I took a little independent trip from St. Louis by rail, to Alton, on the Illinois side. It just took three hours; one to get there, one there, and one to return.
It was many long years since I resided in Alton, and it was with a sort of fearfulness that I made the excursion. Would any one remember me? Were my friends yet living? And so on. I crossed the great railroad bridge over the Mississippi, and up on the east bank to Alton, which lies just above the confluence of the two great rivers. I passed through, on the Illinois side, what seemed a continuous series of manufacturing settlements, all emphasizing the vast development of industrial enterprises in the West.
On arriving at Alton, the changed aspect of all was most apparent. The river front—where in old times I had seen the steamboats line up, and watched their loading and unloading, picturesque by day or by night, but especially attractive when seen under the glare of torches, and enlivened by the songs of the negro hands—was now, almost, unused. The railroad tracks dominated everything, down to the water's edge.
I wandered off at random through the streets, until I came to the old familiar Alton Bank, which looked exactly the same. I entered to inquire after friends, and as the clerk was obligingly giving me information, I asked him if he knew a former clerk, Mr. W——, who was there years before. "Oh, yes," said he; "he is now our president." By this time a pleasant face looked fixedly at me, and, in a moment, an outstretched hand grasped mine, and my old friend was calling me by name, and we were once more young men again, when, in the old time, music was our bond of fellowship, and all that that involves.
While we were speaking—the bank president and myself—a lady, with her little girl, entered the office, and again my name was called. "I have been following you in the street," she said. "I knew it must be you, but I could scarcely believe my eyes." It was the daughter of a dear friend of years long gone, and her daughter was by her side.
How lovely it all seemed to be thus recognized, and to bind together afresh the ties of years that had fled!
But my hour in Alton was almost up. I could only look at the outside of the dear old church where I once worshipped. My friend of the bank brought me, to the train, as a little gift of remembrance, a book called "Poems of the Piasa," by Frank C. Riehl. It contained also a number of other kindred poems of Western life.
The Piasa was a dreadful, winged monster, which inhabited the banks of the Mississippi at Alton in ages past. A note in the volume I received might here be quoted. It is as follows:
"The region along the shores on both sides of the Mississippi, between the points of the confluence of the Illinois and Missouri rivers with the Father of Waters, is particularly rich in legendary stories concerning the life and habits of the powerful tribes of Indians who were the original owners of these fertile valley lands. Along the bluffs on the Illinois side are numberless burial places where the bones of thousands of 'the first Americans' repose, while the valleys and prairie-stretches for some distance back from the river, afford constant reminders of their presence and handiwork in the dim ages of the past.
"From the time of the earliest frontier expeditions, this locality has been conspicuous among the chronicles for the number and peculiar charm of the folk-lore stories handed down from one generation to another, and held in almost sacred reverence by the Indians. And, among these, dating from the famous expedition of Marquette, none is more striking and interesting than that of the Piasa Bird. That this was more than a mere myth is attested by the evidence of many early settlers, who got the story in minute detail from the Indians themselves; and by the painting that remained upon the face of the perpendicular bluffs within the present limits of the city of Alton, until quarried away just about the close of the first half of this century."