In the neighborhood of Dixon, a class of emigrants have established themselves, more opulent and more luxurious in their tastes than most of the settlers of the western country.  Some of these have built elegant mansions on the left bank of the river, amidst the noble trees which seem to have grown up for that very purpose.  Indeed, when I looked at them, I could hardly persuade myself that they had not been planted to overshadow older habitations.  From the door of one of these dwellings I surveyed a prospect of exceeding beauty.  The windings of the river allowed us a sight of its waters and its beautifully diversified banks to a great distance each way, and in one direction a high prairie region was seen above the woods that fringed the course 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.  He asked for assistance to defend his person and dwelling against the lawless violence of these men.  The people of Dixon county came together and passed a resolution to the effect, that they approved fully of what the inhabitants of Ogle county had done, and that they allowed Mr. Bridge the term of four hours to depart from the town of Dixon.  He went away immediately, and in great trepidation.  This Bridge is a notorious confederate and harborer of horse-thieves and counterfeiters.  The thinly-settled portions of Illinois are much exposed to the depredations of horse-thieves, who have a kind of centre of operations in Ogle county, where it is said that they have a justice of the peace and a constable among their own associates, and where they contrive to secure a friend on the jury whenever any one of their number is tried.  Trial after trial has taken place, and it has been found impossible to obtain a conviction on the clearest evidence, until last April, when two horse-thieves being on trial eleven