142 



THE ILLINOIS F^RIMER. 



cheap and of as jyoor a quality as those 

 we now purchase. In making woolen 

 goods in these small shops they can use 

 none but the best of wool ; they cannot 

 work waste and flockings, which is sent 

 east from these small establishments 

 and there worked up and returned to us. 

 The western manufacturer must charge 

 more for his goods, because they are 

 pure wool ; and if the farmer would con- 

 sult his interest, in its greater durability, 

 these small home factories would again 

 prosper. But cheap ready made cloth- 

 ing is laying them out, one by one. The 

 same remarks will, to some extent, ap- 

 ply to carriage making. With the best 

 of timber for wagons and carriages, as 

 well as superior workman, many people 

 send east for their carriages, but this 

 appears to be nearly played out, judging 

 from the prosperous condition of the 

 carriage shop of Mr. Daniel Force. 

 The Ash and Hickory of the Wabash 

 bottoms is not so easily beaten, hence 

 sensible people are patronizing their 

 home enterprise. When our western 

 blacksmiths adopt tne use of coke or 

 charcoal, they will wipe out the last ob- 

 jection to westeirn made carriages. In 

 lumber wagons Attica appears to have 

 a monopoly. The superiority of the 

 timber, and its freedom from the borer, 

 is one of its chief recommendations. 

 In this timber there is no worm holes to 

 plug up, and hence this is also a fine 

 point for the manufacture of packing 

 barrels. But villages, however pretty 

 or prosperous, cannot hold us long, and 

 we needed no second invitation to take a 

 look at the country and to see where 

 the business of the town came from. 

 This part of the country differs in many 

 respects from that of the prairie, and 

 from appearance it must have been a 

 much longer period out of water than 

 the prairie, and was doubtless an island 

 in the wide waste of waters, a greenspot 

 of earth in the groat sea that rolled and 

 washed the base of the Rock Mountains. 

 The formation is of the argillacious 

 sandstone ; the upper layer is of strati- 

 fied sandstone ; next come some forty to 

 fifty feet cf sandstone in masses, mak- 

 incr a more solid crust, and this rests on 

 an indefinite layer of sandstone shale ; 

 of course the water is soft and the soil 

 a sandy clay loam of great depth and 

 capacity for croping. The primeval 

 forest shows great age, as well as a rapid 



growth of timber, and gives us evidence 

 on every hand that this part of Hooser- 

 dom was based on a rock and did not 

 sympathise with the upheaval that gave 

 to the world the great prairie slopes. 

 In company with Mr. E. E. Case, we 

 struck out east through the belt of tim- 

 ber that seperates the small prairies from 

 the river. These small prairies were 

 doubtless sraall ponds or swamps at no 

 distant day, their outlets having been 

 cut deep by heavy freshets through the 

 river ridge, they were drained, and now 

 present small prairies of great fertility 

 for the grasses, but not so well adapt 

 to fruits and wheat, though the higher 

 points are valuable for these purposes. 

 The wooded ridges are first rate fruit 

 lands, and the forest walls break off the 

 sharp winds that can only have a feeble 

 sweep across these small prairies, thus 

 making it a real seat for our favorite 

 goddess Pomona. 



Perhaps there is no place within the 

 range of the great sweep of prairie 

 where the apple, the cherry and the 

 pear thrive better than on these argilla- 

 cious^^standstone ridges. The trees are 

 all loaded with fruit. The Yellow Bell- 

 flower is the great favorite of this sec- 

 tion, though little pains have been 

 taken to introduce the most valuable of 

 our long keepers, or the favorites of 

 summer, and at this time not half of the 

 orchards present a good specimen for 

 eating. In one orchard we found nearly 

 all Black Vandeveres, a coarse winter 

 apple, flanked by a few seedlings; they, 

 had a few harvest apples, but no specie 

 mens fit to eat or look at left, and yet 

 many of the trees were a foot in diam- 

 eter, no effort had been made to correct 

 the error of the first grafting. Those 

 who have early apples, find a ready sale 

 at the prices that they usually get for 

 their -vyinter fruit. This fact alone had 



ought to stimulate them to the growing 

 o£ the summer varieties. 



The orchards are mostly small, and it 



has not'occured to these farmers that 



they have a section of country most 



happily adapted to apples and the smaller 



fruits. The diflSculty has been with the 



railroads, which, without intending it, 



have really cut off shipments or laid an 



almost insuperable embargo on the 



dealer, in what should be one of the 



staple articles of shipment. An jj.r- 

 rangcmcnt by which freight on ftuits 



could be guarantied at the point of ship- 

 ment and paid at the place of delivery, 

 with prompt transportation, would 

 remedy the evil. In going east we have 

 three roads to pass over to reach the 

 lake towns, and the same of the prairie 

 villages to the west ; each ''road makes 

 up its tariff for a short distance, and 

 when the "three are added, the freight is 

 too large ; as cars run over these sever- 

 al lines without a change, a joint tariff 

 should be made. It will be seen that 

 this place is about ninety miles south of 

 Lake Michigan, and with a north wind 

 its atmosphere must be cold and moisten- 

 ed by the lake, but the heated air from 

 the south-west, aided by the valley of 

 the Wabash and the belt of heavy forest, 

 presses the current of lake wind to the 

 east and it becomes warmed, and thus 

 carries the isothermal line a week to ten 

 days in advance of points both to the 

 east and the west. This fact alone 

 gives it an advantage, and is equal to 

 more than a hundred miles of freight, 

 no small item in the marketing of per- 

 ishable fruits. When the people inter- 

 ested make a careful survey of these ad- 

 vantages, we shall see extended orchards 

 of summer apples, of pears, of the 

 May cherry, raspberries, blackberries, 

 strawberries, currants and gooseberries, 



grown for Chicago and other less favor- 

 ed points. 



The Wabash has in the course of 

 time cut down through the masses of 

 sandstone, and nearly a hundred feet 

 into the shale, and thus formed a valley 

 of over a mile in width, and at the top 

 line is nearly two miles. In this vast 

 excavation the river pours the drainage 

 of the high lands south of the lake, and 

 is flanked with bottoms of a mile, on 

 which a vast amount of corn is grown. 

 We crossed over to the west side of the 

 river and visited the old Indian corn- 

 fields,that have been cropped time out of 

 mind, withoutany diminishing of growth. 

 Here the Kickapoos, or Weas, had one 

 of their villages, and their graves are 

 now the site of an orchard bendincr 

 beneath its load of fruit. In this field 

 of five hundred acres, protected on the 

 west by the sandstone bluffs and a beaut- 

 iful belt of trees on the river bank, 

 make it a sylvan retreat, that even the 

 Indian, stoic as he is, could appreciate its 

 beauty. At an early day in the settle- 

 ment of the whites, the waters of a 



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