46 NORTHERN PEAIKIE. 



At La Salle we cross the Illinois river, and have now reached 

 the centre of the coal region of the northern part of the State, 

 a busy populous district, in which the population has increased 

 five fold during the last fifteen years. The value of land has 

 increased in a much greater ratio, land near the station, which 

 then sold at 10s. an acre, being now worth 10. 



At Mendota, about ten miles farther north, the country, 

 which is all open prairie, is well " settled," and the people look 

 unusually lively, healthy, and well fed. White clover may be 

 seen growing very luxuriantly along the railway banks where 

 the natural prairie grass has given way. The same kind of 

 country continues for the next twenty-five miles to Dixon, which 

 is a very handsome town of about 5000 people, finely placed on 

 both sides of the Eock Eiver, a broad navigable stream, flowing 

 at the bottom of shelving wooded banks. For some miles north 

 of Dixon the road runs up the river bank, skirting the wood- 

 land, and then emerges on a tract of open undulating prairie, 

 where large farms with corn fields stretch out apparently for 

 miles on either side. This continues for the next thirty or forty 

 miles. In this northern part of the State the air is much cooler 

 than in the south, and the winters are more severe. Cattle re- 

 quire six weeks longer of winter provender. Indian corn is not 

 so productive by one-fourth as it is in the rich midland portion 

 of the State, and winter wheat is so precarious that the spring- 

 sown variety is chiefly cultivated. But this district is ad- 

 mirably suited for oats and potatoes, and for summer grazing. 

 We have now reached Freeport, a flourishing town of 7000 

 people, on the Pecatonica river, northwards of which, for the 

 next forty or fifty miles to near Galena, the prairie soil is thin- 

 ner and more rolling, but covered with white clover wherever 

 the natural grass has given way. This terminates the prairie 

 land. 



Galena is the great seat of the lead mines in America, and 



