Early Western Travels, 1748-1846 (Volume XXVI) Part 4

The banks of the Illinois are depressed and monotonous, liable at all seasons to inundation, and stretch away for miles to the bluffs in broad prairies, glimpses of whose lively emerald and silvery lakes, caught at intervals through the dark fringe of cypress skirting the stream, are very refreshing. The bottom lands upon either side, from one mile to five, are seldom elevated much above the ordinary surface of the stream, and are at every higher stage of water submerged to the depth of many feet, presenting the appearance of a stream rolling its tide through an ancient and gloomy forest, luxuriant in foliage and vast in extent. It is not surprising that all these regions should be subject to the visitations of disease, when we look upon the miserable cabin of the woodcutter, reared upon the very verge of the water, surrounded on every side by swamps, and enveloped in their damp dews and the poisonous exhalations rising from the seething decomposition of the monstrous vegetation around. The traveller wonders not at the sallow complexion, the withered features, and the fleshless, ague-racked limbs, which, as he pa.s.ses, peep forth upon him from the luxuriant foliage of this region of sepulchres; his only astonishment is, that in such an atmosphere the human const.i.tution {99} can maintain vitality at all. And yet, never did the poet's dream image scenery more enchanting than is sometimes unfolded upon this beautiful stream. I loved, on a bright sunny morning, to linger hours away upon the lofty deck, as our steamer thridded the green islets of the winding waters, and gaze upon the reflection of the blue sky flecked with cloudlets in the bluer wave beneath, and watch the startling splash of the glittering fish, as, in exhilarated joyousness, he flung himself from its tranquil bosom, and then fell back again into its cool depths. Along the sh.o.r.e strode the bluebacked wader; the wild buck bounded to his thicket; the graceful buzzard--vulture of the West--soared majestically over the tree-tops, while the fitful chant of the fireman at his toil echoed and re-echoed through the recesses of the forests.

Upon the left, in ascending the Illinois, lie the lands called the "_Military Bounty Tract_," reserved by Congress for distribution among the soldiers of the late war with Great Britain.[90] It is comprehended within the peninsula of the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, about an hundred and seventy miles in length and sixty broad, embracing twelve of the northwest counties of the state. This tract of country is said to be exceedingly fertile, abounding in beautiful prairies and lakes; but the delta or alluvial regions cannot but prove unhealthy. Its disposition for the purpose of military bounties has r.e.t.a.r.ded its settlement behind that of any other quarter of the state; a very inconsiderable portion has been appropriated by the soldiers; most of the t.i.tles have {100} long since departed, and the land has been disposed of past redemption for taxes. Much is also held by non-residents, who estimate it at an exorbitant value; but large tracts can be obtained for a trifling consideration, the purchaser risking the t.i.tle, and many flourishing settlements are now springing up, especially along the Mississippi.

Near the southern extremity of the Military Tract, at a point where the river sweeps out a deep bend from its western bank, about fifty years since was situated the little French village of _Cape au Gris_, or Grindstone Point, so named from the neighbouring rocks. The French seem to have vied with the natives in rendering the "signification"

conformable to the "thing signified," in bestowing names upon their explorations in the West. The village of _Cape au Gris_ was situated upon the bank of the river, and, so late as 1811, consisted of twenty or thirty families, who cultivated a "common field" of five hundred acres on the adjacent prairie, stretching across the peninsula towards the Mississippi. At the commencement of the late war they were driven away by the savages, and a small garrison from the cantonment of Belle Fontaine, at the confluence, was subsequently stationed near the spot by General Wilkinson. A few years after the close of the war American emigration commenced. This is supposed to have been the site, also, of one of the forts erected by La Salle on his second visit to the West.[91]

As we ascended the Illinois, flourishing villages were constantly meeting the eye upon either bank of the stream. Among these were the euphonious {101} names of Monroe, Montezuma, Naples, and Havana! At Beardstown the rolling prairie is looked upon for the first time; it afterward frequently recurs. As our steamer drew nigh to the renowned little city of Pekin, we beheld the bluffs lined with people of all s.e.xes and sizes, watching our approach as we rounded up to the landing.[92] Some of our pa.s.sengers, surprised at such a gathering together in such a decent, well-behaved little settlement as Pekin, sagely surmised the loss of a day from the calendar, and began to believe it the first instead of the last of the week, until reflection and observation induced the belief that other rites than those of religion had called the mult.i.tude together. Landing, streets, tavern, and groceries--which latter, be it spoken of the renowned Pekin, were like anything but "angel's visits" in recurrence--all were swarmed by a motley a.s.semblage, seemingly intent upon _doing nothing_, and that, too, in the noisiest way. Here a congregation of keen-visaged worthies were gathered around a loquacious land-speculator, beneath the shadow of a sign-post, listening to an eloquent holding-forth upon the merits, relative and distinctive, of prairie land and bluff; there a cute-looking personage, with a twinkle of the eye and sanctimoniousness of phiz, was vending his wares by the token of a flaunting strip of red baize; while l.u.s.ty viragoes, with infants at the breast, were battering their pa.s.sage through the throng, crowing over a "bargain" on which the "cute" pedler had cleared not _more_ than cent. per cent. And then there were sober men and men not sober; individuals half seas over and whole seas {102} over, all in as merry trim as well might be; while, as a sort of presiding genius over the baccha.n.a.l, a worthy wag, tipsy as a satyr, in a long calico gown, was prancing through the mult.i.tude, with infinite importance, on the skeleton of an unhappy horse, which, between _nicking_ and _docking_, a spavined limb and a spectral eye, looked the veritable genius of misery. The cause of all this commotion appeared to be neither more nor less than a redoubted "monkey show," which had wound its way over the mountains into the regions of the distant West, and reared its dingy canva.s.s upon the smooth sward of the prairie. It was a spectacle by no means to be slighted, and "divers came from afar" to behold its wonders.

