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HERE, upon the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, sits your sister, my little Agatha, not, however, upon the sandy shore, but in a pretty villa, built in the Italian style, with Corinthian pillars, surrounded by beautiful trees and flowers.

It, was in the market of Buffalo, amid horses and carriages, and throngs of people buying and selling, passing hither and thither, amid chests and all sorts of baggage, amid crowds and bustle, that I parted from my young friends, who had become dear to me almost as brother and sister. There was neither time nor space to say many words in, the smoking iron-horse which was to speed them   [p. 596]   away along the iron-road stood ready; iron-road, iron-horse, iron-necessity, all were there; the warm heart had neither time nor language; thus we kissed in silence from our inmost hearts, and parted--perhaps forever! The Lowells intend to make a journey to Italy next year. I saw them no longer, and was conducted out of the throng in the market to an hotel by a respectable old gentleman, Judge B., under whose care I am to continue my journey. He had presented himself to me at Niagara with a letter of introduction from Mr. E.

This excellent, vigorous old gentleman, yet quite youthful in spirit, one of the oldest pioneers of the West, and who had taken part in the founding or laying out of many of its most flourishing cities, as Rochester, Lockport, and many others, was quite at home in all the districts through which we were to travel, as far even as Lake Michigan, and for that reason, and also because he was evidently a good and cordial man, I was well satisfied to have him for my companion.

At the hotel at Buffalo I was again tormented by some new acquaintance with the old, tiresome questions, "'How do you like America?" "How do you like the States?" "Does Buffalo look according to your expectations?" To which latter question I replied that I had not expected any thing from Buffalo; but yet, that I must say it struck me as being one of the least excellent cities which I had seen in America. Business! business! appeared to me to be the principal life and character there. But the truth is, that I did not see much of Buffalo.

Toward evening I went on board "The Ocean," a magnificent three-decked steam-boat, which conveyed me across Lake Erie, frequently a very stormy and dangerous lake; its billows, however, now resembled naiads sporting in the sunshine.

"Erie," says M. Bouchette, a French writer, describing this part of the country, "may be regarded as the great   [p. 597]   central reservoir from which canals extend on all sides, so that vessels from this point may go to every part of the country inland, from the Atlantic Ocean on the east and north to the countries and the sea of the south, and bring together the productions of every land and climate." Emigrants of all nations cross Lake Erie on their way to the colonies west of those great inland seas. But to too many of them has Erie proved a grave. Not long since a vessel of emigrants, mostly Germans, was destroyed by fire on Lake Erie, and hundreds of these poor people found a grave in its waters. Among those who were taken up were seven or eight couples, locked in each other's arms. Death could not divide them. Love is stronger than death. The helmsman stood at the helm steering the vessel toward land till the flames burned his hands. The negligence of the captain is said to have been the cause of this misfortune. He too perished. Only between thirty and forty passengers were saved.

For me, however, the sail across Lake Erie was like a sunbright festival, in that magnificent steamer where even a piano was heard in the crowded saloon, and where a polite and most agreeable captain took charge of me in the kindest manner. My good old pioneer related to me various incidents of his life, his religious conversion, his first love and his last, which was quite recent; the old gentleman declaring himself to be half in love with "that Yankee woman, Mrs. L.;" and I do not wonder at it. It convinced me that he had good taste. He declared himself to be "first and foremost a great ladies' man."

At four o'clock in the afternoon--that is to say, of the day after we went on board, we reached Detroit, a city first founded by the French upon that narrow strait between the Lakes Erie and St. Clair, which separates Michigan from Canada. The shores, as seen from the vessel, appeared to be laid out in small farms consisting of regular allotments, surrounded by plantations. The land   [p. 598]   seemed to me low but fertile, undulating hill and valley. Detroit is, like Buffalo, a city where business-life preponderates, yet still it looked to me pleasanter and more friendly than Buffalo. I saw at the hotel some tiresome catechisers, and also some very agreeable people, people whom one could talk well and frankly with, and whom one could like in all respects. Among these I remember, in particular, the Episcopal bishop of Michigan, a frank, excellent, and intellectual man; and a mother and her daughters. I was able to exchange a few cordial words with them, words out of the earnest depths of life, and such always do me good. The people of Detroit were, for the rest, pleased with their city and their way of life there, pleased with themselves, and with each other. And this seems to me to be the case in most of the places that I have been to here in the West.

