Pekin is a small place and only contains eight or nine hundred inhabitants, and five or six streets. The shops seemed well filled with goods, and presented a goodly show of tin, iron-ware, dry-goods, crockery, provisions, etc. I purchased a green gauze veil here and several small articles, all of which I found much more expensive than in our Atlantic shops, freight being high on the Mississippi. In paying for them I found a new currency here, my shillings and sixpences being transformed into bits and pics or picayunes. The Pekin Express lay upon the counter which we amused ourselves looking over while waiting for change. The person who kept the shop turned out to be the oldest inhabitant of the place, that important personage who, in a storm, always determines if there has been ever a greater one or no. He might very well be the oldest, as the town is but ten years in existence. ‘Pekin,’ he said, ‘would have been ere this far ahead of any town upon the river, were it not that there were two parties among the commissioners who were to lay it out; these pulling different ways the town was nearly lost between them. The rich country behind, and the river in front, had befriended them, and they soon expected to have their branch of the railroad finished to Mackinaw river, whose water power and timber bluffs were very valuable.’ We remarked as we walked, a large hotel nearly finished; a presbyterian, methodist, and several other meeting-houses; office of the ‘Tazewell Telegraph’; academy, and some dwellings. We lay here four hours with a hot sun reflecting from the sandy bank, impatiently watching the barrels of flour which seemed as they would never cease rolling from the large store-house upon the bank, down to our vessel. These barrels are from the steam flour mills, which turn out two hundred barrels a day. Beside these, we took in a hundred sacks of corn, and some other merchandize. The captain seemed well pleased with his morning’s work, saying he had a streak of luck that day. Three miles below this he had another ‘streak.’ At the mouth of Mackinaw river scows were waiting him, loaded with bundles of laths and staves, and long dark boards, which I took for mahogany, but which proved to be black-walnut. The Mackinaw is a clear stream, having rich bottom land, bounded by bluffs covered with white oak and cedar. The prairies through which it flows, are rolling and tolerable land with several mill seats.
The Illinois looked beautiful this afternoon. Its glassy waters scarcely moved, and it seemed so content with its sweet resting place, and at the silent admiration of those stately trees, which were sending their cool flickering shadows over her and gazing down at loveliness, that it would fain linger upon its course, as some young languid beauty, conscious of a graceful position which is winning admiring glances from every beholder.
Among the trees, beside the usual elm, oak and maple, we observed several enormous wild cherry trees, nearly one hundred feet in height, and at least fifteen feet in circumference, and the paw paw, the coffee nut, the red ash, American nettle, a tall, slender tree, with pretty red berries, and many unknown to us, or to those around us. The islands in this river are small but covered with soft, luxurious herbage. The birds and wild fowl were out, enjoying themselves, chattering, pluming their wings, and visiting each other from tree to tree. Among the wild fowl, we observed teal and brant, and wild ducks, skimming over the water, or wheeling in flocks over our heads. One, apparently in a spirit of daring, would set out to cross our path—leaving his little cove, he would glide with the utmost rapidity over the river in front of us, leaving a silver line on the smooth surface of the stream, and after we had passed, glide back, bobbing up and down upon the waves in our wake. When he arrived at home, what a quacking and chattering and fluttering was heard! In one little cove, or bayou, was a little island, covered with rich grass, and shaded from the sun by the dense grove whose branches met over it—this seemed to be quite a colony of ducks, who were going and coming in rapid but graceful evolutions from the main land. A young man who stood near us named the place Quackville, and declared when he returned home he would publish a map, and sell off the lots. We passed several towns to day, as Liverpool, Havanna, Beardstown—the former a small settlement, but which its inhabitants intend to make larger, as they have already a railroad in contemplation across the Mississippi. Beardstown is a place of some importance. It is a county town, and its commerce greater than any upon the river. Mechanics of all descriptions are to be found here, as bakers, shoe makers, tailors, blacksmiths, cabinet makers, silver smiths, carpenters, joiners, coopers, painters &c. &c. see Peck. There are also here steam flour mills, saw mills, breweries, distilleries, &c. A canal is projected here, to connect the Illinois with the Wabash, (which divides the state of Illinois from Indiana,) by means of the Sangamon and Vermillion forks. While passing these towns one is surprised at their rapid growth, for when Schoolcraft rowed his canoe up this river twenty years since, it was a wilderness only inhabited by Indians. Opposite Havanna, the Spoon river enters the Illinois. Its Indian name is Amequeon, which means ladle, and is much prettier than its present name. It is one hundred and forty miles in length, navigable most of the way, and capable of being cleared further. The soil is dry undulating prairie, with considerable timber—and some of it upon the forks of the Spoon is the richest in the state—its forks and tributaries affording good mill