When we set out the following day in the stage-coach for Peru, I was surprised to see how the settlement of Chicago had extended westward into the open country. "Three years ago," said a traveller in the coach, "it was thought that this prairie could neither be inhabited nor cultivated. It is so level and so little elevated, that for weeks its surface would remain covered with water; but we have found that as it is intersected with roads, the water either runs off in the ditches of the highways, or is absorbed into the sand which lies below this surface of dark vegetable mould, and it is now, as you perceive, beginning to be covered with habitations."
If you ever go by the stage-coach from Chicago to Peru, on the Illinois river, do not believe the glozing tongue of the agent who tells you that you will make the journey in sixteen hours. Double the number, and you will be nearer the truth. A violent rain fell in the course of the morning; the coach was heavily loaded, nine passengers within, and three without, besides the driver; the day was hot, and the horses dragged us slowly through the black mud, which seemed to possess the consistency and tenacity of sticking-plaster. We had a dinner of grouse, which here in certain seasons, are sold for three cents apiece, at a little tavern on the road; we had passed the long green mound which bears the name of Mount Joliet, and now, a little before sunset, having travelled somewhat less than fifty miles, we were about to cross the channel of the Illinois canal for the second or third time.
There had once been a bridge at the crossing-place, but the water had risen in the canal, and the timbers and planks had floated away, leaving only the stones which formed its foundation. In attempting to ford the channel the blundering driver came too near the bridge; the coach-wheels on one side rose upon the stones, and on the other sank deep into the mud, and we were overturned in an instant. The outside passengers were pitched head-fore-most into the canal, and four of those within were lying under water. We extricated ourselves as well as we could, the men waded out, the women were carried, and when we got on shore it was found that, although drenched with water and plastered with mud, nobody was either drowned or hurt.
A farm wagon passing at the moment, forded the canal without the least difficulty, and taking the female passengers, conveyed them to the next farm-house, about a mile distant. We got out the baggage, which was completely soaked with water, set up the carriage on its wheels, in doing which we had to stand waist high in the mud and water, and reached the hospitable farm-house about half-past nine o'clock. Its owner was an emigrant from Kinderhook, on the Hudson, who claimed to be a Dutchman and a Christian, and I have no reason to doubt that he was either. His kind family made us free of their house, and we passed the night in drying ourselves, and getting our baggage ready to proceed the next day.
We travelled in a vehicle built after the fashion of the English post-coach, set high upon springs, which is the most absurd kind of carriage for the roads of this country that could be devised. Those stage-wagons which ply on Long Island, in one of which you sometimes see about a score of Quakers and Quakeresses, present a much better model. Besides being tumbled into the canal, we narrowly escaped being overturned in a dozen other places, where the mud was deep or the roads uneven.
In my journey the next day, I was struck with the difference which five years had made in the aspect of the country. Frame or brick houses in many places had taken the places of log-cabins; the road for long distances now passed between fences, the broad prairie, inclosed, was turned into immense fields of maize, oats, and wheat, and was spotted here and there with young orchards, or little groves, and clumps of bright-green locust-trees, and where the prairie remained open, it was now depastured by large herds of cattle, its herbage shortened, and its flowers less numerous. The wheat harvest this year is said to have failed in northern Illinois. The rust has attacked the fields which promised the fairest, and they are left unreaped, to feed the quails and the prairie-hens.
Another tedious day's journey, over a specially bad road, brought us to Peru a little before midnight, and we passed the rest of the night at an inn just below the bank, on the margin of the river, in listening to the mosquitoes. A Massachusetts acquaintance the next morning furnished us with a comfortable conveyance to this pleasant neighborhood.