gave them instructions, if they could avoid it.  A certain judge, being ambitious to show his learning, gave very pointed directions to the jury, but they could not agree on a verdict.  The judge asked the cause of their difference, when the foreman answered with great simplicity,—­“Why, Judge, this ’ere’s the difficulty:  the jury wants to know whether that ’ar what you told us, when we went out, was r’aly the law, or whether it was on’y jist your notion.”

In the spring of 1831, Black Hawk, a Sac chief, dissatisfied with the treaty by which his tribe had been removed across the Mississippi, recrossed the river at the head of three or four hundred warriors, and drove away the white settlers from his old lands near the mouth of the Rock River.  This was considered an invasion of the State, and Governor Reynolds called for volunteers.  Fifteen hundred men answered the summons, and the Indians were driven out.  The next spring, however, Black Hawk returned with a larger force, and commenced hostilities by killing some settlers on Indian Creek, not far from Ottawa.  A large force of volunteers was again called out, but in the first encounter the whites were beaten, which success encouraged the Sacs and Foxes so much that they spread themselves over the whole of the country between the Mississippi and the Lake, and kept up a desultory warfare for three or four months against the volunteer troops.  About the middle of July, a body of volunteers under General Henry of Illinois pursued the Indians into Wisconsin, and by forced marches brought them to action near the Mississippi, before the United States troops, under General Atkinson, could come up.  The Indians fought desperately, but were unable to stand long before the courage and superior numbers of the whites.  They escaped across the river with the loss of nearly three hundred, killed in the action, or drowned in the retreat.  The loss of the Illinois volunteers was about thirty, killed and wounded.

This defeat entirely broke the power of the Sacs and Foxes, and they sued for peace.  Black Hawk, and some of his head men, were taken prisoners, and kept in confinement for several months, when, after a tour through the country, to show them the numbers and power of the whites, they were set at liberty on the west side of the Mississippi.  In 1840 Black Hawk died, at the age of eighty years, on the banks of the great river which he loved so well.

After the Black-Hawk War, the Indian title being extinguished, and the country open to settlers, Northern Illinois attracted great attention, and increased wonderfully in wealth and population.

In 1830, the population of the State amounted to 157,445; in 1840, to 476,183; in 1850, to 851,470; in 1860, to 1,719,496.

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Situated in the centre of the United States, the State of Illinois extends from 37 deg. to 42 deg. 30’ N. latitude, and from 10 deg. 47’ to 14 deg. 26’ W. longitude from Washington.  The State is 378 miles long from North to South, and 212 miles broad from East to West.  Its area is computed at 55,408 square miles, or 35,459,200 acres, less than two millions of which are called swamp lands, the remaining thirty-three millions being tillable land of unsurpassed fertility.