For nothing, perhaps, have foreign tourists in our country ridiculed us more justly than for that pomposity of nomenclature which we have delighted to apply to the thousand and one towns and villages sprinkled over our maps and our land; instance whereof this same renowned representative of the Celestial Empire concerning which I have been writing. Its brevity is its sole commendation; for as to the taste or appropriateness of such a name for such a place, to say naught of the euphony, there's none. And then, besides Pekin, there are Romes, and Troys, and Palmyras, and Belgrades, Londons and Liverpools, Babels and Babylons _without account_, all rampant in the glories of log huts, with st.u.r.dy porkers forth issuing from their sties, by way, doubtless, of the st.u.r.dy knight-errants of yore caracoling from the sally-ports of their ill.u.s.trious {103} namesakes.

But why, in the name of all propriety, this everlasting plagiarizing of the Greek, Gothic, Gallic patronymics of the Old World, so utterly incongruous as applied to the backwoods settlements of the New! If in very poverty of invention, or in the meagerness of our "land's language," we, as a people, feel ourselves unequal to the task--one, indeed, of no ordinary magnitude--of christening all the newborn villages of our land with melodious and appropriate appellations, may it not be advisable either to nominate certain worthy dictionary-makers for the undertaking, or else to retain the ancient Indian names? Why discard the smooth-flowing, expressive appellations bestowed by the injured aborigines upon the gliding streams and flowery plains of this land of their fathers, only to supersede them by affixes most foreign and absurd? "Is this proceeding just and honourable" towards that unfortunate race? Have we visited them with so _many_ returns of kindness that this would overflow the cup of recompense? Why tear away the last and only relic of the past yet lingering in our midst? Have we too many memorials of the olden time?

Why disrobe the venerable antique of that cla.s.sic drapery which alone can befit the severe n.o.bility of its mien, only to deck it out in the starched and tawdry preciseness of a degenerate taste?

_Illinois River._

X

"It is a goodly sight to see What Heaven hath done for this delicious land!

What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree!

What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand!"

_Childe Harold._

"Good-evening, sir; a good-evening to ye, sir; pleased with our village, sir!" This was the frank and free salutation a genteel, farmer-looking personage, with a broad face, a broad-brimmed hat, and a broad-skirted coat, addressed to me as I stood before the inn door at Peoria, looking out upon her beautiful lake. On learning, in reply to his inquiry, "Whence do ye come, stranger?" that my birth spot was north of the Potomac, he hailed me with hearty greeting and warm grasp as a brother. "I am a Yankee, sir; yes, sir, I am a genuine export of the old 'Bay State.' Many years have gone since I left her soil; but I remember well the 'Mistress of the North,' with her green islands and blue waters. In my young days, sir, I wandered all over the six states, and I have not forgotten the valley of the Connecticut. I have seen the 'Emporium' with her Neapolitan bay, and I have looked on the 'city of the monuments and fountains;' but in all my journeyings, stranger, I have not found a spot so pleasant as this little quiet Peoria of the Western wilderness!" Whether to smile in admiration {105} or to smile at the oddity of this singular compound of truth and exaggeration, propounded, withal, in such grandiloquent style and language, I was at a loss; and so, just as every prudent man would have acted under the circ.u.mstances, _neither_ was done; and the quiet remark, "You are an enthusiast, sir," was all that betrayed to the worthy man the emotions of the sublime and ridiculous of which he had been the unwitting cause.

But, truly, the little town with this soft Indian name is a beautiful place, as no one who has ever visited it has failed to remark. The incidents of its early history are fraught with the wild and romantic.

The old village of Peoria was one of the earliest settlements of the French in the Mississippi Valley; and, many years before the memory of the present generation, it had been abandoned by its founders, a new village having been erected upon the present site, deemed less unhealthy than the former. The first house is said to have been built in new Peoria, or _La ville de Maillet_, as was its _nom de nique_, about the year 1778; and the situation was directly at the outlet of the lake, one mile and a half below the old settlement.[93] Its inhabitants consisted chiefly of that wild, semi-savage race of Indian traders, hunters, trappers, voyageurs, _couriers du bois_, and half-breeds, which long formed the sole link of union between the northern lakes and the southwest. After residing nearly half a century on this pleasant spot, in that happy harmony with their ferocious neighbours for which the early French were so remarkable, they were at length, in the {106} autumn of 1812, exiled from their ancient home by the militia of Illinois, on charge of conniving at Indian atrocities upon our people, a party having been fired on at night while anch.o.r.ed before the village in their boats. The villagers fled for refuge to their friends upon the Mississippi. In the autumn of the succeeding year, General Howard,[94] with 1400 men, ascended the Illinois; a fortress was constructed at Peoria in twelve days from timber cut on the opposite side of the lake. It was named Fort Clarke, and was occupied by a detachment of United States' troops. In course of a few weeks the whole frontier was swept of hostile Indians. On the termination of hostilities with Great Britain the fort was abandoned, and soon after was burned by the Indians, though the ruins are yet to be seen. The present settlement was commenced by emigrants but a few years since, and has advanced with a rapidity scarcely paralleled even in the West. Geographically, it is the centre of the state, and may at some future day become its seat of government. It is the shire town of a county of the same name; has a handsome courthouse of freestone; the neighbouring regions are fertile, and beds of bituminous coal are found in the vicinity. These circ.u.mstances render this spot, than which few can boast a more eventful history, one of the most eligible _locales_ in the state for the emigrant.

