"There is religion in a flower;
Mountains and oceans, planets, suns, and systems,
Bear not the impress of Almighty power
In characters more legible than those
Which he has written on the tiniest flower
Whose light bell bends beneath the dewdrop's weight."
One who has never looked upon the Western prairie in the pride of its blushing bloom can hardly conceive the surpassing loveliness of its summer flora; and, if the idea is not easy to conceive, still less is it so to convey. The autumn flowers in their richness I have not yet beheld; and in the early days of June, when I first stood upon the prairies, the beauteous sisterhood of spring were all in their graves; and the sweet springtime of the year it is when the gentle race of flowers dance over the teeming earth in gayest guise and profusion. In the first soft days of April, when the tender green of vegetation begins to overspread the soil scathed by the fires of autumn, the viola, primrose of the prairie, in all its rare and delicate forms; the anemone or wind-flower; the blue dewy harebell; the pale oxlip; the flowering arbute, and all the pretty family of the pinks and lilies lie sprinkled, as by the enchantment of a summer shower, or by the tripping footsteps of Titania with her fairies, over the landscape. The blue and the white then tint the perspective, from the most limpid cerulean of an iris to the deep purple of the pink; from the pearly lustre of the cowslip to the golden richness of the buttercup. In early springtime, too, the island groves of the prairies are also in flower; and the brilliant crimson of the cercis canadensis, or Judas-tree; the delightful fragrance of the lonicera or honeysuckle, and the light yellow of the jasimum, render the forests as pleasant to the smell as to the eye. But spring-time passes away, and with her pass away the fair young flowers her soft breath had warmed into being. Summer comes over the prairies like a giant; the fiery dog-star rages, and forth leap a host of bright ones to greet his coming. The heliotrope and helianthus, in all their rich variety; the wild rose, flinging itself around the shrub-oak like a wreath of rainbows; the orchis, the balmy thyme, the burgamot, and the asters of every tint and proportion, then prevail, throwing forth their gaudy, sunburnt petals upon the wind, until the whole meadow seems arrayed in the royal livery of a sunset sky. Scarcely does the summer begin to decline, and autumn's golden sunlight to stream in misty magnificence athwart the landscape, than a thousand gorgeous plants of its own mellow hue are nodding in stately beauty over the plain. Yellow is the garniture of the autumnal Flora of the prairies; and the haughty golden-rod, and all the splendid forms of the gentiana, commingling with the white and crimson eupatorium, and the red spire of the liatris, everywhere bespangle the scene; while the trumpet-formed corolla of the bignonia radicans glitters in the sunbeams, amid the luxuriant wreathing of ivy, from the tall capitals of the isolated trees. All the solidago species are in their glory, and every variety of the lobelia; and the blood-red sumach in the hollows and brakes, and the sagittaria, or arrow-head, with its three-leaved calyx and its three white petals darting forth from the recesses of the dark herbage, and all the splendid forms of the aquatic plants, with their broad blossoms and their cool scroll-like leaves, lend a finished richness of hue to the landscape, which fails not well to harmonize with the rainbow glow of the distant forest.
" – Such beauty, varying in the light
Of gorgeous nature, cannot be portrayed
By words, nor by the pencil's silent skill;
But is the property of those alone
Who have beheld it, noted it with care,
And, in their minds, recorded it with love."
What wonder, then, that, amid a scene like this, where the summer reigned, and young autumn was beginning to anticipate its mellow glories, the traveller should in a measure have forgotten his vocation, and loitered lazily along his way!
Portage des Sioux, Mo.
XXV
"There's music in the forest leaves
When summer winds are there,
And in the laugh of forest girls
That braid their sunny hair."
Halleck.
"The forests are around him in their pride,
The green savannas, and the mighty waves;
And isles of flowers, bright floating o'er the tide
That images the fairy world it laves."
Hemans.
