THREE DAYS AT CHICAGO. 363 



with the enterprise or prosperity of their city, cannot 

 but be struck with admiration. 



Their irrepressible hopefulness, which effected such 

 marvelous results after the great conflagration of 1871, 

 is a case in point, and those who have been fortunate 

 enough to see the transformation, are forced to admit 

 that the calamity was, after all, not so much to be de- 

 plored. Out of the great waste in which the business 

 portion was laid, handsome buildings have sprung up 

 with almost magic rapidity and auguring well for the 

 future of the " Windy City." Especially is this 

 feature striking in the vicinity of the City Hall, where 

 finer edifices rose upon the old ruins. 



The very name of Chicago carries us back to the 

 barbaric scenes of more than two hundred years 

 ago. Where the beautiful city now stands, those days 

 of long since past knew only a morass, an oozy, deso- 

 late stretch of water-soaked swamp. There was a 

 stream in this desolate region, the banks of which, 

 tradition tells us, were parched and cracked and black- 

 ened by the frequent ravages of lightning. The 

 early explorers found on its banks an old stone mound, 

 supposed to have been erected for the sacrifice of hu- 

 man victims to propitiate the wrath of the Indian deity 

 Chekagua, the Thunder God. 



On the oldest map of this region' now extant, one 

 published in 1684, the little river itself bears the 

 name Chekagua, and it may be, that our fair Western 

 metropolis of to-day was also a namesake of that same 

 weird divinity. 



Others, claiming a more propitious christening, as- 

 sert that Chicago was a derivative from Chacaqua, the 



Indian term for the Divine River. 

 IS 



