ual had undergone this operation, the
inhabitants would compel him to withdraw from society. If he lived in a
town, he must absent himself, or he would be driven away.

On the 25th of July, Mr. Birkbeck explored the country as far as
_Harmony_ and the banks of the Ohio. He lodged in a cabin, at a very new
town, on the banks of the Ohio, called _Mount Vernon_. Here he found the
people of a character which confirmed the aversion he had previously
entertained to a settlement in the immediate vicinity of a large
navigable river. Every hamlet was demoralized, and every plantation was
liable to outrage, within a short distance of such a thoroughfare.

Yet, to persons who had been long buried in deep forests, the view of
that noble expanse was like the opening of a bright day upon the gloom
of night. To travel, day after day, among trees a hundred feet high,
without a glimpse of the surrounding country, is oppressive to a degree
which those cannot conceive who have not experienced it.

Mr. Birkbeck left Harmony after breakfast, on the ensuing day, and,
crossing the Wabash, at a ferry, he proceeded to the _Big Prairie_,
where, to his astonishment, he beheld a fertile plain of grass and
arable; and some thousand acres of land covered with corn, more
luxuriant than any he had before seen. The scene reminded him of some
open well-cultivated vale in Europe, surrounded by wooded uplands. But
the illusion vanished on his arrival at the habitation of Mr. Williams,
the owner of an estate, on which, at this time, there were nearly three
hundred acres of beautiful corn in one field; for this man lived in a
way apparently as remote from comfort, as the settler of one year, who
thinks only of the means of supporting existence.

The inhabitants of the Prairie are healthy, and the females and children
are better complexioned than their neighbours of the timber country. It
is evident that they breathe better air: but they are in a low state of
civilization, being about half Indian in their mode of life. They are
hunters by profession, and would have the whole range of the forests for
themselves and their cattle. Strangers appear, to them, invaders of
their privileges; as they have intruded on the better founded and
exclusive privileges of their Indian predecessors.

After viewing several Prairies, which, with their surrounding woods,
were so beautiful as to seem like the creation of fancy; (gardens of
delight in a dreary wilderness;) and