430 

 A VISIT TO THE ILLINOIS. 



WHEN, in the year 1817, the political dissatisfaction of the people of 

 England induced great numbers of our most intelligent and wealthy 

 farmers from the southern counties to take refuge in the western world, 

 from the real or imaginary evils of their native land, I was then, though 

 little more than a youth,, amongst the crowds who were hurrying to the 

 western Elysium. 



I do not propose here to describe the thousand times described voyage 

 across the Atlantic Ocean, nor the cities, roads, and taverns of the 

 Union ; nor the peculiarities of the people, country, laws, manners, or 

 natural productions ; nor, indeed, to dwell upon any foreign matter 

 whatever, in this narrative; proposing solely to exhibit, as through a 

 telescope, a distant community of English men and manners in the 

 bosom of the woods and prairies of the Illinois. 



The person who first directed the attention of emigrants to the natural 

 meadows of the western settlements of America, was Mr. Morris Birk- 

 beck, a gentleman farmer from Wanborough, in Sussex, whose travels 

 and scientific writings are well known in the literature of this country. 

 Upon my arrival, in the following year, at the settlement in the Illinois, 

 I found that this gentleman had fixed his residence upon the edge of an 

 extensive and very beautiful prairie, having made large purchases of 

 land, both woodland and prairie j and he had at that time built a sub- 

 stantial log-house, planted an orchard and garden, and enclosed and 

 ploughed about fifty acres of prairie land. He had also laid out the 

 scite of a future town, called Wanborough, but which, at that time, 

 consisted of only a few straggling log-cabins. His views were appa- 

 rently grasping and ambitious ; for, with a capital altogether inferior to 

 so extensive a design, he had petitioned the government of the United 

 States, to grant him a tract of country more than thirty-two miles 

 square. Indeed, many circumstances induced to the belief, that personal 

 dissatisfaction with his station upon the political ladder in England, and 

 a belief of his ability to ascend to a great height upon it in a foreign 

 country, had been his principal motives for emigrating to America. 

 Nor is it out of the course of human feeling, that such should have been 

 his expectations; for the opposition to a tyrannical government does 

 not so often proceed from motives of generous commiseration with the 

 victims of oppression, as from a selfish and envious resentment of the 

 power to oppress ; nor is it material, perhaps, whether envy or huma- 

 nity be the means implanted in our nature, to counteract the evil inten- 

 tions of arbitrary power. Whatever might have been the designs of 

 Mr. Birkbeck, it is certain that imagination entered too much into the 

 composition of his mind, for their well-directed accomplishment. And 

 his settlement upon the prairies of Illinois, though amongst the most 

 refined and magnificent virgin scenery of nature, eminently fitted for the 

 retirement of the scholar and the man of contemplation, was removed, 

 as it were, beyond the ways of men ; being more than forty miles from 

 the river navigation of the Ohio ; almost a thousand miles from the 

 Atlantic sea-board ; and thus excluded altogether from this money-get- 

 ting world. Though the prairies consisted of land of a high degree of 

 fertility, and though the climate of the Illinois was wholesome, mild, 



