University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XLI.

June 23d.—The latest information which I received today
is of a nature to hasten my departure for Washington;
It can no longer be doubted that a battle between the two
armies assembled in the neighborhood of the capital is imminent.
The vague hope which from time to time I have entertained
of being able to visit Richmond before I finally take up
my quarters with the only army from which I can communicate
regularly with Europe has now vanished.

At four o'clock in the evening I started by the train on the
famous Central Illinois line from Cairo to Chicago.

The carriages were tolerably well filled with soldiers, and
in addition to them there were a few unfortunate women,
undergoing deportation to some less moral neighborhood.
Neither the look, language, nor manners of my fellow-passengers
inspired me with an exalted notion of the intelligence,
comfort, and respectability of the people which are so much
vaunted by Mr. Seward and American journals, and which,
though truly attributed, no doubt, to the people of the New
England States, cannot be affirmed with equal justice to belong
to all the other components of the Union.

As the Southerners say, their negroes are the happiest
people on the earth, so the Northerners boast, "We are the
most enlightened nation in the world." The soldiers in the
train were intelligent enough to think they ought not to be
kept without pay, and free enough to say so. The soldiers
abused Cairo roundly, and indeed it is wonderful if the people
can live on any food but quinine. However, speculators,
looking to its natural advantages as the point where the two
great rivers join, bespeak for Cairo a magnificent and prosperous
future. The present is not promising.

Leaving the shanties, which face the levees, and some poor
wooden houses with a short vista of cross streets partially
flooded at right angles to them, the rail suddenly plunges into
an unmistakable swamp, where, a forest of dead trees wave
their ghastly, leafless arms over their buried trunks, like
plumes over a hearse—a cheerless, miserable place, sacred to
the ague and fever. This occurs close to the cleared space
on which the city is to stand,—when it is finished—and the
rail, which runs on the top of the embankment or levee, here
takes to the trestle, and is borne over the water on the usual
timber frame-work.

"Mound City," which is the first station, is composed of a
mere heap of earth, like a ruined brickkiln, which rises to
some height and is covered with fine white oaks, beneath
which are a few log huts and hovels, giving the place its
proud name. Tents were pitched on the mound side, from
which wild-looking banditti sort of men, with arms, emerged
as the train stopped. "I've been pretty well over Europe,"
said a meditative voice beside me, "and I've seen the despotic
armies of the old world, but I don't think they equal that set
of boys." The question was not worth arguing—the boys
were in fact very "weedy," "splinter-shinned chaps," as another
critic insisted.

There were some settlers in the woods around Mound City,
and a jolly-looking, corpulent man, who introduced himself
as one of the officers of the land department, of the Central
Illinois railroad, described them as awful warnings to the
emigrants not to stick in the south part of Illinois. It was
suggestive to find that a very genuine John Bull, "located,"
as they say in the States for many years, had as much aversion
to the principles of the abolitionists as if he had been
born a Southern planter. Another countryman of his and
mine, steward on board the steamer to Cairo, eagerly asked
me what I thought of the quarrel, and which side I would
back. I declined to say more than I thought the North possessed
very great superiority of means if the conflict were to
be fought on the same terms. Whereupon my Saxon friend
exclaimed, "all the Northern States and all the power of the
world can't beat the South; and why?—because the South
has got cotton, and cotton is king."

The Central Illinois officer did not suggest the propriety of
purchasing lots, but he did intimate I would be doing service
if I informed the world at large, they could get excellent land,

at sums varying from ten to twenty-five dollars an acre. In
America a man's income is represented by capitalizing all that
he is worth, and whereas in England we say a man has so
much a year, the Americans, in representing his value, observe
that he is worth so many dollars, by which they mean
that all he has in the world would realize the amount.

It sounds very well to an Irish tenant farmer, an English
cottier, or a cultivator in the Lothians, to hear that he can get
land at the rate of from £2 to £5 per acre, to be his forever,
liable only to state taxes; but when he comes to see a parallelogram
marked upon the map as" good soil, of unfathomable
richness," and finds in effect that he must cut down trees,
eradicate stumps, drain off water, build a house, struggle for
high-priced labor, and contend with imperfect roads, the want
of many things to which he has been accustomed in the old
country, the land may not appear to him such a bargain. In
the wooded districts he has, indeed a sufficiency of fuel as long
as trees and stumps last, but they are, of course, great impediments
to tillage. If he goes to the prairie he finds that fuel
is scarce and water by no means wholesome.

When we left this swamp and forest, and came out after a
run of many miles on the clear lands which abut upon the
prairie, large fields of corn lay around us, which bore a peculiarly
blighted and harassed look. These fields were suffering
from the ravages of an insect called the "army worm," almost
as destructive to corn and crops as the locust-like hordes of
North and South, which are vying with each other in laying
waste the fields of Virginia. Night was falling as the train
rattled out into the wild, flat sea of waving grass, dotted by
patch-like Indian corn enclosures; but halts at such places as
Jonesburgh and Cobden, enabled us to see that these settlements
in Illinois were neither very flourishing nor very civilized.

