable. We partook of a very good dinner of native produce, even to the wild raspberry tarts, which appeared at desert. I like this much more than being fed upon foreign dainties which one can procure any where. There was a picture in our dining room which was a complete sign of the times; upon it was painted a cider barrel, from which a man was drawing ‘hard cider,’ bearing the motto, ‘Old Tip’s claims to the White House cannot be jumped.’ This had been borne as a banner by the Peoria delegation at the whig convention of Fort Meigs. If one might judge by what one sees, Gen. Harrison will have the votes of all the west, as he seems to be very popular as far as we have been. Upon returning to the parlor we found a centre table containing annuals, and several excellent volumes of the best authors, bearing the names of the young ladies of the house. While I looked over these, my companion took up the Peoria Democrat, and expressed his surprise to see such a paper in so new a place, and in it such proofs of the trade of the place. The type and paper were as good as any in our city, and contained advertisements of goods, drugs, wines, fruits, and other articles, which makes one wonder how such things could find their way there. Another column explains this, where are notices of steamboats which ply between this place and St. Louis, but three or four days voyage to New Orleans; consequently, one may command any thing here. In three years the Michigan canal will be finished, which will open a communication with the Atlantic through the lakes and the New York canals. Peoria cannot fail of being a place of much business, for besides the above named advantages, the land around it is rich prairie, interspersed with wood land, or timber, as they call it here, crossed by several mill streams. It is but seventy miles from Springfield, the capitol of Illinois, a large and handsome town, doing a great deal of business, and situated in the celebrated county of Sangamon.
Over the level country around Peoria good roads are laid out in every direction. A railroad is in contemplation from hence to the Mississippi at Warsaw, while another, the Bloomington and Peoria railroad, is soon to be laid down from this to the Mackinaw river, forty miles. It is on the high road from the gulf of Mexico to the north, and already travellers are taking this route to the eastern States. We found here a young lady and her father who had come from Mobile. They left there in a steamboat for New Orleans, from thence other steamboats brought them up the Mississippi to Quincy, from whence they rode in a stage to Peoria. They were on their way to New York, and had taken this rout from its novelty. In the afternoon we ramble down to the shores, where I found some very pretty pieces of agate, jasper, and other pretty pebbles, and gathered several singular shells and flowers. The shells were principally large muscle, lined with pearl, some of them beautifully irredescent. A neat cottage on the bank with its door open looked so inviting that we ventured to enter and ask for a glass of water. The woman willingly filled a pitcher from a cool spring near, and invited us to sit down. She looked ill, and the children around her were thin and pale. I asked her the cause, and heard a sad story of fever and ague sickness. They had removed from Pennsylvania, and had all been ill as soon as they arrived, but had hopes of being after a while acclimated. The cause of their sickness was as usual, their exposure to the heavy fogs which arise from this river at night, which strangers should avoid for a year at least—and probably other imprudence. Her husband was a carpenter, who had sufficient employment where they had lived, and there they were well and happy. To my question of the cause of their removal she answered, ‘Oh, he had heard of the west, where every one is sure to get rich, and so he came.’ Most of the emigrants we have met with could give us no better reason for removing hither than this woman. They hear the west spoken of as a great, rich, and rising country; pull up their household by the roots, and, ‘westward hold their way.’ I believe no one but our people can thus readily leave their homes, and the graves of their fathers to seek a residence in new and untried regions. Among the emigrants, we were often surprised to see so many from the neighboring States. Hoffman met a man during his ‘winter in the west,’ who had removed his household from one end of the State of Michigan to the other, merely because, the mould was a foot richer at Kalamazoo—his own being eighteen inches. A man removes from the eastern border to the west of Pennsylvania. Perhaps he there erects a house and in a few years sees a good farm around him; another wishing to remove west, offers him a sum for it, so much larger than his original outlay, that he is tempted to sell, and emigrate farther