There is one feature of the Mamelle Prairie, besides its eminent beauty and its profusion of flowering plants, which distinguishes it from every other with which I have met. I allude to the almost perfect uniformity of its surface. There is little of that undulating, wavelike slope and swell which characterizes the peculiar species of surface called prairie. With the exception of a few lakes, abounding with aquatic plants and birds, and those broad furrows traversing the plain, apparently ancient beds of the rivers, the surface appears smooth as a lawn. This circumstance goes far to corroborate the idea of alluvial origin. And thus it was that, lost in a mazy labyrinth of grass and flowers, I wandered on over the smooth soil of the prairie, quite regardless of the whereabout my steps were conducting me. The sun was just going down when my horse entered a slight footpath leading into a point of woodland upon the right. This I pursued for some time, heedlessly presuming that it would conduct me to the banks of the river; when, lo! to my surprise, on emerging from the forest, I found myself in the midst of a French village, with its heavy roofs and broad piazzas. Never was the lazy hero of Diedrich Knickerbocker – luckless Rip – more sadly bewildered, after a twenty years' doze among the Hudson Highlands, than was your loiterer at this unlooked-for apparition. To find one's self suddenly translated from the wild, flowery prairie into the heart of an aged, moss-grown village, of such foreign aspect, withal, was by no means easy to reconcile with one's notions of reality. Of the name, or even the existence of the village, I had been quite as ignorant as if it had never possessed either; and in vain was it that I essayed, in my perplexity, to make myself familiar with these interesting items of intelligence by inquiry of the primitive-looking beings whom I chanced to encounter, as I rode slowly on into the village through the tall stoccades of the narrow streets. Every one stared as I addressed him; but, shaking his head and quickening his pace, pointed me on in the direction I was proceeding, and left me to pursue it in ignorance and single blessedness. This mystery – for thus to my excited fancy did it seem – became at length intolerable. Drawing up my horse before the open door of a cottage, around which, beneath the galleries, were gathered a number of young people of both sexes, I very peremptorily made the demand where I was. All stared, and some few took it upon them, graceless youths, to laugh; until, at length, a dark young fellow, with black eyes and black whiskers, stepped forward, and, in reply to my inquiry repeated, informed me that the village was called "Portage des Sioux;" that the place of my destination was upon the opposite bank of the Mississippi, several miles above – too distant to think of regaining my route at that late hour; and very politely the dark young man offered to procure for me accommodation for the night, though the village could boast no inn. Keeping close on the heels of my conducteur, I again began to thrid the narrow lanes of the hamlet, from the doors and windows of every cottage of which peeped forth an eager group of dark-eyed women and children, in uncontrolled curiosity at the apparition of a stranger in their streets at such an advanced hour of the day. The little village seemed completely cut off from all the world beside, and as totally unconscious of the proceedings of the community around as if it were a portion of another hemisphere. The place lies buried in forest except upon the south, where it looks out upon the Mamelle Prairie, and to the north is an opening in the belt of woods along the river-bank, through which, beyond the stream, rise the white cliffs in points and pinnacles like the towers and turrets of a castellated town, to the perpendicular altitude of several hundred feet. The scene was one of romantic beauty, as the moonbeams silvered the forest-tops and cliffs, flinging their broad shadows athwart the bosom of the waters, gliding in oily rippling at their base. The site of Portage des Sioux is about seven miles above the town of Alton, and five below the embouchure of the Illinois. Its landing is good; it contains three or four hundred inhabitants, chiefly French; can boast a few trading establishments, and, as is invariably the case in the villages of this singular people, however inconsiderable, has an ancient Catholic church rearing its gray spire above the low-roofed cottages. Attached to it, also, is a "common field" of twelve hundred arpens– something less than as many acres – stretching out into the prairie. The soil is, of course, incomparably fertile. The garden-plats around each door were dark with vegetation, overtopping the pickets of the enclosures; and away to the south into the prairie swept the broad maize-fields nodding and rustling in all the gorgeous garniture of summer.
My conducteur stopped, at length, at the gate of a small brick tenement, the only one in the village, whose modern air contrasted strangely enough with the venerable aspect of everything else; and having made known my necessities through the medium of sundry Babel gibberings and gesticulations, he left me with the promise to call early in the morning and see me on my way.
