bt if any
eyes really saw more than my own. When we reached the boat, each gentleman
carried in his hand a cane cut from the woods of Mount Vernon, and one and
all returned to Washington with the consciousness of having spent a
pleasant and profitable day.

We soon left for Lynchburg, Virginia, after which we visited the towns en
route to Knoxville, Tennessee. At the latter place we had a very enjoyable
visit to the home of Parson Brownlow. He was absent in attendance upon the
Legislature, but his daughter gracefully and cordially dispensed the
hospitalities of their home, and did everything within the bounds of her
warm, sympathetic intelligence to heighten the pleasure and interest of
our visit.

Back again to Chicago, we were welcomed by Mr. Arms, whom we found
engaged in erecting machinery in the Gowan Marble Works, the largest of
the kind in the North-west. Resting in the sweet haven of home, we passed
the winter in this sanctum.

CHAPTER XXV.

"I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal."

Renewed and refreshed from our long winter rest, with the migration of the
birds we winged our way westward, alighting in many a lovely locality in
the flourishing State of Iowa, whose soft undulations of prairies were now
swelling in billows of gorgeous green, and touched with the varied tints
of flowery bloom.

Our last resting place was in Council Bluffs, so celebrated for the
grandeur of its location at the foot of the beetling bluffs of the
Missouri River, and for its flourishing and progressive spirit, aside from
which it holds a place in our historic annals dating back to aboriginal
days. When this century was in its early infancy, and the shadowy dawn of
our young nation was still wrapt in the mists which enshrouded its first
struggling efforts; when the little far-away fur station of Astoria, near
the whispering waves of the Pacific coast, held not the mellowing memories
of time or the living light with which the genius of an Irving has since
invested it; when the great explorers, Lewis and Clarke, were leaving
their foot-prints on the land bordering the Columbia River, they held a
council with the Red Man at Kanesville, Iowa, ever since known as "Council
Bluffs."

Thence we went to Omaha, which is one of the