not good beds, yet good tea, good bread, and wild strawberries, and
were entertained with most free communications of opinion and history
from our hosts. Neither shall any of us have a right to say again that
we cannot find any who may be willing to hear all we may have to say.
"A's fish that comes to the net," should be painted on the sign at Papaw
grove.

CHAPTER III.

In the afternoon of this day we reached the Rock river, in whose
neighborhood we proposed to make some stay, and crossed at Dixon's
ferry.

This beautiful stream flows full and wide over a bed of rocks,
traversing a distance of near two hundred miles, to reach the
Mississippi. Great part of the country along its banks is the finest
region of Illinois, and the scene of some of the latest romance of
Indian warfare. To these beautiful regions Black Hawk returned with his
band "to pass the summer," when he drew upon himself the warfare in
which he was finally vanquished. No wonder he could not resist the
longing, unwise though its indulgence might be, to return in summer to
this home of beauty.

Of Illinois, in general, it has often been remarked that it bears the
character of country which has been inhabited by a nation skilled like
the English in all the ornamental arts of life, especially in landscape
gardening. That the villas and castles seem to have been burnt, the
enclosures taken down, but the velvet lawns, the flower gardens, the
stately parks, scattered at graceful intervals by the decorous hand of
art, the frequent deer, and the peaceful herd of cattle that make
picture of the plain, all suggest more of the masterly mind of man, than
the prodigal, but careless, motherly love of nature. Especially is this
true of the Rock river country. The river flows sometimes through these
parks and lawns, then betwixt high bluffs, whose grassy ridges are
covered with fine trees, or broken with crumbling stone, that easily
assumes, the forms of buttress, arch and clustered columns. Along the
face of such crumbling rocks, swallows' nests are clustered, thick as
cities, and eagles and deer do not disdain their summits. One morning,
out in the boat along the base of these rocks, it was amusing, and
affecting too, to see these swallows put their heads out to look at us.
There was something very hospitable about it, as if man had never shown
himself a tyrant near them. What a morning that was! Every sight is
worth twice as much by the early morning lig