seats. It is in the military bounty land, which commences just above it, and terminates at the junction of the Illinois with the Mississippi, making a triangle of five million three hundred and sixty thousand acres, about ninety miles along the Illinois, and the base of the triangle, ninety miles across to the Mississippi, near Quincy. This is appropriated by Congress to the soldiers of the regular army in the war between the United States and Great Britain. Two thirds of this land is prairie, and the rest timbered, crossed by a variety of rivers and creeks. The soil is generally a black vegetable mould from fifteen to thirty inches deep. Much of the best of this land has been bought up by a company who have opened an office at Quincy, where they sell it from three to ten dollars an acre, while other parts are sold at the price government established for its lands all over the States, one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre. Government has given to the State of Illinois every other section. Sangamon river comes gliding down over its pebbly floor, a pure transparent stream, between Liverpool and Havanna. It runs through Sangamon county, of whose fertility, beautiful scenery, crowded population, rich prairies, numerous streams, and valuable timber groves, we have heard such flourishing accounts. By the way, I can never get reconciled to the western custom of calling woods timber, woodland, or groves, or forest, timberland. My young country girl, Maria, in relating an interesting romantic event which had occurred in her region of country, instead of speaking of a ramble in the woods said ‘we had gone to walk in the timber.’ In this famed county is Springfield, the capital of the State. The Sangamon river is one hundred and eighty miles long, and navigable nearly to the capitol, seventy-five miles, by small steamboats. With a small expense it can be cleared. We do not see the Illinois in all its grandeur, as the water is low. It falls, our captain says, one and a half inches a day, and has fallen eight feet since June. It will arise in the autumn, and when its present channel is full overflows the bottom land to the bluffs. This makes the river shore, unless very elevated, rather unhealthy, and consequently uninhabited. Soon after passing the Sangamon, we stopped to take in wood, and we embraced the opportunity to take a sunset stroll in the forest. A small cottage embowered among woodpiles, inhabited by a woodman and his family, were the only signs of human life we saw. These sylvan solitudes however, are not without their denizens, for the birds were skipping from bough to bough, the turtle were romantically reclining upon the logs beside the water, the wild fowls, and the paroquets were chattering in concert with the mocking bird. There the squirrel also
“Sits partly on a bough his brown nuts cracking,
And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking.”
Here however in these pretty nooks he sits undisturbed, for no boys ‘with crooks and bags’ can molest his quiet haunts. We enjoyed the deep forest walk very much having been now so long cramped in a steamboat, and wandered along among the stately beech and graceful linden, the black walnut and locust, swung upon the festoons of the enormous vines which hung down from the trees, and breathed with much satisfaction the perfume from the dewy herbage, grape vine buds, and yellow jassamin which climbed the boughs around us. The steamboat bell recalled us to the shore in time to see a steamboat pass, being the second we had met this morning.
There is much travelling upon this river during the summer months. Our captain told us he had made fifty-eight trips last year from St. Louis to Peru, carrying ten thousand passengers. This seems a great number, but we are a travelling people, and with the emigrants going west, it may be true. I am chary of repeating things heard upon the road as I know my country people delight in quizzing travellers. I have had some awful examples of this lately, sufficient to make me cautious, in regard to certain tourists from abroad to this country; and when told any thing dubious, remember the three miles of roast pig; the drunken ladies of Boston; the piano with pantalets upon its legs; the canvass bags to hold specie in times of bank troubles, etc. etc. Pretty Maria’s travelling bonnet, which I described to you, also reminds me of the misconceptions to which travellers are liable, who take a hasty glance and go not to the best sources for information. As proof of the poverty of the country, low style of dress and manners, an European traveller tells his readers the richest ladies wear hats of their own manufacture, made of pasteboard covered with calico or gingham. And so they do; but only to run in the garden, or to a neighbor in the county, for you know we all, when in the county, use these as garden hats, as they shelter the face so well from the sun. I wish you could transport yourself here at this moment, and seat yourself by me upon the hurricane deck, and see how perfectly the forest shore is reflected upon the quiet polished Illinois. This stream cannot be called a flowing one for it has scarcely any current, but reposes in its bed with the tranquility of a lake. Now it lies in evening’s deep shadow, while, as we look above, the topmost plumage is tipt with gold—this gradually disappears,—darkness succeeds, except where one struggling moon-beam, from the Indians Tibic geezis, night sun, streams down the long forest vista, and lies like a silver ribbon across the river. I always go to bed with the chickens while on board a steamboat, as a light attracts mosquetoes, and here river fog forbids us to sit out of doors—so good night.
