hern Indiana and fringes of
forest growth along the intervening water courses, the prairies stretch
westward continuously across Indiana, and the whole of Illinois to the
Mississippi. Taking the line of the Wabash railway, which crosses
Illinois in its greatest breadth, and beginning in Indiana, where the
railway leaves the timber, west of the Wabash near Marshfield (in Warren
County), the prairie extends to Quincy, a distance of more than two
hundred and fifty miles, and its continuity the entire way is only
broken by four strips of timber along four streams running at right
angles with the route of the railway, namely, the timber on the
Vermilion river between Danville and the Indiana state line; the
Sangamon, seventy miles west of Danville, near Decatur; the Sangamon
again a few miles east of Springfield, and the Illinois river at
Meredosia, and all the timber at the crossing of these several streams,
if put together, would not aggregate fifteen miles, against the two
hundred and fifty miles of prairie. Taking a north and south direction
and parallel with the drainage of the rivers, one could start near
Ashley, on the Illinois Central railway, in Washington county, and going
northward, nearly on an air line, keeping on the divide between
Kaskaskia and Little Wabash, the Sangamon and the Vermilion, the
Iroquois and the Vermilion of the Illinois, crossing the latter stream
between the mouths of the Fox and DuPage, and travel through to the
state of Wisconsin, a distance of nearly three hundred miles, without
encountering five miles of timber during the whole journey."

All that portion of Indiana lying north and west of the Wabash, is
essentially a part of the Grand Prairie. "Of the twenty-seven counties
in Indiana, lying wholly or partially west and north of the Wabash,
twelve are prairie, seven are mixed prairies, barrens and timber, the
barrens and prairie predominating. In five, the barrens, with the
prairies, are nearly equal to the timber, while only three of the
counties can be characterized as heavily timbered. And wherever timber
does occur in these twenty-seven counties, it is found in localities
favorable to its protection against the ravages of fire, by the
proximity of intervening lakes, marshes or watercourses." On the Indiana
side, the most pronounced of the tracts of prairie occur in western
Warren, Benton, southern and central Newton, southern Jasper, and
western White and Tippecanoe. Benton was origin