Chicago, June 20.

There can be no two places in the world more completely thoroughfares than this place and Buffalo.  They are the two correspondent valves that open and shut all the time, as the life-blood rushes from east to west, and back again from west to east.

Since it is their office thus to be the doors, and let in and out, it would be unfair to expect from them much character of their own.  To make the best provisions for the transmission of produce is their office, and the people who live there are such as are suited for this; active, complaisant, inventive, business people.  There are no provisions for the student or idler; to know what the place can give, you should be at work with the rest, the mere traveller will not find it profitable to loiter there as I did.

Since circumstances made it necessary for me so to do, I read all the books I could find about the new region, which now began to become real to me.  All the books about the Indians, a paltry collection, truly, yet which furnished material for many thoughts.  The most narrow-minded and awkward recital, still bears some lineaments of the great features of this nature, and the races of men that illustrated them.

Catlin’s book is far the best.  I was afterwards assured by those acquainted with the regions he describes, that he is not to be depended on for the accuracy of his facts, and, indeed, it is obvious, without the aid of such assertions, that he sometimes yields to the temptation of making out a story.  They admitted, however, what from my feelings I was sure of, that he is true to the spirit of the scene, and that a far better view can be got from him than from any source at present existing, of the Indian tribes of the far west, and of the country where their inheritance lay.

Murray’s travels I read, and was charmed by their accuracy and clear broad tone.  He is the only Englishman that seems to have traversed these regions, as man, simply, not as John Bull.  He deserves to belong to an aristocracy, for he showed his title to it more when left without a guide in the wilderness, than he can at the court of Victoria.  He has, himself, no poetic force at description, but it is easy to make images from his hints.  Yet we believe the Indian cannot be looked at truly except by a poetic eye.  The Pawnees, no doubt, are such as he describes them, filthy in their habits, and treacherous in their character, but some would have seen, and seen truly, more beauty and dignity than he does with all his manliness and fairness of mind.  However, his one fine old man is enough to redeem the rest, and is perhaps the relic of a better day, a Phocion among the Pawnees.