July 10.—Off Meredosia. This is a thriving town, built upon one of those elevated terraces which occur frequently along the river as if on purpose to raise the settlements above the damp alluvion, and to give them a pretty effect. It is in a good situation to rise, as it is a sort of business port to Jacksonville, to which a railroad of twenty-three miles is in operation; and Morgan county, upon which it is situated, is a thickly peopled district, having good timbered lands, mill streams, quarries of lime and free stone; and is watered by many streams. Jacksonville is a large town where there are several churches, a court house, mills and shops. The Quincy and Danville railroad passes through Meredosia, to the Wabash river, two hundred and twenty miles. Through this river, communication is held with the lakes. Their exports are between two and three hundred thousand dollars, and imports five hundred thousand dollars. Here we took in several passengers. Six miles below Meredosia is Naples, a small collection of shops and dwellings, situated upon a high bank. Upon one house, larger than the rest, I read the name ‘Napoleon Coffee House.’ I looked around for Vesuvious, but saw it not, nor any other Neopolitan traces. The names upon this river are very ludicrous, and striking monuments of the want of taste in those who bestowed them. One would imagine, from reading my last letter, I had been travelling in seven league boats, or in a balloon, as I have touched at Peru, Pekin, Havanna, Liverpool, Naples, Brussels, Rome, (part in the night,) &c. While the Indian names are so pretty, why are they neglected for such worn out European designations. Peoria, and Illinois, and Ottowa are very pretty; Hennipen is very well, as given in honor of one of the early discoverers of this county from France, and it might be thought a debt of gratitude, but every pioneer has not so good a name, and if this custom is followed, it saddles us with such names as already abound, viz: Jo Davies’ County, Pike, Cook, Higgonbottom, Hancock, Buggsville, Toddtown, Dodgeville. Moreover, the Indians were the first explorers, and if any, they are entitled to this honor. To obviate this it has been proposed to take something local, but unless persons of taste are consulted, we shall hear of more Bigbonelicks, Bloodyruns, Mud Lakes or Crab Orchard’s. I wish Congress would take the matter in hand, and form a committee of nomanclature to name every new settlement.
We are constantly passing steamboats. In 1836, at Beardstown, there were four hundred and fifty arrivals and departures, and at Naples their account was the first year, 1828, nine; from March to June, 1832, one hundred and eight, and now, of course all these figures must be doubled. Among our passengers we have an old Kentucky woman, who has been living several years upon this river. She was so rejoiced to see a slave again, that soon she and Violette, our chambermaid, became quite intimate friends. She frequently borrowed her pipe to have a comfortable smoke out upon the guards, where, with Violette beside her, she would smoke and chat for hours. A lady on board, who had lately become a convert to temperance cause, was extremely offended at the sight of spirits upon the dining table. Her husband argued for their use upon the ground of frequent impure water, and fever and ague, from which the stomach is fortified. The wife, however, was not convinced; when, in the midst of a high argument, our old woman put her head in at the door, and taking out her pipe, after slowly puffing off her smoke, uttered this oracular sentence: ‘For my part, I think there are lots of gnats strained at, and lots of camels swallowed,’—and disappeared. The husband left the argument for the card table, whence he arose sometime after, grumbling at his losses, and galled by the discovery that the winner was a well known black legg, whose practice was to live in steamboats during summer, to fleece such silly sheep as himself. In the winter he returned upon his laurels, to New Orleans or St. Louis, to revel upon his winnings.