Its situation is indescribably beautiful, extending along the lake of the same name, the Indian name of which was _Pinatahwee_, for several miles from its outlet. This water-sheet, which is little more than an expansion of the stream of from one to three miles, stretches away for about twenty, and is divided near its middle by a contraction called the _Narrows_. Its waters are exceedingly limpid, gliding gently over a pebbly bottom, and abounding in fish of fifty different species, from which an attempt for obtaining oil on a large scale was commenced a few years since, but was abandoned without success. Some of the varieties of these fish are said to be rare and curious. Several specimens of a species called the "Alligator Garr" have been taken.

The largest was about seven feet in length, a yard in circ.u.mference, and encased in armour of hornlike scales of quadrilateral form, impenetrable to a rifle-ball. The weight was several hundred pounds; the form and the teeth--of which there were several rows--similar to those of the shark, and, upon the whole, the creature seemed not a whit less formidable. Another singular variety found is the "spoonfish," about four feet in length, with a black skin, and an extension of the superior mandible for two feet, of a thin, flat, shovel-like form, used probably for digging its food. The more ordinary species, pike, perch, salmon, trout, buffalo, mullet, and catfish, abound in the lake, while the surface is covered with geese, ducks, gulls, a species of water turkey, and, not unfrequently, swans and pelicans. Its bottom contains curious petrifactions and carnelions of a rare quality.

From the pebbly sh.o.r.e of the lake, gushing out with fountains of sparkling water along its whole extent, rises a rolling bank, upon which now stands most of the village. A short distance and you ascend a second eminence, and beyond this you reach {108} the bluffs, some of them an hundred feet in height, gracefully rounded, and corresponding with the meandering of the stream below. From the summit of these bluffs the prospect is uncommonly fine. At their base is spread out a beautiful prairie, its tall gra.s.s-tops and bright-died flowerets nodding to the soft summer wind. Along its eastern border is extended a range of neat edifices, while lower down sleep the calm, clear waters of the lake, unruffled by a ripple, and reflecting from its placid bosom the stupendous vegetation of the wooded alluvion beyond.

It was near the close of a day of withering sultriness that we reached Peoria. Pa.s.sing the Kickapoo, or Red Bud Creek,[95] a sweep in the stream opened before the eye a panorama of that magnificent water-sheet of which I have spoken, so calm and motionless that its mirror surface seemed suspended in the golden mistiness of the summer atmosphere which floated over it. As we were approaching the village a few sweet notes of a bugle struck the ear; and in a few moments a lengthened troop of cavalry, with baggage-cars and military paraphernalia, was beheld winding over a distant roll of the prairie, their arms glittering gayly in the horizontal beams of the sinking sun as the ranks appeared, were lost, reappeared, and then, by an inequality in the route, were concealed from the view. The steamer "Helen Mar" was lying at the landing as we rounded up, most terribly shattered by the collapsing of the flue of one of her boilers a few days before in the vicinity. She had been swept by the death-blast from one extremity {109} to the other, and everything was remaining just as when the accident occurred, even to the pallets upon which had been stretched the mangled bodies, and the remedies applied for their relief. The disasters of steam have become, till of late, of such ordinary occurrence upon the waters of the West, that they have been thought of comparatively but little; yet in no aspect does the angel of death perform his bidding more fearfully. Misery's own pencil can delineate no scene of horror more revolting; humanity knows no visitation more terrible! The atmosphere of h.e.l.l envelops the victim and sweeps him from the earth!

Happening casually to fall in with several gentlemen at the inn who chanced to have some acquaintance with the detachment of dragoons I have mentioned, I accepted with pleasure an invitation to accompany them on a visit to the encampment a few miles from the town. The moon was up, and was flinging her silvery veil over the landscape when we reached the bivouac. It was a picturesque spot, a low prairie-bottom on the margin of the lake, beneath a range of wooded bluffs in the rear; and the little white tents sprinkled about upon the green shrubbery beneath the trees; the stacks of arms and military accoutrements piled up beneath or suspended from their branches; the dragoons around their tents, engaged in the culinary operations of the camp, or listlessly lolling upon the gra.s.s as the laugh and jest went free; the horses grazing among the thickets, while over the whole was resting the misty splendour of the moonlight, {110} made up a _tout ensemble_ not unworthy the crayon of a Weir.[96] The detachment was a small one, consisting of only one hundred men, under command of Captain S----, on an excursion from Camp des Moines, at the lower rapids of the Mississippi, to Fort Howard, on Green Bay, partially occasioned by a rumour of Indian hostilities threatened in that vicinity.[97] They were a portion of several companies of the first regiment of dragoons, levied by Congress a few years since for the protection of the Western frontier, in place of the "Rangers," so styled, in whom that trust had previously reposed. They were all Americans, resolute-looking fellows enough, and originally rendezvoused at Jefferson Barracks. The design of such a corps is doubtless an excellent one; but military men tell us that some unpardonable omissions were made in the provisions of the bill reported by Congress in which the corps had its origin; for, according to the present regulations, all approximation to discipline is precluded. Captain S---- received us leisurely reclining upon a buffalo-robe in his tent; and, in a brief interview, we found him possessed of all that gentlemanly _navete_ which foreign travellers would have us believe is, in our country, confined to the profession of arms. The night-dews of the lowlands had for some hours been falling when we reached the village drenched with their damps.

