10 



a considerable; size, extending in a rather ragged line, offer a vei*>- welcome 

 shade at the foot of the bluff at about high-water mark. An ah>undant sup- 

 ply of very pure and delightfully cool water is easily reached everj-where. 

 either in running springs or by driving down an iron pipe for a few feet in 

 the sand and screwing on a common cistern pump. 



The occasional narrow, swampy- flats along the eastern bank of Quiver 

 Lake and beside the river between that lake and the town, are u.sually 

 jangled thickets of underbrush and swamp-land trees, which at certain sea- 

 sons of the year are gay with multitudes of fl'owers and vocal with the songs 

 of a great variety of birds. The general aspect of the flora of the sandy 

 bluffs is quite imusual for Illinois, many plants occurring there abundantly 

 which are rarely seen in ordinary situations. The bottom-lands become cov- 

 ei'ed in late summer and autumn with an immense growth of composite 

 plants, setting the intervals and recesses of the forest ablaze with yellows. 

 purples, and reds, and loading the air with the heavy odor of the upland 

 ^upatorium. 



This forest itself, beginning at the water's edge with a billowy belt of 

 ■pale green willows, is an untamed tract of primitive wilderness, differ- 

 ing from that through which the Indian hunted his prey only bj- the 

 ■absence of the small percentage of its growth which had a commercial 

 value. Subject to periodical overflow, it has not even been fenced. Elms 

 and pecans and sycamores tower overhead or slowly moulder where 

 they fall, and vines and creepers clamber over the underbrush in a growth 

 like that of a semi-tropical jungle. The shallow lakes and swamps are glori- 

 ous in their season with the American lotus and the white water-lily, the 

 former sometimes growing in tracts of a hundred acres or more, over which 

 its gigantic peltate leaves, borne on tall slender stems, flash in the sun as 

 they bend to the summer wind. In July and August many of the lakes are 

 nearly filled with submerged vegetation, and in the latter part of the season 

 a film of the duckweeds forms along the shore and floats in large patches 

 clown the sluggish current of the stream. Water-fowl abound at the period of 

 their migrations, and fish lie on the shallows, basking in the summer sun 

 in numbers such that dozens may be seen at a time as one floats along in a 

 boat. 



Tlie macroscopic life of the water is equally varied and abundant, a meas- 

 urement of the quantity present in a cubic meter of water showing that 

 with a single reported exception* it is at certain times far in excess of the 

 amount recoi-ded for any other situation in the world. The variety of species 

 present is equally remarkable. The list of those occurring in a single cubic 

 meter of water from the river at Havana in the month of .Tuly contains about 

 twice as many as any of the lists of those found at the same time in the lakes 

 of northern Germany or in our own Great Lakes. 



The bluff beyond the bottoms to the west is higher than that on the east, 

 and usually of a very different character. Strata of carboniferous rock, 

 sometimes containing veins of coal, outcrop locally near their busc. while the 



* Dobersdorfer See, Holsteiu. 



