SOLON ROBINSON, 1847 55 



right North on the next quarter, and William still lives 

 in the same old cabin which he built on his first visit to 

 the country in December, 1834. 



The arrival of these families gave us considerable 

 pleasure, for they had been our old and intimate acquaint- 

 ances and neighbors in the south part of the State. 



The first part of the winter had been mild and pleas- 

 antly cold, but in February came on the most severe 

 weather that I have ever seen since I have lived upon this 

 prairie, and as we had reason to believe they were on the 

 road, we naturally felt considerable anxiety for them, as 

 they were to come by the way of the upper rapids of the 

 Kankakee, at that time a much more desolate and unset- 

 tled region than it is now. 



Some of the perils that they endured may be aptly 

 attended to, as connected with the history of the settle- 

 ment of this county. The marshes south of the Kankakee 

 were covered with ice, upon which night overtook them 

 endeavoring to force their ox teams across. There was 

 no house, and they were unprepared for camping out, and 

 one of the most severe cold nights about closing in upon 

 them, surrounded by a wide field of ice, upon which the 

 already frightened & tired oxen refused to go farther; 

 and not a tree or stick of fire wood near them. 



I allude to this to show those that think they meet with 

 great hardships noiv, that the pioneers met with more 

 severe ones. These families upon this night might have 

 perished, had they not providentialy discovered a set of 

 logs that some one had hauld out upon a little knoll near 

 by to build a cabin with, and with which they were en- 

 abled to build a fire to warm a tent made out of the cover- 

 ing of their wagons, and which enabled them to shelter 

 themselves from the blast that swept over the wide prai- 

 rie almost as unimpeded as over the mountain waves of 

 the ocean. The next day, by diverging ten miles out of 

 their course, they reached a little miserable hut of an old 

 Frenchman, who lived with his half Indian family on the 

 Kankakee. Here they staid two days and nights; such 