Much to our regret, the stage of water in the Illinois would not permit our boat to ascend the stream, as had been the intention, to Hennepin, some twenty miles above, and Ottawa, at the foot of the rapids.[98] Nearly equidistant between these {111} flourishing towns, upon the eastern bank of the Illinois, is situated that remarkable crag, termed by the early French "_Le Rocher_," by the Indian traditions "_Starved Rock_," and by the present dwellers in its vicinity, as well as by Schoolcraft and the maps, "_Rockfort_." It is a tall cliff, composed of alternate strata of lime and sandstone, about two hundred and fifty feet in height by report, and one hundred and thirty-four by actual measurement. Its base is swept by the current, and it is perfectly precipitous upon three sides. The fourth side, by which alone it is accessible, is connected with the neighbouring range of bluffs by a natural causeway, which can be ascended only by a difficult and tortuous path. The summit of the crag is clothed with soil to the depth of several feet, sufficient to sustain a growth of stunted cedars. It is about one hundred feet in diameter, and comprises nearly an acre of level land. The name of "Starved Rock" was obtained by this inaccessible battlement from a legend of Indian tradition, an outline of which may be found in Flint's work upon the Western Valley, and an interesting story wrought from its incidents in Hall's "Border Tales." A band of the Illini having a.s.sa.s.sinated Pontiac, the Ottoway chieftain, in 1767, the tribe of the Pottawattamies made war upon them. The Illini, being defeated, fled for refuge to this rock, which a little labour soon rendered inaccessible to all the a.s.saults of their enemy. At this crisis, after repeated repulse, the besiegers determined to reduce the hold by _starvation_, as the only method remaining. The tradition of this siege affords, perhaps, {112} as striking an ill.u.s.tration of Indian character as is furnished by our annals of the unfortunate race. Food in some considerable quant.i.ty had been provided by the besieged; but when, parched by thirst, they attempted during the night to procure water from the cool stream rushing below them by means of ropes of bark, the enemy detected the design, and their vessels were cut off by a guard in canoes. The last resource was defeated; every stratagem discovered; hope was extinguished; the unutterable tortures of thirst were upon them; a terrific death in antic.i.p.ation; yet they yielded not; the speedier torments of the stake and a triumph to their foes was the alternative. And so they perished--all, with a solitary exception--a woman, who was adopted by the hostile tribe, and was living not half a century since. For years the summit of this old cliff was whitened by the bones of the victims; and quant.i.ties of remains, as well as arrow-heads and domestic utensils, are at the present day exhumed. Sh.e.l.ls are also found, but their _whence_ and _wherefore_ are not easily determined. At the only accessible point there is said to be an appearance of an intrenchment and rampart. A glorious view of the Illinois, which, forming a curve, laves more than half of the column's base, is obtained from the summit. An ancient post of the French is believed to have once stood here.[99]

Brightly were the moonbeams streaming over the blue lake Pinatahwee as our steamer glided from its waters. Near midnight, as we swept past Pekin, we were roused from our slumbers by the plaintive {113} notes of the "German Hymn," which mellowly came stealing from distance over the waters; and we almost pardoned the "Menagerie" its multifold transgressions because of that touching air. There is a chord in almost every bosom, however rough and unharmonious its ordinary emotions, which fails not to vibrate beneath the gentle influences of "sweet sounds." From this, as from the strings of the wind-harp, a zephyr may elicit a melody of feeling which the storm could never have awakened. There are seasons, too, when the nerves and fibres of the system, reposing in quietness, are most exquisitely attempered to the mysterious influences and the delicate breathings of harmony; and such a season is that calm, holy hour, when deep sleep hath descended upon man, and his unquiet pulsings have for an interval ceased their fevered beat. To be awakened then by music's cadence has upon us an effect unearthly! It calls forth from their depths the richest emotions of the heart. The moonlight serenade! Ah, its wild witchery has told upon the romance of many a young bosom! If you have a mistress, and you would woo her _not vainly_, woo her thus! I remember me, when once a resident of the courtly city of L----, to have been awakened one morning long before the dawn by a strain of distant music, which, swelling and rising upon the still night-air, came floating like a spirit through the open windows and long galleries of the building. I arose; all was calm, and silent, and deserted through the dim, lengthened streets of the city. Not a light gleamed from a cas.e.m.e.nt; not a {114} footfall echoed from the pavement; not a breath broke the stillness save the crowing of the far-off c.o.c.k proclaiming the morn, and the low rumble of the marketman's wagon; and then, swelling upon the night-wind, fitfully came up that beautiful gush of melody, wave upon wave, surge after surge, billow upon billow, winding itself into the innermost cells of the soul!

"Oh, it came o'er my ear like the sweet South, That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour."

_Illinois River._

XI

"You will excuse me if I do not strictly confine myself to narration, but now and then interpose such _reflections_ as may offer while I am writing."--NEWTON.

"Each was a giant heap of mouldering clay; There slept the warriors, women, friends, and foes; There, side by side, the rival chieftains lay, And mighty tribes swept from the face of day."

FLINT.

More than three weeks ago I found myself, one bright morning at sunrise, before the city of St. Louis on descending the Illinois; and in that venerable little city have I ever since been a dweller. A series of those vexatious delays, ever occurring to balk the designs of the tourist, have detained me longer than could have been antic.i.p.ated. Not the {115} most inconsiderable of these preventives to locomotion in this bustling, swapping, chaffering little city, strange as it may seem, has been the difficulty of procuring, at a conscionable outlay of dollars and cents, a suitable steed for a protracted jaunt. But, thanks to the civility or _selfism_ of a friend, this difficulty is at an end, and I have at length succeeded in securing the reversion of a tough, spirited little bay, which, by considerate usage and bountiful foddering, may serve to bear me, with the requisite quantum of speed and safety, over the prairies. A few days, therefore, when the last touch of _acclimation_ shall have taken its leave, and "I'm over the border and awa'."

