While Illinois was still a Territory,
these salines were rented by the United States to individuals, but
were granted to the new State (1818) in perpetuity. The trade, in
time, decreased with the decadence of river traffic; and Shawneetown
has since had but slow growth--it now being a dreary little place of
three thousand inhabitants, with unmistakable evidences of having long
since seen its best days.

The farmers upon the wide bottoms of the lower reaches now invariably
have their dwellings, corn-cribs, and tobacco-sheds set upon posts,
varying from five to ten feet high, according to the surrounding
elevation above the normal river level. At present we are, as a rule,
hemmed in by banks full thirty or forty feet in height above the
present stage. After a hard climb up the steps which are frequently
found cut into the clay, to facilitate access to the river, it is with
something akin to awe that we look upon these buildings on stilts, for
they bespeak, in times of great flood, a rise in the river of between
fifty and sixty feet.

Three miles above Saline River, I scrambled up to photograph a
farm-house of this character. In order to get the building within the
field of the camera, it was necessary to mount a cob-house of loose
rails, which did duty as a pig-pen. A young woman of eighteen or
twenty years, attired in a dazzling-red calico gown, came out on the
front balcony to see the operation; and, for a touch of life, I held
her in talk until the picture was taken. She was not at all averse to
thus posing, and chatted as familiarly as though we were old friends.
The water, my model said, came at least once a year to the main floor
of the house, some ten feet above the level of the land, and forty
feet above the normal river stage; "every few years" it rose to the
eaves of this story-and-a-half dwelling, when the family would embark
in boats, hieing off to the back-lying hills, a mile-and-a-half away.
An event of this sort seemed quite commonplace to the girl, and not
at all to be viewed as a calamity. As in other houses of the bottom
farmers of this district, there is no wall-paper, no plaster upon the
walls, and little or nothing else to be injured by water. Their few
household possessions can readily be packed into a scow, together with
the live-stock, and behold the family is ready, if need be, to float
away to the ends of the world. As a matter of fact, if they carry food
enough with them, and a rain-proof ten