"What's your name, any how?" was the courteous salutation of mine host, as I placed my foot across his threshold, after attending to the necessities of the faithful animal which had been my companion through the fatigues of the day. He was a dark-browed, swarthy-looking man, with exceedingly black hair, and an eye which one might have suspected of Indian origin but for the genuine cunning – the "lurking devil" – of its expression. Replying to the unceremonious interrogatory with a smile, which by no means modified the haughty moroseness of my landlord's visage, another equally civil query was proposed, to which I received the hurried reply, "Jean Paul de – ." From this amiable personage I learned, by dint of questioning, that the village of Portage des Sioux had been standing about half a century: that it was originally settled by a colony from Cahokia: that its importance now was as considerable as it ever had been: that it was terribly shaken in the great earthquakes of 1811, many of the old cottages having been thrown down and his own house rent from "turret to foundation-stone" – the chasm in the brick wall yet remaining – and, finally, that the village owed its name to the stratagem of a band of Sioux Indians, in an expedition against the Missouris. The legend is as follows: "The Sioux being at war with a tribe of the Missouris, a party descended the Upper Mississippi on an expedition for pillage. The Missouris, apprized of their approach, laid in ambush in the woods at the mouth of the river, intending to take their enemies by surprise as their canoes doubled the point to ascend. The Sioux, in the depths of Indian subtlety, apprehending such a manœuvre, instead of descending to the confluence, landed at the portage, took their canoes upon their backs, and crossed the prairie to the Indian village on the Missouri, several miles above. By this stratagem the design of their expedition was accomplished, and they had returned to their canoes in safety with their plunder long before the Missouris, who were anxiously awaiting them at their ambuscade, were aware of their first approach."
Supper was soon served up, prepared in the neatest French fashion. While at table a circumstance transpired which afforded me some little diversion. Several of the villagers dropped in during the progress of the meal, who, having seated themselves at the board, a spirited colloquy ensued in the patois of these old hamlets – a species of gumbo-French, which a genuine native of La Belle France would probably manage to unravel quite as well as a Northern Yankee. From a few expressions, however, the meaning of which were obvious, together with sundry furtive glances to the eye, and divers confused withdrawals of the gaze, it was not very difficult to detect some pretty free remarks upon the stranger-guest. All this was suffered to pass with undisturbed nonchalance, until the meal was concluded; when the hitherto mute traveller, turning to the negro attendant, demanded in familiar French a glass of water. Presto! the effect was electric. Such visages of ludicrous distress! such stealthy glancing of dark eyes! such glowing of sallow cheeks! The swarthy landlord at length hurriedly ejaculated, "Parlez vous Français?" while the dark-haired hostess could only falter "Pardonnez moi!" A hearty laugh on my own part served rather to increase than diminish the empressement, as it confirmed the suspicion that their guest had realized to the full extent their hospitable remarks. Rising from the table to put an end to rather an awkward scene, I took my portfeuille and seated myself in the gallery to sketch the events of the day. But the dark landlord looked with no favouring eye upon the proceeding; and, as he was by no means the man to stand for ceremony, he presently let drop a civil hint of the propriety of retiring; the propriety of complying with which civil hint was at once perceived, early as was the hour; and soon the whole house and village was buried in slumber. And then "the stranger within their gates" rose quietly from his couch, and in a few moments was luxuriating in the fresh night-wind, laden with perfumes from the flowerets of the prairie it swept. And beautifully was the wan moonlight playing over forest, and prairie, and rustling maize-field, and over the gray church spire, and the old village in its slumbering. And the giant cliffs rose white and ghastly beyond the dark waters of the endless river, as it rolled on in calm magnificence, "for ever flowing and the same for ever." And associations of the scene with other times and other men thronged "thick and fast" upon the fancy.
The first vermeil flush of morning was firing the eastern forest-tops, when a single horseman was to be seen issuing from the narrow lanes of the ancient village of Portage des Sioux, whose inhabitants had not yet shaken off the drowsiness of slumber, and winding slowly along beneath the huge trees skirting the prairie's margin. After an hour of irregular wandering through the heavy meadow-grass, drenched and dripping in the dews, and glistening in the morning sunlight, he plunges into the old woods on his right, and in a few moments stands beneath the vine-clad sycamores, with the brilliant, trumpet-formed flower of the bignonia suspended from the branches upon the margin of a stream. It is the "Father of Waters," and beyond its bounding bosom lies the little hamlet of Grafton, slumbering in quiet beauty beneath the cliffs. The scene is a lovely one: the mighty river rolling calmly and majestically on – the moss-tasselled forest upon its bank – the isles of brightness around which it ripples – the craggy precipice, rearing its bald, broad forehead beyond – the smoking cottages at the base, and the balmy breath of morning, with fragrance curling the blue waters, are outlines of a portraiture which imagination alone can fill up.
