SPOKT IN NORTH AMEEICA. 



from four to five hundred oysters good for motlier- 

 of -pearl. 



v.— TORCH-FISHING. 



Undoubtedly one of the most important towns 

 in the American Union is Chicago, on the banks of 

 Lake Michigan. At the present time, its buildings 

 cover a superficies of two square leagues. The 

 commercial capital of the State of Illinois was, 

 fifteen years ago, nothing but a group of huts, 

 wooden houses, and the trunks of trees which had 

 been felled and heaped up together, covered with 

 moss and weeds, and grouped at the end of a bay 

 suflficiently spacious to provide accommodation for a 

 war-fleet. Thanks to emigration, the hamlet of 

 Chicago suddenly grew to be a village ; then it 

 assumed the proportions of a little town of twenty 

 thousand inhabitants; and at the census of 1861, it 

 was found that there were a hundred and twenty- 

 five thousand inhabitants in the town of Chicago. , 



During my stay in the State I found myself, in 

 the month of March, 184-6, staying in Chicago, 

 which I was visiting on business. Sitting at break- 

 fast one morning at the Great Eagle Mansion, where 

 I was putting up, I happened to be next a man 



