to enter, but he declined. Sitting down on a
log, he covered his face with his hands, for a few moments, and seemed
buried in grief. It did not last long, however: he rose almost
immediately, and going a little aside, calmly loaded his rifle. Without
noticing the old man, who stood gazing at him in wonder, he turned away,
and, with his eyes fixed upon the ground, took the path toward his own
house. He was seen to break the door and enter, but he remained within
only a few minutes. On coming out, he threw his rifle over his shoulder,
and walked away through the forest. Half an hour afterward, smoke was
seen issuing from the roof of the house in several places, and on
repairing thither, the neighbors found the whole place in a bright
flame! It was of no use to attempt to save it or any of its contents. An
hour afterward, it was a heap of smouldering ruins, and its owner had
disappeared from the country!

Seven years passed away.

The war was over: the Indians had been driven to the north and west, and
the tide of emigration had again set toward the Mississippi. The
northwestern territory--especially that part of it which is now included
within the limits of Illinois and Indiana--was rapidly filling up with
people from the south and east. The advanced settlements had reached the
site of Springfield, in the "Sangamon country,"[78] now the capital of
Illinois, and a few farms were opened in the north of Madison
county--now Morgan and Scott. The beautiful valley, most inaptly called,
of the _Mauvaisterre_, was then an unbroken wilderness.

The grass was growing as high as the head of a tall man, where now
well-built streets and public squares are traversed by hurrying crowds.
Groves which have since become classic were then impenetrable thickets;
and the only guides the emigrant found, through forest and prairie, were
the points of the compass, and the courses of streams. But in the years
eighteen hundred and seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen, the western
slope of the Sangamon country began rapidly to improve. Reports had gone
abroad of "the fertility of its soil, the beauty of its surface, its
genial climate, and its many advantages of position"--and there is
certainly no country which more richly deserves these praises.

But the first emigrant who made his appearance here, in the autumn of
eighteen hundred and nineteen, was probably moved by other
considerations. It was none other than Abram Cutler! And his family
c