Blast after blast from the throat of a huge horn suspended from the limb of an aged cotton-wood, went pealing over the waters; but all the echoes in the surrounding forest had been awakened, and an hour was gone by, before a float, propelled by the sturdy sinews of a single brace of arms, had obeyed the summons. And so the traveller sat himself quietly down upon the bank beneath the tree-shade, and luxuriated on the feast of natural scenery spread out before him.
The site of the town of Grafton is an elevated strip of bottom-land, stretching along beneath the bluffs, and in this respect somewhat resembling Alton, fifteen or twenty miles below. The locale of the village is, however, far more delightful than that of its neighbour, whatever the relative advantages for commerce they may boast, though those of the former are neither few nor small. Situated at the mouth of the Illinois as to navigation; possessing an excellent landing for steamers, an extensive and fertile interior, rapidly populating, and inexhaustible quarries for the builder, the town, though recently laid off, is going on in the march of improvement; and, with an hundred other villages of the West, bids fair to become a nucleus of wealth and commerce.
Grafton, Ill.
XXVI
"When breath and sense have left this clay,
In yon damp vault, oh lay me not;
But kindly bear my bones away
To some lone, green, and sunny spot."
"Away to the prairie! away!
Where the sun-gilt flowers are waving,
When awaked from their couch at the breaking of day,
O'er the emerald lawn the gay zephyrs play,
And their pinions in dewdrops are laving."
On the morning of my arrival at Grafton, while my brisk little hostess was making ready for my necessities, I stepped out to survey the place, and availed myself of an hour of leisure to visit a somewhat remarkable cavern among the cliffs, a little below the village, the entrance of which had caught my attention while awaiting the movements of the ferryman on the opposite bank of the Mississippi. It is approached by a rough footpath along the river-margin, piled up with huge masses of limestone, which have been toppled from the beetling crags above: these, at this point, as before stated, are some hundred feet in perpendicular height. The orifice of the cave is elliptical in outline, and somewhat regular, being an excavation by the whirling of waters apparently in the surface of the smooth escarpment; it is about twenty feet in altitude, and as many in width. Passing the threshold of the entrance, an immediate expansion takes place into a spacious apartment some forty or fifty feet in depth, and about the same in extreme height: nearly in the centre a huge perpendicular column of solid rock rears itself from the floor to the roof. From this point the cavern lengthens itself away into a series of apartments to the distance of several hundred feet, with two lesser entrances in the same line with that in the middle, and at regular intervals. The walls of the cave, like everything of a geological character in this region, are composed of a secondary limestone, abounding in testaceous fossils. The spot exhibits conclusive evidence of having once been subject to diluvial action; and the cavern itself, as I have observed, seems little else than an excavation from the heart of an enormous mass of marine petrifaction. Large quantities of human bones of all sizes have been found in this cavern, leaving little doubt that, by the former dwellers in this fair land, the spot was employed as a catacomb. I myself picked up the sincipital section of a scull, which would have ecstasied a virtuoso beyond measure; and several of the lumbar vertebræ, which, if they prove nothing else, abundantly demonstrate the aboriginal natives of North America to have been no pigmy race. The spot is now desecrated by the presence of a party of sturdy coopers, who could not, however, have chosen a more delightful apartment for their handicraft; rather more taste than piety, however, has been betrayed in the selection. The view of the water and the opposite forest from the elevated mouth of the cavern is very fine, and three or four broad-leafed sycamores fling over the whole a delightful shade. The waters of the river flow onward in a deep current at the base, and the fish throw themselves into the warm sunlight from the surface. What a charming retreat from the fiery fervour of a midsummer noon!
