320 TRANSACTIONS OF THE KANKAKEE 



I have frequently traced the clear and sharp cut lines of woodland, 

 and observed the strong contrast it presented to the far-stretching 

 prairie, until the line of timber in the distance looked like a solid 

 wall. There is but little compromise between the two: the natural 

 prairie will not encroach upon the woodland, nor does the forest of 

 itself enlarge its borders at the expense of the plain. The acorns 

 and nuts that fall upon the prairie margin decay and rot where they 

 fall, unless the soil was specially prepared for their reception, while 

 had the same germs been planted by the hand of nature on a true 

 timber-bearing soil, they would of themselves have sprouted and 

 taken root. The characteristics and differences between true timber 

 and prairie land is as marked and distinct as that between mountain, 

 slope, and meadow location. 



Nor has the age of prairie formation even yet, by any means 

 ceased to be; the sloughs and low marshy lands we find in almost 

 any direction about us, is a condition, the last of a long series that 

 have continued for long ages past, that transforms a sea bottom to 

 a fertile plain. The bay of Sandusky, north of Ohio, is at present 

 undergoing this same transformation. A portion becomes land- 

 locked by sand bars and islands, and thus protected from the agita- 

 tions of storms and deep waters, fresh water deposits are slowly but 

 surely accumulating ujjon the bottom. These and the washings of 

 the surrounding shores, and the debris of incoming streams, are an 

 influence that makes itself felt in the course of centuries. Minne- 

 sota may be termed a land of inland lakes, yet it will not be many 

 generations hence ere the majority of them will become cultivated 

 fields. Beaver and Eagle lakes, in the border of an adjoining state, 

 have, by a system of drainage, been largely reclaimed to cultivation 

 within the past twenty years, and where formerly the lake bottom 

 was found at a depth of twenty feet or more there is scarcely half 

 that, while, by a general cultivation of the entire country, an in- 

 creased evaporation is taking place, and swamps and marshes are 

 yearly becoming firmer and more cultivatable. Near my former home 

 is the old arm of a lake covering a thousand acres, that in a few 

 years longer will bear the finest of tame grasses; within the memory 

 of men still living it lay five feet under water. The inarshes along 

 the bed of the Kankakee River in the State of Indiana are slowly 

 but surely becoming dry prairie, and when, two hundred years ago, 

 LaSalle and his brave men followed the course of our river from 

 some point in Indiana to its union with the Illinois, the marsh was 

 both wider and deeper than at present. 



It will be but a few generations hence when the monotone of 

 prairie grandeur and its wild loneliness will have forever passed from 

 our midst. The civilization of to-day is thickly dotting the fertile 

 acres with prosperous homes. The great present and the still greater 

 future granaries of the world lie within our l^orders. The cultiva- 

 tion of upland and the drainage of lowland plains s^nd the million 