The city of San' Louis, now h.o.a.ry with a century's years, was one of those early settlements planted by the Canadian French up and down the great valley, from the Northern Lakes to the Gulf, while the English colonists of Plymouth and Jamestown were wringing out a wretched subsistence along the sterile sh.o.r.es of the Atlantic, wearied out by constant warfare with the thirty Indian tribes within their borders.

Attracted by the beauty of the country, the fertility of its soil, the boundless variety of its products, the exhaustless mineral treasures beneath its surface, and the facility of the trade in the furs of the Northwest, a flood of Canadian emigration opened southward after the discoveries of La Salle, and the little villages of Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Prairie du Po, Prairie du Rocher, St. Phillipe, St.

Ferdinand, Peoria, Fort Chartres, Vuide Poche, Pet.i.tes Cotes, now St.

Charles, Pain Court, now St. Louis, and others, successively sprang up in {116} the howling waste. Over nearly all this territory have the Gaul, the Spaniard, the Briton, and the Anglo-American held rule, and a dash of the national idiosyncrasy of each may be detected.

Especially true is this of St. Louis. There is an antiquated, venerable air about its narrow streets and the ungainly edifices of one portion of it; the steep-roofed stone cottage of the Frenchman, and the tall stuccoed-dwelling of the Don, not often beheld. A mellowing touch of time, which few American cities can boast, has pa.s.sed over it, rendering it a spot of peculiar interest to one with the slightest spirit of the antiquary, in a country where all else is new. The modern section of the city, with its regular streets and lofty edifices, which, within the past fifteen years, has arisen under the active hand of the northern emigrant, presents a striking contrast to the old.

The site of St. Louis is elevated and salubrious, lying for some miles along the Mississippi upon two broad plateaux or steppes swelling up gently from the water's edge. Along the first of these, based upon an exhaustless bed of limestone, which furnishes material for building, are situated the lower and central portions of the city, while that above sweeps away in an extensive prairie of stunted black-jack oaks to the west. The latter section is already laid out into streets and building-lots; elegant structures are rapidly going up, and, at no distant day, this is destined to become the most courtly and beautiful portion of the city. It is at a pleasant remove from the dust and bustle of the landing, {117} while its elevation affords a fine view of the harbour and opposite sh.o.r.e. Yet, with all its improvements of the past few years, St. Louis remains emphatically "a little _French_ city." There is about it a cheerful village air, a certain _rus in rube_, to which the grenadier preciseness of most of our cities is the antipodes. There are but few of those endless, rectilinear avenues, cutting each other into broad squares of lofty granite blocks, so characteristic of the older cities of the North and East, or of those cities of tramontane origin so rapidly rising within the boundaries of the valley. There yet remains much in St. Louis to remind one of its village days; and a stern _eschewal_ of mathematical, angular exact.i.tude is everywhere beheld. Until within a few years there was no such thing as a row of houses; all were disjoined and at a considerable distance from each other; and every edifice, however central, could boast its humble _stoop_, its front-door plat, bedecked with shrubbery and flowers, and protected from the inroads of intruding man or beast by its own tall stoccade. All this is now confined to the southern or French section of the city; a right Rip Van Winkle-looking region, where each little steep-roofed cottage yet presents its broad piazza, and the cosey settee before the door beneath the tree shade, with the fleshy old burghers soberly luxuriating on an evening pipe, their dark-eyed, brunette daughters at their side. There is a delightful air of "old-fashioned comfortableness" in all this, that reminds us of nothing we have seen in our own country, but much of the antiquated villages of which we have {118} been told in the land beyond the waters. Among those remnants of a former generation which are yet to be seen in St. Louis are the venerable mansions of Auguste and Pierre Chouteau, who were among the founders of the city.[100] These extensive mansions stand upon the princ.i.p.al street, and originally occupied, with their grounds, each of them an entire square, enclosed by lofty walls of heavy masonry, with loopholes and watch-towers for defence. The march of improvement has encroached upon the premises of these ancient edifices somewhat; yet they are still inhabited by the posterity of their builders, and remain, with their ma.s.sive walls of stone, monuments of an earlier era.

The site upon which stands St. Louis was selected in 1763 by M.

Laclede, a partner of a mercantile a.s.sociation at New-Orleans, to whom D'Abbadie, Director-general of the province of Louisiana, had granted the exclusive privilege of the commerce in furs and peltries with the Indian tribes of the Upper Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. By the treaty of that year France had ceded all her possessions east of the Mississippi to Great Britain, and there was on the western sh.o.r.e only the small village of Ste. Genevieve. This was subsequently deemed too distant from the mouth of the Mississippi to be a suitable depot and post for the fur-trade; and Laclede, having surveyed all the neighbouring region, fixed upon the spot where St. Louis now stands as a more eligible site. Whether this site was selected by the flight of birds, by consultation of the entrails of beasts, or the voice of an oracle; whether by accident {119} or design, tradition averreth not.

Yet sure is it, that under the concurrence of all these omens, a more favourable selection could not have been made than this has proved. It _is related_, however, that when the founder of the city first planted foot upon the sh.o.r.e, the imprint of a human foot, naked and of gigantic dimensions, was found enstamped upon the solid limestone rock, and continued in regular succession as if of a man advancing from the water's edge to the plateau above.[101] By a more superst.i.tious age this circ.u.mstance would have been deemed an omen, and, as such, commemorated in the chronicles of the city. On the 15th of February, 1764, Colonel Auguste Chouteau, with a number of persons from Ste. Genevieve, Cahokia, and Fort Chartres, arrived at the spot, and commenced a settlement by felling a splendid grove of forest-trees which then reared itself upon the bank, and erecting a building where the market-house now stands. The town was then laid off, and named in honour of Louis XV., the reigning monarch of France, though the settlers were desirous of giving it the name of its founder: to this Laclede would not consent. He died at the post of Arkansas in 1778; Colonel Chouteau followed him in the month of February of 1829, just sixty-four years from the founding of the city. He had been a constant resident, had seen the spot merge from the wilderness, and had become one of its most opulent citizens.