The heavy bluffs which overhang the village, and over which winds the great road to the north, though not a little wearisome to surmount, command from the summit a vast and beautiful landscape. A series of inclined planes are talked of by the worthy people of Grafton to overcome these bluffs, and render their village less difficult of inland ingress and regress; and though the idea is not a little amusing, of rail-cars running off at an angle of forty-five degrees, yet when we consider that this place, if it ever becomes of any importance, must become a grand thoroughfare and dépôt on the route from St. Louis and the agricultural regions of the Missouri to the northern counties of Illinois, the design seems less chimerical than it might be. A charter, indeed, for a railroad from Grafton, through Carrolton to Springfield, has been obtained, a company organized, and a portion of the stock subscribed;182 while another corporation is to erect a splendid hotel. The traveller over the bluffs, long before he stands upon their summit, heartily covets any species of locomotion other than the back of a quadruped. But the scenery, as he ascends, caught at glimpses through the forest, is increasingly beautiful. Upon one of the loftiest eminences to the right stand the ruins of a huge stone-heap; the tumulus, perchance, of some red-browed chieftain of other days. It was a beautiful custom of these simple-hearted sons of the wilderness to lay away the relics of their loved and honoured ones even upon the loftiest, greenest spots of the whole earth; where the freed spirit might often rise to look abroad over the glories of that pleasant forest-home where once it roved in the chase or bounded forth upon the path of war. And it is a circumstance not a little worthy of notice, that veneration for the dead is a feeling universally betrayed by uncivilized nations. The Indian widow of Florida annually despoils herself of her luxuriant tresses to wreathe the headstone beneath which reposes the bones of her husband. The Canadian mother, when her infant is torn from her bosom by the chill hand of death, and, with a heart almost breaking, she has been forced to lay him away beneath the sod, is said, in the touching intensity of her affection, to bathe the tombstone of her little one with that genial flood which Nature poured through her veins for his nourishment while living. The Oriental nations, it is well known, whether civilized or savage, have ever, from deepest antiquity, manifested an eloquent solicitude for the sepulchres of their dead. The expiring Israelite, we are always told, "was gathered to his fathers;" and the tombs of the Jewish monarchs, some of which exist even to the present day, were gorgeously magnificent. The nations of modern Turkey and India wreathe the tombs of their departed friends with the gayest and most beautiful flowers of the season; while the very atmosphere around is refreshed by fountains.
From the site of the stone-heap of which I have spoken, and which may or may not have been erected to the memory of some Indian chieftain, a glorious cosmorama of the whole adjacent region, miles in circumference, is unfolded to the eye. At your feet, far below, flow on the checkered waters of the Mississippi, gliding in ripples among their emerald islands; while at intervals, as the broad stream comes winding on from the west, is caught the flashing sheen of its surface through the dense old woods that fringe its margin. Beyond these, to the south, lies spread the broad and beautiful Mamelle Prairie, even to its faint blue blending with the distant horizon laid open to the eye, rolling and heaving its heavy herbage in the breeze to the sunlight like the long wave of ocean. And the bright green island-groves, the cape-like forest-strips swelling out upon its bosom, the flashing surface of lakes and water-sheets, almost buried in the luxuriance of vegetation, with thousands of aquatic birds wheeling their broad flight over them, all contribute to fill up the lineaments of a scene of beauty which fails not to enrapture the spectator. Now and then along the smooth meadow, a darker luxuriance of verdure, with the curling cabin-smoke upon its border, and vast herds of domestic cattle in its neighbourhood, betray the presence of man, blending his works with the wild and beautiful creations of Nature. On the right, at a distance of two miles, come in the placid waters of the Illinois, from the magnificent bluffs in the back-ground stealing softly and quietly into the great river through the wooded islands at its mouth. The day was a sultry one; the atmosphere was like the breath of a furnace; but over the heights of the bluffs swept the morning air, fresh and cool from the distant prairie. For some miles, as is invariably the case upon the banks of the Western rivers, the road winds along among bluffs and sink-holes; and so constantly does its course vary and diverge, that a pocket compass is anything but a needless appendage. Indeed, all his calculations to the contrary notwithstanding, the traveller throughout the whole of this region describes with his route a complete Virginia fence. The road is not a little celebrated for its tortuosity. At length the traveller emerges upon a prairie. On its edge beneath the forest stands a considerable settlement, bordering on Macoupin Creek, from which it takes a name. In the latter part of 1816 this settlement was commenced, and was then the most northern location of whites in the Territory of Illinois.183
