It is a common remark in this country, that the first cultivation of the earth renders any neighborhood more or less unhealthy.  “Nature,” said a western man to me, some years since, “resents the violence done her, and punishes those who first break the surface of the earth with the plough.”  The beautiful Rock River district, with its rapid stream, its noble groves, its banks disposed in natural terraces, with fresh springs gushing at their foot, and airy prairies stretching away from their summits, was esteemed one of the most healthy countries in the world as long as it had but few inhabitants.  With the breaking up of the soil came in bilious fever and intermittents.  A few years of cultivation will render the country more healthy, and these diseases will probably disappear, as they have done in some parts of western New York.  I can remember the time when the “Genesee Country,” as it was called, was thought quite a sickly region—­a land just in the skirts of the shadow of death.  It is now as healthy, I believe, as any part of the state.

Letter XXXIV.

Voyage to Sault Ste. Marie.

Sault Ste. Marie, August 13, 1846.

When we left Chicago in the steamer, the other morning, all the vessels in the port had their flags displayed at half-mast in token of dissatisfaction with the fate of the harbor bill.  You may not recollect that the bill set apart half a million of dollars for the construction or improvement of various harbors of the lakes, and authorized the deepening of the passages through the St. Clair Flats, now intricate and not quite safe, by which these bulky steamers make their way from the lower lakes to the upper.  The people of the lake region had watched the progress of the bill through Congress with much interest and anxiety, and congratulated each other when at length it received a majority of votes in both houses.  The President’s veto has turned these congratulations into expressions of disappointment which are heard on all sides, sometimes expressed with a good deal of energy.  But, although the news of the veto reached Chicago two or three days before we left the place, nobody had seen the message in which it was contained.  Perhaps the force of the President’s reasonings will reconcile the minds of people here to the disappointment of their hopes.

It was a hot August morning as the steamer Wisconsin, an unwieldy bulk, dipping and bobbing upon the small waves, and trembling at every stroke of the engine, swept out into the lake.  The southwest wind during the warmer portion of the summer months is a sort of Sirocco in Illinois.  It blows with considerable strength, but passing over an immense extent of heated plains it brings no coolness.  It was such an air that accompanied us on our way north from Chicago; and as the passengers huddled into the shady places outside of the state-rooms on the upper deck, I thought of the flocks of quails I had seen gasping in the shadow of the rail-fences on the prairies.