The following evening we were at Anne Arbor, a pretty little rural city. Here also I received visitors, and was examined as usual. My good old pioneer did not approve of traveling incognito, but insisted upon it that people should be known by people, and could not comprehend how any one could be tired, and need a cessation of introductions and questions. In Anne Arbor, also, the people were much pleased with themselves, their city, its situation, and way of life. The city derived its name from the circumstance that when the first settlers came to the place they consisted principally of one family, and while the woods were felled and the land plowed, the laborers had no other dwelling than a tent-like shed of boughs and canvas, where the mother of the family, "Anne," prepared the food, and cared for the comfort of all. That was the domestic hearth; that was the calm haven where all the laborers found rest and refreshment under the protection of Mother Anne. Hence they called the tent Anne's Arbor or Bower, and the city, which by degrees sprung up around it, retained the name. And with its neat houses   [p. 599]   and gardens upon the green hills and slopes the little city looked, indeed, like a peaceful retreat from the unquiet of the world.

We remained over night at Anne Arbor. The following morning we set off by rail-road and traveled directly across the State of Michigan. Through the whole distance I saw small farms, with their well-built houses, surrounded by well-cultivated land; fields of wheat and maize, and orchards full of apple and peach trees. In the wilder districts the fields were brilliant with some beautiful kind of violet and blue flowers, which the rapidity of our journey prevented me from examining more closely, and with tall sunflowers, the heads of which were as large as young trees. It was splendid and beautiful. My old pioneer told me that he never had seen any where such an affluence of magnificent flowers as in Michigan, especially in the olden times before the wilderness was broken up into fields. Michigan is one of the youngest states of the Union, but has a rich soil, particularly calculated for the growth of wheat, and is greatly on the increase. The legislation is of the most liberal description, and it has abolished capital punishment in its penal code. Nevertheless, I heard of crime having been committed in this state which deserved death, or at least imprisonment for life, if any crime does deserve it. A young man of a respectable family in Detroit, during a hunt, had shot clandestinely and repeatedly at another young man, his best friend, merely to rob him of his pocket-book. He had been condemned for an attempt to murder, which he acknowledged, only to twenty years imprisonment. And in prison he was visited by young ladies, who went to teach him French and to play on the guitar! One of these traveled with me on the rail-road. She spoke of the young prisoner's "agreeable demeanor!" There is a leniency toward crime and the criminal which is disgusting, and which proves laxity of moral feeling.

The weather was glorious the whole day. The sun preceded us westward. We steered our course directly toward the sun; and the nearer it sank toward the earth, more brightly glowed the evening sky as with the most transcendent gold. The country, through the whole extent, was lowland, and monotonous. Here and there wound along a lovely little wooded stream. Here and there in the woods were small frame houses, and beside one and another of them wooden sheds, upon which a board was fastened, whereon might be read in white letters, half a yard high, the word "Grocery." The cultivated districts were in all cases divided regularly, scattered over with farm-houses resembling those of our better class of peasant farmers. The settlers in the West purchase allotments of from eighty to one hundred sand sixty or two hundred acres, seldom less and seldom more. The land costs, in the first instance, what is called "government price," one dollar and a quarter per acre; and will, if well cultivated, produce abundant harvests within a few years. The farmers here work hard, live frugally, but well, and bring up strong, able families. The children, however, seldom follow the occupation of their fathers. They are sent to schools, and after that endeavor to raise themselves by political or public life. These small farms are the nurseries from which the Northwest States obtain their best officials and teachers, both male and female. A vigorous, pious, laborious race grows up here. I received much enlightenment on this subject from my good old pioneer, who, with his piety, his restless activity, his humanity, his great information, and his youthfully warm heart, even in advancing years, was a good type of the first cultivators of the wilderness in this country. He parted from me on the journey in order to reach his home in the little city of Niles.

In company with an agreeable gentleman, Mr. H., and his agreeable sister-in-law, I went on board the steamer   [p. 601]   which crosses Lake Michigan. The sun had now sunk; but the evening sky glowed with the brightest crimson above the sea-like lake. We departed amid its splendor and in the light of the new moon. The water was calm as a mirror.

