PRAIRIE ON FIRE.

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LETTER XXVII.

St. Louis, March 9th, 1834.

HERE I am, safely at last in the renowned city of San' Louis. Our route from Peoria, by the way of the flourishing towns of Springfield, Jacksonville, and Alton, through the small meadowlike and half-cultivated prairies of Lower Illinois, was very agreeable. I believe I have not mentioned, that before getting into this fair and comparatively populous region, I had the pleasure, while crossing one prairie of considerable extent, of seeing it on fire on every side around me. The hour was near midnight, and the spectacle was magnificent beyond description. An illustration by Westall's pencil of the Rich Man in the Burning Lake, which I have seen somewhere, would give as near an idea of the scene as the painter's art could convey. In one place the prairie presented exactly the appearance of a broad burning pool, in others the flames swelled up like seas of fire, rolling the liquid element in solid columns

* See note E.

over the land; and then, like the waves of the sea itself, when they break upon the shore, a thousand forked tongues of flame would project themselves far beyond the broken mass, and greedily lick up the dry aliment that lay before them. Our horses did not seem to mind the phenomenon at all, and we drove so near to the fire as to feel the heat very sensibly. But though we probably incurred no danger, it was almost startling, at times, to see a wall of fire as high as our horses' ears, in some places, stretching along the road-side, while the flames would shoot to the height of twenty feet or more when a gust of wind would sweep the prairie. We had an accession of four or five passengers at Jacksonville, a very pretty and flourishing-looking place; and I was not a little amused to find, that out of six persons in the stage we had four colonels; and when we chanced to stop at a tavern, where I saw a cartridge-box and a musket over the mantelpiece, I could not help remarking aloud, that it was the first symptom of the existence of a private I had seen in the country. Some of the colonels looked a little sour, and the jest might not have passed off as easily as I could have wished it, had not my friend, who was also a colonel, entered my name on the tavern-register by the same distinguished title, which, I presume, quali

ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY.

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fied me to speak a little ad libitum of militia deeds of arms.

The character of the country between Peoria and Alton, where you first strike the Mississippi, is much the same as that described in the previous part of this letter. The prairies are smaller and more fertile-looking than in the upper country; and when not under cultivation, resemble what at the North are called "river-flats," or natural meadows. While on the immense plateaux or steppes which form the prairies of the northwestern part of this State, on this side of Rock River, I described the occasional tracts of woodland to you as occupying generally the hollows and ravines of those interminable plains, and thus rendering preposterous a favourite surmise of some philosophers, who would have it that the prairies are the deserted beds of lakes, from whose waters the existing groves once reared themselves as islands. In the districts which I have traversed latterly, however, the woodland, being generally higher than the prairie, gives a degree of reasonableness to the supposition; and, indeed, where the new grass has begun to show itself in these shallow basins, one could almost suppose that some freakish power, more than mortal, — such as Ovid loved to sing, — had been at work metamor

phosing the unstable waters into lakes of verdure. These rich savannas are in some places so sheltered by the lofty forests around them, that the cold winds have but little play; and to no lovelier spots can Spring make her first visits than to the beautiful groves which repose here and there over their bosom; and even now, when the snow-tracks of winter are hardly yet melted away,

"Zefiro torna e'l bel tempo rimena,

E i fiori e l'herbe."

I could now, although I confess a fire is still not uncomfortable, almost realize the grateful and glowing pictures of the summer prairies by Judge Hall's pencil the fresh grass rolled out into a verdant lake, with the points of woodland making into it like so many capes and promontories, and the clumps of trees studding its bosom like islands; here the broad reaches of natural meadow land striking far into the forest like the friths of this grassy sea, and there a mass of heavy timber, like a bold headland, breaking its surface. The effect of first entering upon a prairie in summer is said to be equally novel and delightful; and the change from gloom to sunshine, from the closeness of a forest where a woodman's axe has never rung to the broad and free range of those delicious plains, impresses one like passing from a desert to a garden. In the words of Judge Hall," There is

LOWER PRAIRIES.

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an air of civilization about them that wins the heart." These lower prairies, however, though certainly more beautiful in their conformation than the immense plains of the upper country, where the sun rises and sets upon either extremity, as upon the ocean itself, - do not yet, I think, compare with the romantic tracts beyond Rock River, and west of Lake Michigan; - where meadows, and groves, and rocky hills, and bright streams are all so richly intermingled. It was only in passing through this latter region which will form part of the new territory of Ouisconsin,—that I regretted the season of the year did not allow me to see the country in its full beauty. True, indeed, I suffered much from cold in crossing the larger prairies to reach those remote districts; but I am persuaded that the larger prairies can never be seen to greater advantage than I beheld them. Their essential characteristics are grandeur and loneliness; and these can in no way be so much heightened as by the garb of winter; nor would I, as my fleet sleigh skimmed over their savage wastes, and I inhaled a breeze that lent new life and vigour to every nerve, — have exchanged the singular but joyous excitement for all the charms that spring's green vesture or summer's balmy airs could impart to those magnificent solitudes.