SOLON ROBINSON, 1845 427 



Over a rough uncultivated tract, mostly timbered, I 

 went to the somewhat famous town of Alton, or rather 

 towns, for there are three of them, Upper, Middle and 

 Lower; and all covering as rough and uneven a surface, 

 extending up mountain sides, and back a mile or more 

 over other mountain sides, from the river, that part being 

 Upper Alton. Here is the college, several good churches 

 and fine dwellings, but no mercantile business. Middle 

 town is a collection of good dwellings, mostly occupied 

 by men doing business in the lower town. Here I noticed 

 a dwelling surrounded with a garden in high cultivation, 

 a plain indication of the owner's mind, who I found on 

 acquaintance, though engaged in other pursuits, highly 

 interested in agricultural improvement, and whose name, 

 Moses G. Atwood, 1 will call to the mind of Mr. Tucker, 

 reminiscences of the days when they were both sticking 

 type away down in New-Hampshire. 



At the lower town is the Illinois penitentiary, several 

 fine churches, one busy business street — there is no room 

 for a second one — and a tavern, the Franklin House, that 

 is worthy of patronage. From Alton to St. Louis is 25 

 miles, down the far famed American bottom — an im- 

 mense tract of land that was covered, and in some places 

 greatly injured, by the great flood. But it never was 

 under that kind of a state of cultivation which would 

 satisfy any man who had an aspiration above a "hog and 

 hominy" kind of existence, and was willing to have the 

 "shakes" half the year, for permission even to enjoy that 

 much. I believe I met with a fair sample of half of the 

 inhabitants, in an individual who had lived upon the same 

 farm 40 years, and has not an acre of grass or fruit tree 

 in the world, but can brag of raising more and bigger 

 corn than all the rest of creation, "Old Kaintuck" in- 

 cluded. 



I asked him why he did not raise grass? "Well, he did 

 sometimes think on't — and he tried it about 30 years ago, 



1 Moses G. Atwood, born April 14, 1785, at Woodbury, Connecti- 

 cut; died February 5, 1867. Breeder of Merino sheep. 



