always, as Lincoln says, "a heart-appalling shock accompanying the
amount of its cost, which forces us to shrink from our pleasing
anticipations." Improvement of the Sangamon River he declared the most
feasible plan. That it was possible, he argued from his experience
on the river in April of the year before (1831), when he made his
flatboat trip, and from his observations as manager of Offutt's
saw-mill. He could not have advocated a measure more popular. At
that moment the whole population of Sangamon was in a state of wild
expectation. Some six weeks before Lincoln's circular appeared, a
citizen of Springfield had advertised that as soon as the ice went
off the river he would bring up a steamer, the "Talisman," from
Cincinnati, and prove the Sangamon navigable. The announcement had
aroused the entire country, speeches were made, and subscriptions
taken. The merchants announced goods direct per steamship "Talisman"
the country over, and every village from Beardstown to Springfield was
laid off in town lots. When the circular appeared the excitement was
at its height.

[Illustration: THE BLACK HAWK.

From a photograph made for this Magazine.

After a portrait by George Catlin, in the National Museum at
Washington, D.C., and here reproduced by the courtesy of the director,
Mr. G. Brown Goode. Makataimeshekiakiak, the Black Hawk Sparrow,
was born in 1767 on the Rock River. He was not a chief by birth, but
through the valor of his deeds became the leader of his village. He
was imaginative and discontented, and bred endless trouble in
the Northwest by his complaints and his visionary schemes. He was
completely under the influence of the British agents, and in 1812
joined Tecumseh in the war against the United States. After the close
of that war, the Hawk was peaceable until driven to resistance by
the encroachments of the squatters. After the battle of Bad Axe he
escaped, and was not captured until betrayed by two Winnebagoes. He
was taken to Fort Armstrong, where he signed a treaty of peace, and
then was transferred as a prisoner of war to Jefferson Barracks, now
St. Louis, where Catlin painted him. Catlin, in his "Eight Years,"
says: "When I painted this chief, he was dressed in a plain suit of
buckskin, with a string of wampum in his ears and on his neck, and
held in his hand his medicine-bag, which was the skin of a black hawk,
from which he had taken his name, and the tail of which made him a
fan, which he was al