histories and
topics. And several persons I saw evidently transplanted from the most
refined circles to be met in this country. There are lures enough in the
West for people of all kinds;--the enthusiast and the cunning man; the
naturalist, and the lover who needs to be rich for the sake of her he
loves.

The torrent of emigration swells very strongly towards this place.
During the fine weather, the poor refugees arrive daily, in their
national dresses, all travel-soiled and worn. The night they pass in
rude shantees, in a particular quarter of the town, then walk off into
the country--the mothers carrying their infants, the fathers leading the
little children by the hand, seeking a home, where their hands may
maintain them.

One morning we set off in their track, and travelled a day's journey
into this country,--fair, yet not, in that part which I saw, comparable,
in my eyes, to the Rock River region. It alternates rich fields, proper
for grain, with oak openings, as they are called; bold, various and
beautiful were the features of the scene, but I saw not those majestic
sweeps, those boundless distances, those heavenly fields; it was not the
same world.

Neither did we travel in the same delightful manner. We were now in a
nice carriage, which must not go off the road, for fear of breakage,
with a regular coachman, whose chief care was not to tire his horses,
and who had no taste for entering fields in pursuit of wild flowers, or
tempting some strange wood path in search of whatever might befall. It
was pleasant, but almost as tame as New England.

But charming indeed was the place where we stopped. It was in the
vicinity of a chain of lakes, and on the bank of the loveliest little
stream, called the Bark river, which flowed in rapid amber brightness,
through fields, and dells, and stately knolls, of most idylic beauty.

The little log cabin where we slept, with its flower garden in front,
disturbed the scene no more than a stray lock on the fair cheek. The
hospitality of that house I may well call princely; it was the boundless
hospitality of the heart, which, if it has no Aladdin's lamp to create a
palace for the guest, does him still higher service by the freedom of
its bounty up to the very last drop of its powers.

Sweet were the sunsets seen in the valley of this stream, though here,
and, I grieve to say, no less near the Rock River, the fiend, who has
ever liberty to tempt the happy in this world, appea