ILLINOIS AND THE LAKES.
Lead mines—Indian treaty—Ride to Chicago—Vast prairies—The stricken family—Amusing Adventures—Chicago—Milwaukie—Mackinaw—Indian encampment.
We spent one day during the present week in passing through the mining country to visit several of the diggings in Wisconsin, and around Galena, and also the smelting furnaces, where the mineral is extracted from the ore and cast into pigs. The country through which we passed was one continued series of rolling prairies. It was perfectly enchanting to see what a perfect flower garden was before us wherever we went.
We descended a mine which had been sunk about one hundred feet. The lead runs in veins either due north and south, or west and east. Veins frequently cross each other at right angles. If it is a north and south vein, and a good one—and crosses an east and west vein, it becomes inferior from that point, and the other assumes a superior character, and usually is the best lead. The way the miners dig the lead is to pierce down perpendicularly till they get to the bottom of the sheet—then take the base out and dig upwards. The lead is usually wedged in between two ledges of rocks, filling up the crevice, which runs down from fifty to one hundred feet. It is frequently wedged in so tight that the rocks have to be blasted to loosen it. I went down about fifty feet where they were at work, and then passed along in a horizontal direction, about eighty feet, where the miners were knocking out the lead in the fissures in the rocks over their heads. We loitered around the mines till the decline of day. The shades of evening gathered over us before we had crossed the last prairie on our way to Galena. The moon was just climbing above the horizon, when a prairie wolf darted across our path, as though scared by the sound of our carriage wheels, but having run a few rods, turned around to look to see who were the intruders upon his domain.
An Indian treaty is about negotiating at St. Peters, and a steamer started from here a few days since to carry up a party who desire to be present at this gathering of the wild men, and to visit the majestic and stupendous scenery around St. Anthony's Falls. I had fully intended to have been one of the party, but on the eve of starting I felt myself forced for want of time to forego the excursion.
The Steamer James Madison,
Wednesday Evening, June 19th.
At early dawn, on Monday last, we crossed Fevre river, and started for Chicago in an open lumber wagon, 'ycleped a stage. Taking our trunks for seats, we determined we would make the best of every thing, and if possible keep up good spirits, while we learned the manner in which people travel through new countries. Our journey, though attended with no little fatigue, was like a walk over the rosied path of pleasure, compared with a jaunt of which Bishop Kemper gave me an account. He had made an appointment somewhere in the interior of Indiana, where it was necessary for him to be at a given day, and had undertaken to pass over Illinois from St. Louis to that point by land. He was overtaken by rain which continued a day or two: the streams became swollen, and the roads, often for miles, completely overflown. All this time he was obliged to ride in an open wagon, the bottom boards of which were loose, and often slipping out, rendering it necessary for him every now and then to get out, and stand in the mud and water, till the rickety wagon could be again brought into a state of temporary order. During the last part of his journey he rode all night with the rain pouring down upon him, and the horses sometimes fording deep creeks—sometimes plunging into sloughs, and then wading for miles through the water which had overflowed the road. The office of a missionary Bishop at the west, if he does his duty, and throws himself with all his heart into the work, is no sinecure.
Our course from Galena, for the first thirty miles, was through beautiful oak openings, and over a rolling prairie. After this, on nearly to Chicago, our path lay through a magnificent, level prairie country. The wide sea of grass around us was now and then broken by a grove, springing up with luxuriance and beauty amid the treeless tract of country that stretched around on every side. These groves are points of great interest, and are spoken of by the sparsely scattered inhabitants of northern Illinois, as we speak of cities and towns. The most beautiful of those which we passed were Buffalo, Inlet, and Paw Paw groves, around or near which were scenes of massacre and slaughter during the Black Hawk war.
As no one can conceive the sensation awakened by being out of sight of land at sea, till he actually stands on the deck of a vessel, that is ploughing her way through the trackless world of waters that stretch interminably around him, and strains his eye in vain to catch a view of one single fading outline of the far off shore—so no one can conceive the emotion that rises up in the bosom of the traveller as he stands on the broad prairie, and sees the horizon settling down upon one wide sea of waving grass, and can behold around him neither stone, nor stump, nor bush, nor tree, nor hill, nor house. These vast prairies, though bearing a luxuriant growth of grass, would impress one with a sense of desolateness, were they not beautified with flowers, and animated with the songs and the sight of the feathered tribes. The view of the prairie, as it stretches off before you, often appears like a perfect flower garden. Though we were too late to see these productions in their rich vernal beauty, yet often they stood strewn around us on every side as far as the eye could reach, spreading out their rich and brilliant petals of every colour and hue. An intelligent lady told me that in a single walk over the corner of a prairie, she gathered for a bouquet forty different kinds of flowers; and another informed me that she had been able to gather one hundred and twenty different kinds. Though the music wafted along over these luxuriant expanses of earth be usually not so melodious nor varied as that to which the woodlands echo, there is something very animating in the wheeling of the plover, the chirping of the robin, and the fluttering of the wings of a flock of prairie hens, started up at every half mile of your journey. And then occasionally we saw noble herds of cattle feeding over these vast plains. Such large, and fat, and noble-looking oxen and cows, I never before beheld, as I saw grazing amid the luxuriant prairies of Illinois. There is no fence to stay them in their course:—they range where they choose amid the ten thousands of acres that stretch unenclosed around them.
I have already intimated that this part of Illinois is as yet but thinly populated. It is rapidly filling up but for some years the first settlers will have to endure many hardships, and submit to many privations and sacrifices, of which we can scarcely form an idea. The following fact will serve to illustrate this remark. While on our way to Chicago, as we stopped on one occasion to change horses, I went in and sat down in the only house in the place. It was a comfortable log-cabin, and all nature looked so bright and sunny without, I was hardly prepared for demure and melancholy looks within: and yet the moment I entered, I saw in the countenance of the good lady of the cabin that her heart was ill at ease. She looked so forlorn and full of gloom, I determined to enter into conversation with her and if possible elicit the cause of her depression. After a variety of inquiries, she was drawn out to give the following sketch of herself, which I will put down as nearly as possible in her own words.