These picturesque beings - the bullock-waggons setting out for
the Far West - the medley of different nations and costumes in the streets
- make the city a spectacle of great interest.
The deep hollow roar of the locomotive, and the shrill scream from the
steamboat, are heard here all day; a continuous stream of life ever
bustles through the city, and, standing as it does on the very verge of
western civilisation, Chicago is a vast emporium of the trade of the
districts east and west of the Mississippi.
At an office in one of the streets Mr. C - - took my ticket for Toronto by
railway, steamer, railway, and steamer, only paying eight dollars and a
half, or about thirty-four shillings, for a journey of seven hundred
miles!
We returned to tea at the hotel, and found our viands and companions just
the same as at dinner. It is impossible to give an idea of the "western
men" to any one who has not seen one at least as a specimen. They are the
men before whom the Indians melt away as grass before the scythe. They
shoot them down on the smallest provocation, and speak of "head of
Indian," as we do in England of head of game. Their bearing is bold,
reckless, and independent in the extreme; they are as ready to fight a foe
as to wait upon women and children with tender assiduity; their very
appearance says to you, "Stranger, I belong to the greatest, most
enlightened, and most progressive nation on earth; I may be the President
or a millionaire next year; I don't care a straw for you or any one
else."
Illinois is a State which has sprung up, as if by magic, to be one of the
most fruitful in the West. It was settled by men from the New England
States - men who carried with them those characteristics which have made
the New Englander's career one of active enterprise, and successful
progress, wherever he has been. Not many years ago the name of Illinois
was nearly unknown, and on her soil the hardy settler battled with the
forest-trees for space in which to sow his first crops. Her roads were
merely rude and often impassable tracks through forest or prairie; now she
has in operation and course of construction two thousand and seventy miles
of those iron sinews of commercial progress - railroads, running like a
network over the State.
At seven o'clock, with a feeling of great relief, mingled with
thankfulness at having escaped untouched by the terrible pestilence which
had ravaged Chicago, I left the hotel, more appropriately termed a
"caravanserai" and my friends placed me in the "Lightning Express,"
warranted to go sixty-seven miles an hour. Unless it may be St. Louis, I
fancy that Chicago is more worth a visit than any other of the western
cities.