For many years St. Louis was called "_Pain_ {120} _Court_," from the scarcity of provisions, which circ.u.mstance at one period almost induced the settlers to abandon their design. In 1765 Fort Chartres was delivered to Great Britain, and the commandant, St. Ange, with his troops, only twenty-two in number, proceeded to St. Louis; and a.s.suming the government, the place was ever after considered the capital of the province.[102] Under the administration of St. Ange, which is said to have been mild and patriarchal, the _common field_ was laid open, and each settler became a cultivator of the soil. This field comprised several thousand acres, lying upon the second steppe mentioned, and has recently been divided into lots and sold to the highest bidder. Three years after the arrival of St. Ange, Spanish troops under command of Don Rious took possession of the province agreeable to treaty;[103] but, owing to the dissatisfaction of the inhabitants, no official authority was exercised until 1770. Thirty years afterward the province was retroceded to France, and from that nation to the United States. In the spring of 1778 an attack was made upon the village by a large body of the northern Indians, at the instigation of the English. They were repulsed with a loss of about twenty of the settlers, and the year was commemorated as "_L'annee du grand coup_."[104] In the spring of 1785, the Mississippi rose thirty feet above the highest water-mark previously known, and the American Bottom was inundated. This year was remembered as "_L'annee des grandes eaux_."

At that period commerce with New-Orleans, for {121} the purpose of obtaining merchandise for the fur trade, was carried on exclusively by keel-boats and barges, which in the spring started upon their voyage of more than a thousand miles, and in the fall of the year slowly returned against the current. This mode of transportation was expensive, tedious, and unsafe; and it was rendered yet more hazardous from the murders and robberies of a large band of free-booters, under two chiefs, Culburt and Magilbray, who stationed themselves at a place called Cotton Wood Creek, on the Mississippi, and captured the ascending boats. This band was dispersed by a little fleet of ten barges, which, armed with swivels, ascended the river in company. This year was remembered as "_L'annee des bateaux_."[105] All the inconvenience of this method of transportation continued to be experienced until the introduction of steam upon the Western waters; and the first boat of this kind which made its appearance at the port of St. Louis was the "General Pike," in 1814. This boat was commanded by Captain Jacob Reed, and, at the time of its arrival, a large body of a neighbouring Indian tribe chanced to have an encampment in the suburbs of the city. Their astonishment, and even _terror_, at first sight of the evolutions of the steamer, are said to have been indescribable. They viewed it as nothing less than a living thing; a monster of tremendous power, commissioned by the "Great Spirit" for their extermination, and their humiliation was proportional to their terror. Great opposition was raised against steamers by the boatmen, some thousands of whom, by their introduction, would {122} be thrown out of employment; but this feeling gradually pa.s.sed away, and now vessels propelled by steam perform in a few days a voyage which formerly required as many months. A trip to the city, as New-Orleans, _par excellence_, was styled, then demanded weeks of prior preparation, and a man put his house and household in order before setting out: now it is an ordinary jaunt of pleasure. The same dislike manifested by the old French _habitans_ to the introduction of the steamer or _smoke-boat_, "bateau a vapeur," as they termed it, has betrayed itself at every advance of modern improvement. Erected, as St. Louis was, with no design of a city, its houses were originally huddled together with a view to nothing but convenience; and its streets were laid out too narrow and too irregular for the bustle and throng of mercantile operations. In endeavouring to correct this early error, by removing a few of the old houses and projecting balconies, great opposition has been encountered. Some degree of uniformity in the three princ.i.p.al streets parallel to the river has, however, by this method been attained. Water-street is well built up with a series of lofty limestone warehouses; but an irretrievable error has been committed in arranging them at so short a distance from the water. On some accounts this proximity to the river may be convenient; but for the sake of a broad arena for commerce; for the sake of a fresh and salubrious circulation of air from the water; for the sake of scenic beauty, or a n.o.ble promenade for pleasure, there should have been no encroachment upon the precincts {123} of the "eternal river." In view of the miserable _plan_ of St. Louis, if it may claim anything of the kind, and the irregular manner and singular taste with which it has been built, the regret has more than once been expressed, that, like Detroit,[106] a conflagration had not swept it in its earlier days, and given place to an arrangement at once more consistent with elegance and convenience.

From the river bank to the elevated ground sweeping off in the rear of the city to the west is a distance of several hundred yards, and the height above the level of the water cannot be far from an hundred feet. The ascent is easy, however, and a n.o.ble view is obtained, from the cupola of the courthouse on its summit, of the Mississippi and the city below, of the broad American Bottom, with its bluffs in the distance, and a beautiful extent of natural scenery in the rear. Along the brow of this eminence once stood a line of military works, erected for the defence of the old town in 1780 by Don Francois de Cruzat, lieutenant governor "_de la partie occidentale des Illinois_," as the ancient chronicles style the region west of the Mississippi.[107]

These fortifications consisted of several circular towers of stone, forty feet in diameter and half as many in alt.i.tude, planted at intervals in a line of stoccade, besides a small fort, embracing four demilunes and a parapet of mason-work. For many years these old works were in a dismantled and deserted state, excepting the fort, in one building of which was held {124} the court, and another superseded the necessity of a prison. Almost every vestige is now swept away. The great earthquakes of 1811 essentially a.s.sisted in toppling the old ruins to the ground. The whole city was powerfully shaken, and has since been subject to occasional shocks.[108]

