at they were. Some of them resembled the English
skylark in the habit of singing and soaring. But the note was different.

My head felt heavy. I seemed to be growing more listless. But I could
not help but note the prairie: the limitless expanse of heavy grass,
here and there brightened by brilliant blossoms. All the houses along
the way were built of logs. The inhabitants were a large breed for the
most part, tall and angular, dressed sometimes in buckskin, coonskin
caps. Now and then I saw a hunter carrying a long rifle. The wild geese
were flying....

Some of the passengers were dressed in jeans; others in linsey-woolsey
dyed blue. As we stopped along the way I had an opportunity to study the
faces of the Illinoisians. Their jaws were thin, their eyes, deeply
sunk, had a far-away melancholy in them. They were swarthy. Their voices
were keyed to a drawl. They sprawled, were free and easy in their
movements. They told racy stories, laughed immoderately, chewed tobacco.
Some of the passengers were drinking whisky, which was procured anywhere
along the way, at taverns or stores. The stage rolled from side to side.
The driver kept cracking his whip, but without often touching the
horses, which kept an even pace hour after hour. We had to stop for
meals. But the heavy food turned my stomach. I could not relish the
cornbread, the bacon or ham, the heavy pie. When we reached La Salle,
where I was to get the boat, I found myself very fatigued, aching all
through my flesh and bones, and with a dreamy, heavy sensation about my
eyes.

The country had become more hilly. And now the bluffs along the Illinois
River rose with something of the majesty of the Palisades of the Hudson.
The river itself was not nearly so broad or noble, but it was not
without beauty.... More oblivious of my surroundings than I had been
before, I boarded _The Post Boy_, a stern wheeler, and in a few minutes
she blew the most musical of whistles and we were off....

The vision of hills and prairies around me harmonized with the dreamy
sensations that filled my heavy head and tired body. I sat on deck and
viewed it all. I did not go to the table. The very smell of the food
nauseated me. I do not remember how I got to bed, nor how long I was
there. I remember being brought to by a negro porter who told me that we
were approaching Bath where I was to get off. I heard him say to another
porter: "That boy is sure sick." And then a tall spare man came to me,