There is a level modicum of comfort, which may be consistent
with the greatest good of the greatest number, but
which makes the standard of the highest in point of well-being
very low indeed. I own, that to me, it would be more agreeable
to see a flourishing community placed on a high level in
all that relates to the comfort and social status of all its members
than to recognize the old types of European civilization,
which place the castle on the hill, surround its outer walls
with the mansion of doctor and lawyer, and drive the people
into obscure hovels outside. But then one must confess that

there are in the castle some elevating tendencies which cannot
be found in the uniform level of citizen equality. There are
traditions of nobility and noble deeds in the family; there are
paintings on the walls; the library is stored with valuable
knowledge, and from its precincts are derived the lessons not
yet unlearned in Europe, that though man may be equal, the
condition of men must vary as the accidents of life or the
effects of individual character, called fortune, may determine.

The towns of Jonesburgh and Cobden have their little teapot-looking
churches and meeting-houses, their lager-bier saloons,
their restaurants, their small libraries, institutes, and
reading rooms, and no doubt they have also their political
cliques, social distinctions and favoritisms; but it requires,
nevertheless, little sagacity to perceive that the highest of the
bourgeois who leads the mass at meeting and prayer, has but
little to distinguish him from the very lowest member of the
same body politic. Cobden, for example, has no less than four
drinking saloons, all on the line of rail, and no doubt the highest
citizen in the place frequents some one or other of them,
and meets there the worst rowdy in the place. Even though
they do carry a vote for each adult man, "locations" here
would not appear very enviable in the eyes of the most miserable
Dorsetshire small farmer ever ferreted out by "S.
G.O."

A considerable number of towns, formed by accretions of
small stores and drinking places, called magazines, round the
original shed wherein live the station master and his assistants,
mark the course of the railway. Some are important enough
to possess a bank, which is generally represented by a wooden
hut, with a large board nailed in front, bearing the names of
the president and cashier, and announcing the success and
liberality of the management. The stores are also decorated
with large signs, recommending the names of the owners to
the attention of the public, and over all of them is to be seen
the significant announcement, "Cash for produce."

At Carbondale there was no coal at all to be found, but
several miles farther to the north, at a place called Dugoine,
a field of bituminous deposit crops out, which is sold at the
pit's mouth for one dollar twenty-five cents, or about 5s. 2d.
a ton. Darkness and night fell as I was noting such meagre
particulars of the new district as could be learned out of the
window of a railway carriage; and finally with a delicious
sensation of cool night air creeping in through the windows,

the first I had experienced for many a long day, we made
ourselves up for repose, and were borne steadily, if not rapidly
through the great prairie, having halted for tea at the
comfortable refreshment rooms of Centralia.

There were no physical signs to mark the transition from
the land of the Secessionist to Union-loving soil. Until the
troops were quartered there, Cairo was for Secession, and
Southern Illinois is supposed to be deeply tainted with disaffection
to Mr. Lincoln. Placards on which were printed the
words, "Vote for Lincoln and Hamlin, for Union and Freedom"
and the old battle-cry of the last election, still cling to
the wooden walls of the groceries, often accompanied by bitter
words or offensive additions.

One of my friends argues that as slavery is at the base of
Secession, it follows that States or portions of States will be
disposed to join the Confederates or the Federalists, just as
the climate may be favorable or adverse to the growth of
slave produce. Thus in the mountainous parts of the Border
States of Kentucky and Tennessee, in the north-western part
of Virginia, vulgarly called the pan-handle, and in the pine
woods of North Carolina, where white men can work at the
rosin and naval store manufactories, there is a decided feeling
in favor of the Union; in fact, it becomes a matter of isothermal
lines. It would be very wrong to judge of the condition
of a people from the windows of a railway carriage,
but the external aspect of the settlements along the line, far
superior to that of slave hamlets, does not equal my expectations.
We all know the aspect of a wood in a gentleman's
park; which is submitting to the axe, and has been partially
cleared, how raw and bleak the stumps look, and how
dreary is the naked land not yet turned into arable. Take
such a patch, and fancy four or five houses made of pine
planks, sometimes not painted, lighted by windows in which
there is, or has been, glass, each guarded by a paling around
a piece of vegetable garden, a pig house, and poultry box;
let one be a grocery, which means a whiskey shop, another
the post-office, and a third the store where "cash is given for
produce." Multiply these groups, if you desire a larger settlement,
and place a wooden church with a Brobdignag spire
and Lilliputian body out in a waste, to be approached only by
a causeway of planks; before each grocery let there be a
gathering of tall men in sombre clothing, of whom the majority
have small newspapers, and all of whom are chewing

tobacco; near the stores let there be some light-wheeled carts
and ragged horses, around which are knots of unmistakably
German women; then see the deep tracks which lead off to
similar settlements in the forest or prairie, and you have a
notion, if your imagination is strong enough, of one of these
civilizing centres which the Americans assert to be the homes
of the most cultivated and intelligent communities in the
world.