This morning we passed one of those machines employed by government, during low water for the purpose of clearing away the sandbars. It is a large wooden ark, worked by steam. A great shovel takes up the mud, brings it up, and throws it into the scow at the other side which is emptied upon the shores. The State has appropriated $100,000 to improvements upon this river. There are several sandbars, and below Ottowa ledges of sandstone which, if removed, would render the navigation unimpeded at all seasons of the year quite to Ottowa, two hundred and ten miles above the mouth of the river. We stopped so often to take in freight and passengers, that we began to be fearful we should not reach the mouth of the river and behold its junction with the stately Mississippi before dark—however, ‘we came a good jog’ this morning, to use our old Kentucky lady’s phrase, and now after tea we are sitting upon the guards watching for it. We are continually passing streams which run into this river—Crooked creek, comes down about one hundred miles through a very fertile region of country with a soil of argillaceous mould from one to four feet deep.[20] Its banks are lined with oak, maple, hickory, black walnut and much other valuable timber. Bituminous coal, and free stone quarries are also found there. Apple creek, at whose mouth is a small settlement; Macoupin creek, its name taken from the Indian Maquapin, a water plant, whose smooth leaf floats upon the bayous and lakes in this region; its esculent root, after being baked under heated stones is a favorite food with the native tribes. There is a settlement upon this last named stream commenced in eighteen hundred and sixteen, which then was the most northern white settlement of Illinois. The population of the State four years after, in eighteen hundred and twenty, was fifty-five thousand two hundred and eleven, and now, eighteen hundred and forty, it is four hundred and twenty three thousand nine hundred and thirty four, a great increase in twenty years. We have now upon each hand, the two last counties which border the Illinois. Green, on the east, contains excellent land, well settled by eastern families, many from Vermont. It is one of the richest portions of land in the State, traversed by fine water courses and bounded by two large rivers,—containing beautiful prairies, and excellent timber. In the cliffs which border the Mississippi on this county, bituminous coal is found among the sandstone and limestone strata, and crystal springs flow from their sides. Calhoun county on our right is the southern point of the triangle containing the military bounty lands. The point where the Mississippi and Illinois meet is low prairie subjected to inundation and consequently unhealthy; coal has been found here, and the large trees are famous for their honey. As we were near the mouth of the river, and my little fellow voyager, Maria, had not yet landed, I asked her how far we were from her brother’s residence. She said she had been looking out for it, but every place had a different name from that of her brother. I recommended her to ask the captain; he sent her word we had passed it twenty miles back. Poor Maria seemed overwhelmed with consternation. The town, we found upon enquiry, was in the interior, the passengers landing at an old tree upon the shore and we all now remembered a plain country-man, upon the bank who made numerous signs to the steamboat, flourishing his arms frantically. Maria with the rest supposed he was in jest, or a madman, but now remembered he was like her brother, who must have seen her and motioned her to stop. Maria had expected a town, and did not imagine that her stopping place. As our boat was so uncertain in its movements the poor man must have spent the day upon the shore, and was now doubtless very anxious about his young sister. There was nothing for her to do now but stop in the steamboat at St. Louis until its return trip. I felt sorry for the poor girl, only fifteen, and thus left to the tender mercy of the world. We spoke to the captain and chambermaid, who both promised to take charge of her and land her at her brothers when he returned next week. The afternoon is beautiful; we are peeping up the forest glades, as the channel runs near the shore, or inhaling the rich perfume which the summer breeze shakes out from the trees. Suddenly the forest is passed and we gaze over the low prairie which lies between the two rivers, bounded by a line of round green hills which range across the country. ‘The bluffs of the Mississippi!’ exclaimed my companion, ‘and we soon shall see its famous waters.’ We hastened up to the hurricane deck, and placed ourselves in a good situation for beholding the scenery; a little excited at the thought of looking upon the grand and celebrated stream. The Illinois flowed as straight and still as a canal, about four hundred yards wide, we glided over its waters and soon found ourselves in a broad majestic stream which came rolling down between a range of bluffs; here, a mile broad, upon whose bosom some lonely islands stretched across from the mouth of the Illinois. The view was delightful upon each side; the fair plains of Missouri at our right, and upon the Illinois side, bold beautiful cliffs, or green cone like hills, covered with a soft carpet of verdure, sinking down upon the east side into lovely green dells. This style of hill is called by the French, Mamelle. In one of these pretty nooks, nestled at the foot of a bluff, is the town of Grafton, from whose balconies the inhabitants obtain a fine view up the Mississippi. This town is only a few years old, but expects soon to rival Alton, as most of the travelling from the interior to the Missouri towns opposite, is through it. It has already laid out upon paper a railroad to Springfield, the capitol. The rapid tide of the ‘father of waters,’ presented a great contrast to the languid Illinois. The color is brown, but of a different tint from the Illinois, being a dark coffee brown, but clear and sparkling. We looked a last farewell to the fair Illinois, upon whose banks, or on whose water we had travelled for four days and four nights, a distance of nearly four hundred and fifty miles, if we include the Des Plaines. The loveliness of the scenery all this distance merits the encomiums made upon it by the early French writers. This was a favorite river with the French, and La Salle, Charlevoix, and Marquette, describe the beauty of its shores in glowing terms.