ertility is the inevitable
attendant upon the first incision of the plough, _what_ we shall plant
and _how_ we shall plant it become the only topics for consideration.
Setting aside the merely temporary residences of the poorer class of
farmers,--houses sure to be replaced by palaces of pine-boards, at
least, before a great while, provided the owner does not "move West,"
or take to whiskey,--the cottages we catch glimpses of from
car-windows are pretty and well-planned, and some of them show even
better on the inside than on the out. I must forbear to enlarge on the
comfort and abundance of these dwellings, lest I trench upon private
matters; but I may mention, by way of illustrating my subject, and
somewhat as the painter introduces human figures into his picture to
give an idea of the height of a tower or the vastness of a cathedral,
that I have found an abundant and even elegant table, under frescoed
ceiling, in a cottage near the Illinois Central, and far south of the
mid-line of this wonderful State, so lately a seeming waste through
much of its extent.

And thus throughout. At one moment a bare expanse, looking
man-despised, if not God-forgotten,--and at the next, a smiling
village, with tasteful dwelling, fine shrubbery, great hotels, spires
pointing heavenward, and trees that look down with the conscious
dignity of old settlers, as if they had stood just so since the time
of good Father Marquette, that stout old missionary, who first planted
the holy cross in their shade, and, "after offering to the Mightiest
thanks and supplications, fell asleep to wake no more."

There are many interesting reminiscences or traditions of the early
European settlers of Illinois. After Father Marquette,--whom I always
seem to see in Hicks's sweet picture of a monk inscribing the name
JESU on the bark of a tree in the forest,--came La Salle, an emissary
of the great Colbert, under Louis XIV.; an explorer of many heroic
qualities, who has left in this whole region important traces of his
wanderings, and the memory of his bloody and cruel murder at the
impious hands of his own followers, who had not patience to endure to
the end. Counted as part of Florida, under Spanish rule, and part of
Louisiana, under that of the French,--falling into the hands of the
celebrated John Law, in the course of his bubble Mississippi scheme,
and afterwards ceded with Canada and Nova Scotia to the English,
Illinois was never Americanized until the pe