On the morning of the 13th of September, I saw the sun shine over Chicago. I expected to have been met at Chicago by some friends, who were to take me to their house. But none came; and on inquiring, I learned that they were not now there. Nor was this to be wondered at, as I was two months after the appointed time. I now, therefore, found myself quite alone in that great unknown West. And two little misadventures occurring just now with my luggage made it still less agreeable. But precisely at the moment when I stood quite alone on the deck--for my kind new acquaintance had left the steamer somewhat earlier--my gladness returned to me, and I felt that I was not alone; I felt vigorous, both body and mind. The sun was there too; and such a heartfelt rejoicing filled my whole being, in its Lord and in my Father, and the Father of all, that I esteemed myself fortunate that I could shut myself up in a little solitary room at an hotel in the city, and thus be still more alone with my joy.

But my solitude was not of long continuance. Handsome, kind people gathered round me, offered me house, and home, and friendship, and every good thing, and all in Chicago became sunshine to me.

In the evening I found myself in that pretty villa, where I am now writing to you, and in the beautiful night a serenade was given in the moonlight gardens, in which was heard the familiar

Einsam bin ich nicht allein.

It was a salutation from the Germans of the city.

September 17th. Prairies! A sight which I shall never forget.

Chicago is situated on the edge of the prairie-land.

The whole State of Illinois is one vast rolling prairie (that is to say, a plain of low, wave-like hills); but the prairie proper does not commence until about eighteen miles from the city. My new friends wished me to pass a day of prairie-life. We drove out early in the morning, three families in four carriages. Our pioneer, a dark, handsome hunter, drove first with his dogs, and shot, when we halted by the way, now and then, a prairie hen (grouse) on the wing. The day was glorious; the sky of the brightest blue, the sun of the purest gold, and the air full of vitality, but calm; and there, in that brilliant light, stretched itself far, far out into the infinite, as far as the eye could discern, an ocean-like extent, the waves of which were sunflowers, asters, and gentians. The plain was splendid with them, especially with the sunflowers, which were frequently four yards high, and stood far above the head of our tallest gentleman.

We ate our dinner in a little wood, which lay like a green shrub upon that treeless, flowery plain. It was an elevation, and from this point the prairie stretched onward its softly waving extent to the horizon. Here and there, amid this vast stretch, arose small log-houses, which resembled little birds' nests floating upon the ocean. Here and there, also, were people making hay; it looked like some child's attempt, like child's play. The sun-bright soil remained here still in its primeval greatness and magnificence, unchecked by human hands, covered with its flowers, protected and watched alone by the eye of the sun. And the bright sunflowers nodded and beckoned in the wind, as if inviting millions of beings to the festival set out on the rich table of the earth. To me it was a festival of light. It was a really great and glorious sight; to my feeling less common and grander even than Niagara itself.

The dark hunter, a man of few words but evidently of strong feelings, leaned upon his gun aud said softly, "Here I often stand for hours and gaze on creation!"

And well he might. That sight resembled an ecstasy in the life of nature. It was bathed in light; it reposed blissfully in the bosom of light. The sunflowers sang praises to the sun.

I wandered about in the wood and gathered flowers. The asters grew above my head. Nearly all the flowers which now cover the prairies are of the class Syngenesia, and of these the Solidago and Helianthus predominate. The prairies are covered each different month with a different class of flowers; in spring white, then blue, then purple, and now mostly of a golden yellow.

In the course of the day we visited one of the log-houses on the plain. A nice old woman was at home. The men were out getting in the hay. The house was one year old, and tolerably open to the weather, but clean and orderly within, as are houses generally in which live American women. I asked the good woman how the solitude of this great prairie agreed with her. She was tired of it, "it was so monotonous," she said. Yes, yes, there is a difference between seeing this sight of heaven and earth for one day and for a whole year! Nevertheless, I would try it for a year.

We did not see a cloud during the whole of this day, nor yet perceive a breath of air; yet still the atmosphere was as fresh as it was delicious. The Indian summer will soon begin. The whole of that little prairie-festival was cloudless, excepting that the hunter's gun went off and shot one of our horses in the ear, and that a carriage broke down; but it was near the end of the journey and was taken all in good part, and thus was of no consequence.