f the Atlantic
states on this subject, that should be corrected. When sickness
prevails, there is just as much, and it is equally severe, amongst the
old settlers, those born in the country, or who migrate from the
Carolinas or Georgia, as those who come from the northern states.
Families are just as liable to sickness, and are as often attacked for
the first time, after residing several years in the country, as at any
other time. A large proportion of the families and individuals, who
remove from New England to the various parts of the Valley, north of the
37th degree of latitude have no sickness the first year.

The impression has formerly existed abroad, that Illinois is less
healthy than other western states. This is entirely erroneous. As in all
countries, there are some localities, where the causes that produce
sickness exist more than in others. This is not the fact with Illinois
in general.

That this state is as healthy as any other western state, can be
abundantly supported by facts. Let a candid observer compare the health
of the early settlers of New England, with that of the early settlers of
the West, and he will find the scale to preponderate in favor of the
latter. Unless there is some strange fatality attending Illinois, its
population must be more healthy than the early settlers of a timbered
region. But in no period of its history have sickness and death
triumphed, in any respect equal to what they did two or three years
since, in the lake country of New York.

The year 1811, is recorded in the memoirs of the early settlers, as a
season of unusual sickness near the banks of the Mississippi and
Missouri rivers. The latter river rose to an unusual height in June, the
waters of the small creeks were backed up, and a large surface of
luxuriant vegetation was covered and deadened. This was succeeded by hot
and dry weather. Bilious and intermittent fevers prevailed extensively.
The seasons of 1819, '20, and '21 were usually sickly in Illinois and
Missouri. Emigrants, in shoals, had spread over a wide range of country
within a year or two preceding. Multitudes were placed under
circumstances the most unfavorable to the preservation of health, in new
and open cabins of green timber, often using the stagnant water of
creeks and ponds, with a luxuriant vegetation around them undergoing
decomposition, and all the other evils attendant on the settlement of a
new and unbroken country. Under such circumstances,