UKBA^A. 43 



Crossing the river, which is a broad clear stream, as wide 

 as the Thames at Eichmond, running between limestone cliffs 

 clothed with timber, the road traverses a continuous prairie, 

 more or less dotted with houses and farms for the next seventy 

 miles. This is all a good range of country, and though the 

 railroad frequently runs in a perfectly straight line for many 

 miles, the surface while rather flat is very seldom a dead level, 

 as may be at once observed by the varied depth of the cuttings 

 and embankments all along the line. At every eight or ten 

 miles we pass a station round each of which a town is rapidly 

 springing up, very often with a steam flour-mill in its centre 

 capable of manufacturing 150 barrels of flour a day. 



At Urbana, 128 miles south of Chicago, there is a flourish- 

 ing town and station, the population numbering near 4000. I 

 saw a peach plantation in this neighbourhood which was said 

 to be in some seasons extraordinarily productive and remuner- 

 ative. High prices are paid by the graziers here for the best 

 breeds of cattle to improve their stock, one man whom I met 

 at the station having last year paid 5001. for a short-horn bull 

 from England. The soil is very black and rich looking. Gen- 

 erally, even on the flattest prairie, groves of timber are visible 

 somewhere on the horizon, but they become more frequent after 

 we pass southward of Urbana, and until Mattoon is reached, 

 a few miles from which, and at about 180 miles south of Chi- 

 cago, the general level of the country falls about eighty feet. 

 This forms the termination of the line of black loamy prairie, 

 the grey wheat-soils of southern Illinois now commencing. The 

 open prairie becomes narrower, and the woods, which are every- 

 where found along the beds of the rivers and streams, seem to 

 be within little more than a mile apart from each other. The 

 soil is more silicious than the black soil of the upper prairies, 

 and better adapted for winter wheat, of which it seldom fails to 

 produce good crops of fine quality. It is also considered good 



