A New Guide for Emigrants to the West

by John Mason Peck

4. Barrens. This term, in the western dialect, does not indicate poor land, but a species of surface of a mixed character, uniting forest and prairie.

The timber is generally scattering, of a rough and stunted appearance, interspersed with patches of hazle and brushwood, and where the contest between the fire and timber is kept up, each striving for the mastery.

In the early settlements of Kentucky, much of the country below and south of Green river presented a dwarfish and stunted growth of timber, scattered over the surface, or collected in clumps, with hazle and shrubbery intermixed. This appearance led the first explorers to the inference that the soil itself must necessarily be poor, to produce so scanty a growth of timber, and they gave the name of barrens to the whole tract of country. Long since, it has been ascertained that this description of land is amongst the most productive soil in the State. The term barren has since received a very extensive application throughout the West. Like all other tracts of country, the barrens present a considerable diversity of soil. In general, however, the surface is more uneven or rolling than the prairies, and sooner degenerates into ravines and sink-holes. Wherever timber barely sufficient for present purposes can be found, a person need not hesitate to settle in the barrens. These tracts are almost invariably healthy; they possess a greater abundance of pure springs of water, and the soil is better adapted for all kinds of produce, and all descriptions of seasons, wet and dry, than the deeper and richer mould of the bottoms and prairies.

When the fires are stopped, these barrens produce timber, at a rate of which no northern emigrant can have any just conception. Dwarfish shrubs and small trees of oak and hickory are scattered over the surface, where for years they have contended with the fires for a precarious existence, while a mass of roots, sufficient for the support of large trees, have accumulated in the earth. As soon as they are protected from the ravages of the annual fires, the more thrifty sprouts shoot forth, and in ten years are large enough for corn cribs and stables.

As the fires on the prairies become stopped by the surrounding settlements, and the wild grass is eaten out and trodden down by the stock, they begin to assume the character of barrens; first, hazle and other shrubs, and finally, a thicket of young timber, covers the surface.

5. Forest, or timbered Land. In general, Illinois is abundantly supplied with timber, and were it equally distributed through the State, there would be no part in want. The apparent scarcity of timber where the prairie predominates, is not so great an obstacle to the settlement of the country as has been supposed. For many of the purposes to which timber is applied, substitutes are found. The rapidity with which the young growth pushes itself forward, without a single effort on the part of man to accelerate it, and the readiness with which the prairie becomes converted into thickets, and then into a forest of young timber, shows that, in another generation, timber will not be wanting in any part of Illinois.

The kinds of timber most abundant are oaks of various species, black and white walnut, ash of several kinds, elm, sugar maple, honey locust, hackberry, linden, hickory, cotton wood, pecan, mulberry, buckeye, sycamore, wild cherry, box elder, sassafras, and persimmon. In the southern and eastern parts of the State are yellow poplar, and beech; near the Ohio are cypress, and in several counties are clumps of yellow pine and cedar. On the Calamick, near the south end of lake Michigan, is a small forest of white pine. The undergrowth are redbud, pawpaw, sumach, plum, crab apple, grape vines, dogwood, spice bush, green brier, hazle, &c.

The alluvial soil of the rivers produces cotton wood and sycamore timber of amazing size.

For ordinary purposes there is now timber enough in most parts of the State, to say nothing about the artificial production of timber, which may be effected with little trouble and expense. The black locust, a native of Ohio and Kentucky, may be raised from the seed, with less labor than a nursery of apple trees. It is of rapid growth, and, as a valuable and lasting timber, claims the attention of our farmers. It forms one of the cleanliest and most beautiful shades, and when in blossom gives a rich prospect, and sends abroad a delicious fragrance.

6. Knobs, Bluffs, Ravines, and Sink-holes. Under these heads are included tracts of uneven country found in various parts of the State.