It was evening, at the close of a sultry day, that the village of Carrolton appeared before me among the trees.184 I was struck with the quiet air of simple elegance which seemed to pervade the place, though its general outlines are those of every other Western village I have visited. One broad, regular street extends through the town, upon either side of which stand the stores and better class of private residences; while in the back-ground, scattered promiscuously along the transverse avenues, are log-cabins surrounded by cornfields, much like those in the villages of the French. Three sides of the town are bounded by forest, while the fourth opens upon the prairie called "String Prairie." In the centre of the village, upon the principal street, is reserved a square, in the middle of which stands the courthouse, with other public structures adjacent, and the stores and hotels along its sides. One thing in Carrolton which struck me as a little singular, was the unusual diversity of religious denominations. Of these there are not less than five or six; three of which have churches, and a fourth is setting itself in order to build; and all this in a village of hardly one thousand inhabitants. The courthouse is a handsome edifice of brick, two stories, with a neat spire. The neighbouring region is fertile and healthy; well proportioned with prairie and timber, well watered by the Macoupin and Apple Creeks,185 and well populated by a sturdy, thriving race of yeomanry. This is, indeed, strictly an agricultural village; and, so far as my own observation extended, little attention is paid or taste manifested for anything else.
About a dozen miles north of Carrolton is situated the village of Whitehall, a flourishing settlement in the prairie's edge, from the centre of which, some miles distant, it may be seen.186 Three years ago the spot was an uncultivated waste; the town has now two houses of worship, a school, an incorporation for a seminary, two taverns, six hundred inhabitants, and a steam mill to feed them withal. A few miles from this place, on the outskirts of another small settlement, I was met by a company of emigrants from Western New-York. The women and children were piled upon the top of the household stuff with about as much ceremony as if they constituted a portion thereof, in a huge lumbering baggage-wagon, around which dangled suspended pots and kettles, dutch-ovens and tin-kitchens, cheese-roasters and bread-toasters, all in admired confusion, jangling harsh discord. The cart-wheels themselves, as they gyrated upon the parched axles, like the gates of Milton's hell on their hinges, "grated harsh thunder." In the van of the cavalcade strode soberly on the patriarch of the family, with his elder sons, axe upon shoulder, rifle in hand, a veritable Israel Bush. For six weeks had the wanderers been travelling, and a weary, bedusted-looking race were they, that emigrant family.
The rapidity with which a Western village goes forward, and begins to assume importance among the nations, after having once been born and christened, is amazing. The mushrooms of a summer's night, the wondrous gourd of Jonah, the astonishing bean of the giant-killer, or the enchantments of the Arabian Nights, are but fit parallels to the growth of the prairie-village of the Far West. Of all this I was forcibly reminded in passing through quite a town upon my route named Manchester, where I dined, and which, if my worthy landlord was not incorrect, two years before could hardly boast a log-cabin.187 It is now a thriving place, on the northern border of Mark's Prairie, from which it may be seen four or five miles before entering its streets; it is surrounded by a body of excellent timber, always the magnum desideratum in Illinois. This scarcity of timber will not, however, be deemed such an insurmountable obstacle to a dense and early population of this state as may have been apprehended, when we consider the unexampled rapidity with which a young growth pushes itself forward into the prairies when once protected from the devastating effects of the autumnal fires; the exhaustless masses of bituminous coal which may be thrown up from the ravines, and creeks, and bluffs of nearly every county in the state; the facility of ditching, by the assistance of blue grass to bind the friable soil, and the luxuriance of hedge-rows for enclosures, as practised almost solely in England, France, and the Netherlands; and, finally, the convenience of manufacturing brick for all the purposes of building. There is not, probably, any quarter of the state destined to become more populous and powerful than that section of Morgan county through which I was now passing. On every side, wherever the traveller turns his eye, beautiful farms unfold their broad, wavy prairie-fields of maize and wheat, indicative of affluence and prosperity. The worst soil of the prairies is best adapted to wheat; it is generally too fertile; the growth too rapid and luxuriant; the stalk so tall and the ear so heavy, that it is lodged before matured for the sickle. Illinois, consequently, can never become a celebrated wheat region, though for corn and coarser grains it is now unequalled.