PRODUCTS OF ILLINOIS. 
59 
town. It would be an easy trick for old Santa 
Claus to take a flying leap from the cars into 
the chimney top of some of the Lanesbo- 
reans. 
Now we are in the rich and lovely valley of 
the Susquehanna, and at seven o’clock, only 
twelve hours from New-York City, we alight at 
Binghamton, 227 miles from thence. It is 
not the little village of twenty-five years ago, 
far away in the interior of the state, and almost 
unapproachable, but a flourishing, lovely town; 
a suburb almost of the great emporium. What 
a change has the realisation of that wild dream 
accomplished for the valley. Agricultural pro¬ 
ducts, which formerly were not worth cultivating 
for want of a market, now find ready sales and 
daily transit to an all-absorbing market. Only 
think of shipping frame houses to San Fran¬ 
cisco from this place over the Erie Railroad! 
Ah ! and think too what is very likely to be the 
case a few years hence! Beef and mutton will 
not only be fatted upon these rich lands, but the 
slaughter houses of the city will be here also, 
and the animals killed, as they always should be, 
where they are fed; when the facilities are as 
good for sending the meat to market, that if 
butchered in the afternoon, and hung up in cars 
constructed on purpose, with wire gauze win¬ 
dows, it would be in market next morning in 
fine order, and far better than when the poor 
beasts are driven or transported alive. It ap¬ 
pears to me to be one of the grossest pieces of 
folly, in our time, to continue to butcher animals 
within the city. Look at the amount of offal to 
be carried out again. The hides, too, are sent 
back over the same route to the tanner. 
But I am off the track. Yet these things are 
all so intimately blended with the railroad that 
I can but speak of them. The road is now 
completed 260 miles, to Elmira, and in a few 
weeks a branch will be completed from there to 
Seneca Lake, and a large and good steamboat 
running all the year, (that lake never freezes,) 
to Geneva. Another branch is nearly ready 
between Owego and Ithaca—29 miles—and 
through Cayuga Lake, thus uniting, by either of 
these routes, with the northern railroads. Even 
now the amount of travel upon the road is enor¬ 
mous, but when the branches are open, it will 
be greatly increased; and when it is finally 
terminated upon Lake Erie, it will exceed any 
other work, perhaps, in the world, in the mag¬ 
nificent manner it is constructed, and in its con¬ 
tinual length and incalculable business. It is 
worth a journey of a thousand miles in addition, 
to witness the surprisingly beautiful scenery of 
the country through which this road passes. 
I visited several farms in the Susquehanna 
Valley, of which I shall speak hereafter. 
Solon Robinson. 
New York, October 21th, 1849. 
Locke says we are to be classed as mental 
ruminants. It is not enough to cram with collec¬ 
tions of facts and theories, but we must chew 
them over and over, before they will yield 
strength and nourishment to us. 
PRODUCTS OF ILLINOIS. 
Our state being mostly prairie, indicates very 
definitely our leading productions, which are 
wheat, corn, and grass. The wheat, after taking 
what we want for our own consumption, and you 
may rely upon it we are not sparing in its use, 
we ship east and west, north and south, as best 
suits the convenience of our farmers. Previous 
to the construction of the canal, immense quan¬ 
tities were hauled to the banks of the Illinois 
River, and thence carried by steamboat, some 
twenty or thirty of which, in the winter 
of ’46 and ’47, found constant employment in 
freighting our rich products to St. Louis, on 
their way to mitigate the famine in Europe. In 
voyaging leisurely along this route, I have been 
almost incredulous at the enormous quantity of 
produce reported to me to have been sent for¬ 
ward from the successive little shipping ports 
which line this minature Nile. Now, the tide of 
transportation is turned northwardly, and large 
quantities of our products, which formerly went 
down stream, go backward towards its source, 
and crossing the narrow isthmus, at Chicago, 
launch upon the broad waters of Lake Michigan, 
towards your emporium. Although this naviga-. 
tion is nearly twice the distance, and about 500 
miles of it is through artificial channels, yet we 
find our account in sending generally by this 
route, as we are always sure of the best Ame¬ 
rican market, and the safer and cleaner trans¬ 
port secures us a higher price than when it goes 
by New Orleans. That our wheat is good, you 
must have had conclusive proof in the millions 
of bushels we have hitherto sent; though it has 
been the practice of some of our farmers to mix 
their spring and winter wheat for market, which 
has, to some extent, depreciated our average 
standard. Our buyers, however, have become 
more discriminating than formerly; and by their 
diminished offers for the spring grain, have now 
more generally induced the growers to retain it 
for their own use, (for which it is really quite as 
useful,) and send only the more highly-prized 
winter grain forward for exportation. 
As for corn, we raise it almost beyond count— 
not so intolerably abundant as in the middle and 
southern part of the state, yet in sufficient quan¬ 
tity to fatten a very large number of swine and 
cattle. Our pork and beef markets are small in 
comparison with that of Cincinnati, the pork em¬ 
porium of the universe. But we are steadily ad¬ 
vancing in these products, and in beef, especially, 
we have been winning golden, literal 1 j golden opi¬ 
nions from Europe, for our finely-packed, prairie- 
grass, and corn-fed beef. Grass furnishes us the 
groundwork for our fat cattle, which, but a few 
years since, were invariably driven to market. 
Since we have taken pains to learn the English 
system of fattening, as well as packing, we have 
made our herds vastly more profitable by 
slaughtering and putting them up at home. 
We supply ourselves with dairy products, but 
export few comparatively as yet. We shall, 
within a few years, probably, when we have 
learned the science of making, preserving, and 
packing, according to European plans, become 
extensive exporters cf butter and cheese. 