west. He with this money purchases a place of a man in Ohio, who sells in the same way and passes on. In a few years the Pensylvanian again sells, and again removes, so that there is a constant stream going step by step to fill up the immense plains and valleys which here abound. Fashions for emigration prevail; a place becomes popular; every one is excited by the accounts of this new Dorado, and westward ho! is the cry. Boon’s, Lick in Missouri, Salt river, Platte river, Oregon, Rock river, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa, each have had its run, and its partisans. But there is ‘more than meets the ear,’ in this; fortunately their destinies are not left to the guidance of their own variable fancies. There is an overruling Power, at whose command their steps are hither bent. When I see them on their march; people from every nation, men, women, and little ones, and cattle winding down the road in their wagons, filling the steamboats, and crowding the stages, all pressing in large bodies towards the land of milk and honey, they remind me of the Hebrews plucked up from an over-grown country, and led with an Almighty hand, to the land of promise. May these travellers, study the eventful journey of the Palestine emigrants, and shun those errors by which they were driven forth from its fair fields. The Hebrews were told, if they would obey their heavenly leader, ‘the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit’—and ‘ye shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in the land safely,’ and ‘ye shall lie down and none shall make you afraid’; ‘I will be your God and ye shall be my people.’[17] What magnificent promises! And how powerful the promiser! Oh that these people would lay these words to their heart, and consider well the Hebrew’s fate! They were also promised to be made ‘high above all nations which He hath made, in praise, in name, and in honor.’[18] There be those who predict this for our country; let these read the conditions by which this maybe obtained, and dread curses[19] which await a failure! We continued our stroll, back of the town across the prairie, or steppe upon which it is built, to another about twelve or fifteen feet above it. From thence is a fine plateau which reaches to the bluffs. As we sat upon this eminence the view was very pretty. The sun had been long gone, but a delicate amber shaded with purple tinted every thing. Below us, was the green prairie crossed with dark purple paths over which the ‘lowing herds’ were winding slowly, as if loth to leave their free pastures for the confinement of a barn yard. The cattle raised upon prairie grass are very fat, and the Illinois beef commands a ready sale in the New Orleans markets. The butter and milk we met with here was uncommonly rich, equal to our first rate Goshen butter. Beyond the prairie is the town, beneath which, flows the quiet Illinois, bounded by dark forests and elevated bluffs. While we were thus sitting enjoying the ‘coming on of grateful evening mild,’ the deep silence was broken by the sweet sound of a church bell, echoing over the river and the still forests. At once these words of Milton so very appropriate to our situation sprang to our lips;
“On a plat of rising ground
I hear the far off Curfew sound,
Over some wide watered shore,
Swinging slow with solem roar.”
There was apparently an evening meeting about to be held, and we rejoiced we should be enabled to enter the courts of the Lord, a privilege we had been denied for some time. Our path to the town lay past several very pretty cottage residences, ornamented with shrubbery and flowers—thence, following the sound of the bell we found ourselves before a small meeting house. It happened fortunately to be the meeting which enjoyed the administration of the Rev. Mr. S——g, of the presbyterian persuasion, whom we found to be a very pleasing, intelligent, and pious man. We were very much gratified with his discourse, which we found very appropriate. He spoke of man as a traveller, the end of whose journey must certainly one day approach, and earnestly bade us to take thought for that event, as there were many there who ‘before the frost is spread over our prairie, may be lying under its sod.’ He reminded us much of Amos, the herdsman of Tekoa, for his similies were all drawn from rural objects—the sun, the clouds, the prairie, the river, and the scenery around him. We no longer wondered at the accounts we had received of the high religious and moral standing of the place, and the great amount of good done in it. This last year, twenty-three thousand dollars were contributed by the people of Peoria towards charitable and religious institutions. We walked home under a bright moon, our hearts much refreshed by all we had heard, and we were rejoiced the Lord had placed such a faithful servant in these fair prairies, to uphold his name.