It is in the northern suburbs of the city that are to be seen those singular ancient mounds for which St. Louis is so celebrated; and which, with others in the vicinity, form, as it were, a connecting link between those of the north, commencing in the lake counties of Western New-York, and those of the south, extending deep within the boundaries of Mexico, forming an unbroken line from one extremity of the great valley to the other. Their position at St. Louis is, as usual, a commanding one, upon the second bank, of which I have spoken, and looking proudly down upon the Mississippi, along which the line is parallel. They stand isolated, or distinct from each other, in groups; and the outline is generally that of a rectangular pyramid, truncated nearly one half. The first collection originally consisted of ten tumuli, arranged as three sides of a square area of about four acres, and the open flank to the west was guarded by five other small circular earth-heaps, isolated, and forming the segment of a circle around {125} the opening. This group is now almost completely destroyed by the grading of streets and the erection of edifices, and the eastern border may alone be traced. North of the first collection of tumuli is a second, four or five in number, and forming two sides of a square. Among these is one of a very beautiful form, consisting of three stages, and called the "Falling Garden." Its elevation above the level of the second plateau is about four feet, and the area is ample for a dwelling and yard; from the second it descends to the first plateau along the river by three regular gradations, the first with a descent of two feet, the second of ten, and the lower one of five, each stage presenting a beautiful site for a house. For this purpose, however, they can never be appropriated, as one of the princ.i.p.al streets of the city is destined to pa.s.s directly through the spot, the grading for which is already commenced. The third group of mounds is situated a few hundred yards above the second, and consists of about a dozen eminences. A series extends along the west side of the street, through grounds attached to a cla.s.sic edifice of brick, which occupies the princ.i.p.al one; while opposite rise several of a larger size, upon one of which is situated the residence of General Ashley, and upon another the reservoir which supplies the city with water, raised from the Mississippi by a steam force-pump upon its banks. Both are beautiful spots, imbowered in forest-trees; and the former, from its size and structure, is supposed to have been a citadel or place of defence. {126} In excavating the earth of this mound, large quant.i.ties of human remains, pottery, half-burned wood, &c., &c., were thrown up; furnishing conclusive evidence, were any requisite farther than regularity of outline and relative position, of the artificial origin of these earth-heaps. About six hundred yards above this group, and linked with it by several inconsiderable mounds, is situated one completely isolated, and larger than any yet described. It is upward of thirty feet in height, about one hundred and fifty feet long, and upon the summit five feet wide. The form is oblong, resembling an immense grave; and a broad terrace or ap.r.o.n, after a descent of a few feet, spreads out itself on the side looking down upon the river. From the extensive view of the surrounding region and of the Mississippi commanded by the site of this mound, as well as its alt.i.tude, it is supposed to have been intended as a vidette or watch-tower by its builders. Upon its summit, not many years ago, was buried an Indian chief. He was a member of a deputation from a distant tribe to the agency in St. Louis; but, dying while there, his remains, agreeable to the custom of his tribe, were deposited on the most commanding spot that could be found. This custom accounts for the circ.u.mstance urged against the antiquity and artificial origin of these works, that the relics exhumed are found near the surface, and were deposited by the present race. But the distinction between the remains found near the surface and those in the depths of the soil is too palpable and too {127} notorious to require argument. From the _Big Mound_, as it is called, a _cordon_ of tumuli stretch away to the northwest for several miles along the bluffs parallel with the river, a n.o.ble view of which they command. They are most of them ten or twelve feet high; many clothed with forest-trees, and all of them supposed to be tombs. In removing two of them upon the grounds of Col.

O'Fallon,[109] immense quant.i.ties of bones were exhumed. Similar mounds are to be found in almost every county in the state, and those in the vicinity of St. Louis are remarkable only for their magnitude and the regularity of their relative positions. It is evident, from these monuments of a former generation, that the natural advantages of the site upon which St. Louis now stands were not unappreciated long before it was pressed by the first European footstep.

It is a circ.u.mstance which has often elicited remark from those who, as tourists, have visited St. Louis, that so little interest should be manifested by its citizens for those mysterious and venerable monuments of another race by which on every side it is environed. When we consider the complete absence of everything in the character of a public square or promenade in the city, one would suppose that individual taste and munic.i.p.al authority would not have failed to avail themselves of the moral interest attached to these mounds and the beauty of their site, to have formed in their vicinity one of the most attractive spots in the West. These ancient tumuli could, at no considerable expense, have been {128} enclosed and ornamented with shrubbery, and walks, and flowers, and thus preserved for coming generations. As it is, they are pa.s.sing rapidly away; man and beast, as well as the elements, are busy with them, and in a few years they will quite have disappeared. The practical utility of which they are available appears the only circ.u.mstance which has attracted attention to them. One has already become a public reservoir, and measures are in progress for applying the larger mound to a similar use, the first being insufficient for the growth of the city. It need not be said that such indifference of feeling to the only relics of a by-gone race which our land can boast, is not well in the citizens of St. Louis, and should exist no longer; nor need allusion be made to that eagerness of interest which the distant traveller, the man of literary taste and poetic fancy, or the devotee of abstruse science, never fails to betray for these mysterious monuments of the past, when, in his tour of the Far West, he visits St. Louis; many a one, too, who has looked upon the century-mossed ruins of Europe, and to whose eye the castled crags of the Rhine are not unfamiliar. And surely, to the imaginative mind, there is an interest which attaches to these venerable beacons of departed time, enveloped as they are in mystery inscrutable; and from their origin, pointing, as they do, down the dim shadowy vista of ages of which the ken of man telleth not, there is an interest which hallows them even as the h.o.a.ry piles of old Egypt are hallowed, and which feudal Europe, with all her {129} time-sustained battlements, can never boast. It is the mystery, the impenetrable mystery veiling these aged sepulchres, which gives them an interest for the traveller's eye. They are landmarks in the lapse of ages, beneath whose shadows generations have mouldered, and around whose summits a gone _eternity_ plays! The ruined tower, the moss-grown abbey, the damp-stained dungeon, the sunken arch, the fairy and delicate fragments of the shattered peristyle of a cla.s.sic land, or the beautiful frescoes of Herculaneum and Pompeii--around _them_ time has indeed flung the silvery mantle of eld while he has swept them with decay; but _their_ years may be _enumerated_, and the circ.u.mstances, the authors, and the purposes of their origin, together with the incidents of their ruin, are chronicled on History's page for coming generations. But who shall tell the era of the origin of these venerable earth-heaps, the race of their builders, the purpose of their erection, the thousand circ.u.mstances attending their rise, history, desertion? Why now so lone and desolate? Where are the mult.i.tudes that once swarmed the prairie at their base, and vainly busied themselves in rearing piles which should exist the wonder of the men of other lands, and the sole monument of their own memory long after they themselves were dust? Has war, or famine, or pestilence brooded over these beautiful plains? or has the fiat of Omnipotence gone forth that as a race their inhabitants should exist no longer, and the death-angel been commissioned to sweep them from off the face of {130} the earth as if with destruction's besom? We ask: the inquiry is vain; we are answered not! Their mighty creations and the tombs of myriads heave up themselves in solemn grandeur before us; but from the depths of the dusky earth-heap comes forth no voice to tell us its origin, or object, or story!