Next morning, just at dawn, I woke up and got out on the
platform of the carriage, which is the favorite resort of
smokers and their antithetics, those who love pure fresh air,
notwithstanding the printed caution, "It is dangerous to stand
on the platform;" and under the eye of early morn saw
spread around a fiat sealike expanse, not yet warmed into
color and life by the sun. The line was no longer guarded
from daring Secessionists by soldiers' outposts, and small
camps had disappeared. The train sped through the centre
of the great verdant circle as a ship through the sea, leaving
the rigid iron wake behind it tapering to a point at the horizon
and as the light spread over it, the surface of the crisping
corn waved in broad undulations beneath the breeze from
east to west. This is the prairie indeed. Hereabouts it is
covered with the finest crops, some already cut and stacked.
Looking around one could see church spires rising in the
distance from the white patches, of houses, and by degrees
the tracks across the fertile waste became apparent, and then
carts and horses were seen toiling through the rich soil.

A large species of partridge or grouse appeared very abundant,
and rose in flocks from the long grass at the side of the
rail or from the rich carpet of flowers on the margin of the
corn-fields. They sat on the fence almost unmoved by the
rushing engine, and literally swarmed along the line. These
are called "prairie chickens "by the people, and afford excellent
sport. Another bird about the size of a thrush, with
a yellow breast and a harsh cry, I learned was" "the sky-lark;"
and apropos of the unmusical creature, I was very briskly
attacked by a young lady patriot for finding fault with the
sharp noise it made. "Oh, my! And you not to know that
your Shelley loved it above all things! Didn't he write some
verses—quite beautiful, too, they are—to the sky-lark?"
And so "the Britisher was dried up," as I read in a paper
afterwards of a similar occurrence.

At the little stations which occur at every few miles—

there are some forty of them, at each of which the train stops,
in 365 miles between Cairo and Chicago—the Union flag
floated in the air; but we had left all the circumstance of this
inglorious war behind us, and the train rattled boldly over the
bridges across the rare streams, no longer in danger from Secession
hatchets. The swamp had given place to the cornfield.
No black faces were turned up from the mowing and
free white labor was at work, and the type of the laborers
was German and Irish.

The Yorkshireman expatiated on the fertility of the land,
and on the advantages it held out to the emigrant. But I observed
all the lots by the side of the rail, and apparently as
far as the eye could reach, were occupied. "Some of the
very best land lies beyond on each side," said he. "Out over
there in the fat places is where we put our Englishmen." By
digging deep enough good water is always to be had, and coal
can be carried from the rail, where it costs only 7s. or 8s. a
ton. Wood there is little or none in the prairies, and it was
rarely indeed a clump of trees could be detected, or anything
higher than some scrub brushwood. Those little communities
which we passed were but the growth of a few years, and as we
approached the northern portion of the line we could see, as it
were, the village swelling into the town, and the town spreading
out to the dimensions of the city. "I dare say, Major,"
says one of the passengers, "this gentleman never saw anything
like these cities before. I'm told they've nothing like
them in Europe?" "Bless you," rejoined the Major, with a
wink, "just leaving out London, Edinbro', Paris, and Manchester,
there's nothing on earth to ekal them." My friend,
who is a shrewd fellow, by way of explanation of his military
title, says, "I was a major once, a major in the Queen's Bays,
but they would put troop-sergeant before it them days." Like
many Englishmen he complains that the jealousy of native-born
Americans effectually bars the way to political position
of any naturalized citizen, and all the places are kept by the
natives.

The scene now began to change gradually as we approached
Chicago, the prairie subsided into swampy land, and thick
belts of trees fringed the horizon; on our right glimpses of
the sea could be caught through openings in the wood—the
inland sea on which stands the Queen of the Lakes. Michigan
looks broad and blue as the Mediterranean. Large farmhouses
stud the country, and houses which must be the retreat

of merchants and citizens of means; and when the train,
leaving the land altogether, dashes out on a pier and causeway
built along the borders of the lake, we see lines of noble
houses, a fine boulevard a forest of masts, huge isolated piles
of masonry, the famed grain elevators by which so many have
been hoisted to fortune, churches and public edifices, and the
apparatus of a great city; and just at nine o'clock the train
gives its last steam shout and comes to a standstill in the spacious
station of the Central Illinois Company, and in half-an-hour
more I am in comfortable quarters at the Richmond
House, where I find letters waiting for me, by which it appears
that the necessity for my being in Washington in all
haste, no longer exists. The wary General who commands
the army is aware that the advance to Richmond, for which
so many journals are clamoring, would be attended with serious
risk at present, and the politicians must be content to wait
a little longer.