July 9th.—While wandering along the shore this morning, we descried the smoke of our expected steamboat, and hastened back to the hotel to pack our trunks. It was the Home, from Peru to St. Louis, and we were to take passage in her for Alton, on the Mississippi. We bade adieu to sweet Peoria with regret. The remembrance of it will long ‘perfume our minds,’ as old Izaak Walton says. Its situation, its excellent society, and religious privileges, and its good schools, must certainly make it a desirable place of residence, or of trade. It is two hundred miles from St. Louis, and one hundred and seventy from Chicago. When in the saloon of the Home we were presented with a book in which to write our names, place of residence, whither bound, and our politics. While leaving this, our eyes fell upon a piece of pink satin, framed, which hung against the wall, upon which was printed the rules of the boat. Among other things it forbid ‘any gentleman to go to table without his coat, or any other garb to disturb the company. No gentleman must pencil-work or otherwise injure the furniture.’ (I suppose whittling was meant. Upon our lake boat we saw the boxes of merchandize and barrels on deck, fast disappearing under the whittling knife. A piece a foot long and two inches wide would be torn from the box and cut to pieces by a restless passenger.) Beside these, we were told ‘no gentleman was to lie down in a berth with his boots on, and none enter the ladies’ saloon without permission from them.’ We found in this boat, three indications of being near the south, liquors upon the table, gambling in the gentlemen’s cabin, and a black chambermaid slave to the captain. Among the passengers, were a man with his wife and sons, unlike the most I had met, going west, but making a retrograde motion to the east. They were driven away they said by the fever and ague, from which they had been suffering ever since their removal west. Their yellow gaunt appearance fully testified to the truth of this. He had been a shop keeper in the State of New York, who experiencing some reverses, was persuaded to remove to this golden region by his wife, who was now no longer able to lead the village fashions. He bought a lot, and mill privilege, in an embryo town—their house was situated under the boughs of a forest impenetrable to the sunbeams, surrounded by decaying leaves, moist new soil, and a mill pond. The town’s people were too busily occupied in building banks and hotels, to dig wells, and drinking out of the marshy springs, of course all fell ill by turns. Their boy, they said, had been at ‘death’s door,’ and now, although better, was afflicted with an ague cake, which they wished me to feel in his side. I am convinced a little prudence and knowledge, will keep many ‘healthy, wealthy, and wise,’ who, without it are easily discouraged, fall into difficulties, and wish to try a new place. We have met many upon the road, who have nearly equalled the old woman on the prairie, who had begun the world seven times.
The other female passenger was a young girl who had come down the river in the boat, her home being on the prairie, back of Peru. She was a pretty innocent country lassie about sixteen, travelling alone, on a visit to a brother living on the river, whose wife was ill and required her services. Her travelling dress was a muslin striped with pink; and her hat one of that description we call Dutch bonnets, made of pasteboard covered with pink glazed gingham. She was rejoiced to examine my wardrobe, and cut new patterns, as she lives far from the haunts of men and mantua-makers. My Mosaic brooch pleased her much, and she asked me if I had bought it of the pedlar who she heard had lately arrived in that part of the country with a lot of new goods, and whom she was eager to see. I was obliged to say I had not purchased it from that fashionable depositary. She then proposed to show me her clothes; mine being new to her, she supposed her’s must be new and desirable to me. At her request the chamber-maid drew from the state-room a huge chest of black walnut, which she opened, and, among other things, displayed a pretty straw bonnet trimmed with gay ribbons and flowers. That was her Sunday bonnet. She also drew forth a topaz pin which had reached here in a pedlar’s cart, and was a present to her by her brother. ‘This pin has lasted wonderfully,’ she said, ‘considering how much it has been borrowed. At every dance or party when I do not go, some of the girls borrow and wear it. It has been lent for ten miles around.’ This young lady had been brought when quite young, by her family, from Ohio, whence they emigrated here. They had all suffered much from the fever and ague, but were now acclimated, or rather had corrected the causes of their agues, and she had become fat and rosy. I have remarked in several instances, that the children born here, or brought here young, grow up strong and ruddy, and their parents suffer the most. It is only the first generation who lose their health, as the land improves and diseases vanish about their homes by the time their children are grown. This family live upon a large and productive farm which yields, among other things, according to her account, four hundred bushels of peaches. In the season of this delicious fruit her mother gives a peach feast, inviting all their friends and acquaintances, who, after eating as much as they like, carry away each a basket full. Her family sell several barrels of dried peaches every year.
Twelve miles below Peoria we stopped at the town of Pekin, built upon a bank elevated fifteen feet above the water during high tide; but now, all these places are much higher. The captain told us he should be here some time taking in merchandize, and we employed the interval in seeing the lions of the town. I told the little country girl our intention. ‘Lions!’ she said, ‘I guess you mean wolves; there are no lions in these parts.’