JOURNEY FROM CHICAGO TO SPRINGFIELD. 231 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



Journey from Chicago to Springfield Oak Plains Travellers 

 Crowded House DuPage Benighted Clatterman s Ottawa 

 Family from New England Travellers Gouging Sleeping 

 Accommodation Peoria Pekin Storekeeper Salt creek Hos 

 pitality of Inhabitants Springfield Prairies Notices of Na 

 ture Face of the Country Soil Agricultural Notices. 



I LEFT Chicago at ten in the morning of the 19th Septem 

 ber : rain having fallen, rendered the prairie difficult to walk 

 on, especially when the soil was wet. A number of Indians 

 were travelling in different directions, and also heavy wag 

 gons, some of the attendants of which carried guns for the 

 purpose of shooting on the journey. 



I dined twelve miles from Chicago, at a hotel on the river 

 Oak Plains, a stream on which people were engaged in erect 

 ing a mill, and the waters of which were competent to propel 

 machinery of moderate power. On asking the workmen if 

 the stream flowed into Lake Michigan, they answered, &quot; It 

 joined the Illinois, although in time of high freshets it some 

 times crossed the plains to the Chicago concern.&quot; This is 

 evidence of the level surface of this part of America ; the river 

 Oak Plains, after running in a southerly direction for half a 

 degree of latitude, takes a westerly course at a point twelve 

 miles from Chicago, and only a few feet above the level of 

 Lake Michigan, and its waters join the sea at New Orleans, 

 while those of the lake flow into the Gulf of St Lawrence. 



When crossing the Oak Plains, five or six geese alighted 

 in the stream, and I stood and saw a young man shoot one of 

 them, who pointed out the proper road across the prairie, 

 which had become doubtful by two or three diverging in diffe 

 rent directions. While in the middle of the prairie, two Indian 

 men and a boy, the former with guns over their shoulders, 



