SOLON ROBINSON, 1845 421 



dying with the kidney worm, and he made a "bad crap ; 

 it was so powerful wet in the spring that the crap got 

 right smartly in the grass ! and then again it got dreadful 

 dry," and so with all these misfortunes, he felt too poor 

 to subscribe for a paper. I hinted that if he had taken 

 one, he would have found a receipt to cure the kidney 

 worm, and thus have saved fifty dollars worth of hogs. 

 But "he reckoned these ere papers told a heap of lies;" 

 and so to save the poor man's conscience as well as hogs, 

 I told him to give the latter sulphur, which if I had given 

 him the medicine as well as advice, perhaps he would 

 have done. 



After leaving this fair specimen of a large majority 

 of the settlers of this country, I entered just at sundown, 

 upon a 20 mile prairie, intending to drive five miles to the 

 first and only house, and spend the night; but as I ap- 

 proached, one unacquainted with such scenes, might have 

 fancied that instead of a country tavern, he was nearing 

 an army encampment ; as it required no great stretch of 

 fancy to convert a score of white wagon covers into 

 tents, and the noise of a dozen families of emigrants, into 

 that of a small detachment of "la grand armie." Indeed, 

 such scenes in the west are by no means uncommon. 

 There is one of the roads that enter Chicago, upon which 

 I have seen 300 wagons pass in a day, and that not a rare 

 sight, but one often seen. 



Finding in the present case, that if I remained I must 

 content myself with a very small portion of a bed, and 

 my horses with a birth by the side of a rail fence, I soon 

 concluded to "put out" and brave the terrors of a threat- 

 ening snow storm upon a prairie 15 miles across, as upon 

 the other side lay the town of Carlinsville, the seat of 

 justice in Macoupin county. I am of opinion that if that 

 fellow who is astonishing the "down easters," fiddling 

 the "solitude of the prairie," had been with me this eve- 

 ning, that he would have been able to play the tune in 

 much greater perfection. Perhaps he might add, 



