rom fifteen to twenty per cent to the stockholders,
and the people along the line soon became its warmest friends,--and no
wonder, since it doubled the value of every man's farm on the line. The
next year the road was extended to Rock River, and then to Galena, one
hundred and eighty-five miles.

This road was the pioneer of the twenty-eight hundred and fifty miles of
railroads which now cross the State in every direction, and which have
hastened the settlement of the prairies at least fifty years.

Among these lines of railway, the most important, and one of the longest
in America, is the Illinois Central, which is seven hundred and four
miles in length, and traverses the State from South to North, namely:--

1. The main line, from Cairo to La Salla 308 miles
2. The Galena Branch, from La Salle to Dunleith 146 "
3. The Chicago Branch, from Chicago to Centralia 250 "

This great work was accomplished in the short space of four years and
nine months, by the help of a grant of two and a half millions of acres
of land lying along the line. The company have adopted the policy of
selling these lands on long credit to actual settlers; and since the
completion of the road, in 1856, they have sold over a million of acres,
for fifteen millions of dollars, in secured notes, bearing interest. The
remaining lands will probably realize as much more, so that the seven
hundred and four miles of railroad will actually cost the corporators
nothing.

There are eleven trunk and twenty branch and extension lines, which
centre in Chicago, the earnings of nineteen of which, for the year 1859,
were fifteen millions of dollars. As that, however, was a year of great
depression in business, with a short crop through the Northwest, we
think, in view of the large crop of 1860, and the consequent revival of
business, that the earnings of these nineteen lines will not be less
this year than twenty-two millions of dollars.

In the early settlement of the State, twenty-five or thirty years ago,
the pioneers being necessarily very liable to want of good shelter, to
bad food and impure water, suffered much from bilious and intermittent
fevers. As the country has become settled, the land brought under
cultivation, and the habits of the people improved, these diseases have
in a great measure disappeared. Other forms of disease have, however,
taken their place, pulmonary affections and fevers of the typhoid type
being more prev