"Ye mouldering relics of a race departed, Your names have perished; not a trace remains, Save where the gra.s.sgrown mound its summit rears From the green bosom of your native plains."

Ages since--long ere the first son of the Old World had pressed the fresh soil of the New; long before the bright region beyond the blue wave had been the object of the philosopher's revery by day and the enthusiast's vision by night--in the deep stillness and solitude of an unpeopled land, these vast mausoleums rose as now they rise, in lonely grandeur from the plain, and looked down, even as now they look, upon the giant flood rolling its dark waters at their base, hurrying past them to the deep. So has it been with the ma.s.sive tombs of Egypt, amid the sands and barrenness of the desert. For ages untold have the gloomy pyramids been reflected by the inundations of the Nile; an hundred generations, they tell us, have arisen from the cradle and reposed beneath their shadows, and, like autumn leaves, have dropped into the grave; but from the deep midnight of by-gone centuries comes forth no daring spirit to claim these kingly sepulchres as his own!

And shall the dusky piles on the plains of distant Egypt affect so deeply our reverence for the {131} departed, and these mighty monuments, reposing in dark sublimity upon our own magnificent prairies veiled in mystery more inscrutable than they, call forth no solitary throb? Is there no hallowing interest a.s.sociated with these aged relics, these tombs, and temples, and towers of another race, to elicit emotion? Are they _indeed_ to us no more than the dull clods we tread upon? Why, then, does the wanderer from the far land gaze upon them with wonder and veneration? Why linger fondly around them, and meditate upon the power which reared them and is departed? Why does the poet, the man of genius and fancy, or the philosopher of mind and nature, seat himself at their base, and, with strange and undefined emotions, pause and ponder amid the loneliness which slumbers around?

And surely, if the far traveller, as he wanders through this Western Valley, may linger around these aged piles and meditate upon a power departed, a race obliterated, an influence swept from the earth for ever, and dwell with melancholy emotions upon the destiny of man, is it not meet that those into whose keeping they seem by Providence consigned should regard them with interest and emotion? that they should gather up and preserve every incident relevant to their origin, design, or history which may be attained, and avail themselves of every measure which may give to them perpetuity, and hand them down, undisturbed in form or character, to other generations?

The most plausible, and, indeed, the only plausible argument urged by those who deny the artificial {132} origin of the ancient mounds, is _their immense size_. There are, say they, "many mounds in the West that exactly correspond in _shape_ with these supposed antiquities, and yet, from their _size_, most evidently were not made by man;" and they add that "it would be well to calculate upon the ordinary labour of excavating ca.n.a.ls, how many hands, with spades, wheelbarrows, and other necessary implements, it would take to throw up mounds like the largest of these within any given time."[110] We are told that in the territory of Wisconsin and in northern Illinois exist mounds to which these are molehills. Of those, Mount Joliet, Mount Charles, Sinsinewa, and the Blue Mounds vary from one to four hundred feet in height; while west of the Arkansas exists a range of earth-heaps ten or twelve miles in extent, and two hundred feet high: there also, it might be added, are the Mamelle Mountains, estimated at one thousand feet.[111] The adjacent country is prairie; farms exist on the summits of the mounds, which from their declivity are almost inaccessible, and _springs gush out from their sides_. With but one exception I profess to know nothing of these mounds from personal observation; and, consequently, can hazard no opinion of their character. The fact of the "gushing springs," it is true, {133} savours not much of artificialness; and in this respect, at least, do these mounds differ from those claimed as of artificial origin. The earth-heaps of which I have been speaking can boast no "springs of water gushing from their sides;" if they could, the fact would be far from corroborating the theory maintained. The a.n.a.logy between these mounds is admitted to be strong, though there exist diversities; and were there _none_, even Bishop Butler says that we are not to infer a thing true upon slight presumption, since "there may be probabilities on both sides of a question." From what has been advanced relative to the character of the mounds spoken of, it is believed that the probabilities strongly preponderate in favour of their artificial origin, even admitting their _perfect_ a.n.a.logy to those "from whose sides gush the springs." But more anon.

_St. Louis._

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