The colored map of Illinois, as given in a nice, new book, called, “Illinois as it is,” looks like a beautiful piece of silk, brocaded in green (prairies) on a brownish ground (woodland tracts),—­the surface showing a nearly equal proportion of the two; while the swampy lands, designated by dark blue,—­in allusion, probably, to the occasional state of mind of those who live near them,—­take up a scarce appreciable part of the space.  Long, straggling “bluffs,” on the banks of the rivers, occupy still less room; but they make, on land and paper, an agreeable variety.  People thus far go to them only for the mineral wealth with which they abound.  It will be many years, yet, before they will be thought worth farming; not because they would not yield well, but because there is so much land that yields better.

Some parts of the State are hilly, and covered with the finest timber.  The scenery of these tracts is equal to any of the kind in the United States; and much of it has been long under cultivation, having been early chosen by Southern settlers, who have grown old upon the soil.  Here and there, on these beautiful highlands, we find ancient ladies, bright-eyed and cheerful, who tell us they have occupied the selfsame house—­built, Kentucky-fashion, with chimney outside—­for forty years or so.  The legends these good dames have to tell are, no doubt, quite as interesting in their way as those which Sir Walter Scott used to thread the wilds of Scotland to gather up; but we value them not.  By-and-by, posterity will anathematize us for letting our old national stories die in blind contempt or sheer ignorance of their value.

The only thing to be found fault with in the landscape is the want of great fields full of stumps.  It does not seem like travelling in a new country to see all smooth and ready for the plough.  Trees are not here looked upon as natural enemies; and so, where they grow, there they stand, and wave triumphant over the field like victors’ banners.  No finer trees grow anywhere, and one loves to see them so prized.  Yet we miss the dear old stumps.  My heart leaps up when I behold hundreds of them so close together that you can hardly get a plough between.  Long, long years ago, I have seen a dozen men toiling in one little cleared spot, jollily engaged in burning them with huge fires of brush-wood, chopping at them with desperate axes, and tearing the less tenacious out by the roots, with a rude machine made on the principle of that instrument by the aid of which the dentist revenges you on an offending tooth.  The country looks tame, at first, without these characteristic ornaments, so suggestive of human occupancy.  The ground is excellently fertile where stumps have been, and association makes us rather distrustful of its goodness where nothing but grass has ever grown.