Of this river, of a lighter green than they,
and touched with the golden light of the setting sun.
I am told that the character of Rock River is, throughout its course, much
as I have described it in the neighborhood of Dixon, that its banks are
high and free from marshes, and its waters rapid and clear, from its
source in Wisconsin to where it enters the Mississippi amidst rocky
islands. What should make its shores unhealthy I can not see, yet they
who inhabit them are much subject to intermittent fevers. They tell you
very quietly that every body who comes to live there must take a
seasoning. I suppose that when this country becomes settled this will no
longer be the case. Rock River is not much subject to inundations, nor do
its waters become very low in summer. A project is on foot, I am told, to
navigate it with steam-vessels of a light draught.
When I arrived at Dixon I was told that the day before a man named
Bridge, living at Washington Grove, in Ogle county, came into town and
complained that he had received notice from a certain association that he
must leave the county before the seventeenth of the month, or that he
would be looked upon as a proper subject for Lynch law.
