M. Duponceau, a Frenchman settled at Philadelphia, who is perhaps one of the first philologists of the age, concludes a treatise on the same subject with the following deductions: 

1.—­“That the American languages, in general, are rich in words and in grammatical forms; and that in their complicated construction, the greatest order, method, and regularity prevail.”

2.—­“That these complicated forms, which I call polysinthetic, appear to exist in all those languages, from Greenland to Cape Horn."[8]

3.—­“That these forms appear to differ essentially from those of the ancient and modern languages of the old hemisphere.”

We intended to proceed direct from the banks of the Mississippi to Edwardsville, which lies in a north-easterly direction from St. Louis, but unfortunately got on the wrong track, an occurrence by no means uncommon on the prairies, and by this casualty visited Troy, a town containing two houses, namely, a “groggery,” and a farm-house, both owned by the one person.  The only resemblance this trans-Atlantic Ilium can possibly bear to the city of the ten years’ siege, lies in the difficulty of ascertaining its location; for had we not been informed that here stood the town of Troy, we should have passed through this, as we did through many others, without ever suspecting the fact.  Town-making is quite a speculation in the western country; and the first thing a man does after purchasing a few hundred acres of ground, is to “lay off a town lot:”  this causes the maps to be studded with little circular dots, and great big names attached to them, which would lead one to suppose the population to be much greater than it is in reality.

From Edwardsville, we proceeded by Ripley and Greenville, to Vandalia, the seat of government of the state.

The prairies had lost much of the brilliant green colour which they possessed when we before crossed them, and they were now assuming rather a burnt appearance.  Towards the close of autumn the grass generally becomes so dry as to be easily ignited, which formerly took place by accident, or otherwise, almost every year.  The sight must be grand indeed; and we almost regretted that we were not so fortunate as to be in danger of being burnt alive—­the sight would be worth the risk.  There is a penalty attached to the firing of the woods or prairies, as the plantations are now becoming too numerously scattered over the country, and property is likely to be injured by these conflagrations.

Towards the latter end of October, the season peculiar to this country, denominated the “Indian summer,” commences, and lasts for some weeks.  At this period, the atmosphere is suffused with a vapour which at a distance has the appearance of smoke, arising as it were from fires in the forest.  The air is always calm and mild on those days, and the sun’s disk assumes a broad, reddish appearance.

Vandalia is the capital of Illinois, and is seated on the Kaskaskia river, which is only navigable to this point during the “freshets” in autumn and spring.  The positions of the capitals are chosen for their centrality alone, and not with reference to any local advantages they may possess.