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Show 304 Early Western Travels [ Vol. 36 environed by flourishing farms, the traveller catches a view of the distant village stretching away along the northern horizon. He soon enters an extended avenue, perfectly uniform for several miles, leading on to the town. Beautiful meadows and harvest- fields on either side sweep off beyond the reach of the eye, their neat white cottages and palings peeping through the enamelled foliage. To the left, upon a swelling upland at the distance of some miles, are beheld the brick edifices of " Illinois College," relieved by a dark grove of oaks resting against the western sky. 1" These large buildings, together with the numerous other public structures, imposingly situated and strongly relieved, give to the place a dignified, city- like aspect in distant [ 50] view. After a ride of more than a mile within the immediate suburbs of the town, the traveller ascends a slight elevation, and the next moment finds himself in the public square, surrounded on every side by stores and dwellings, carts and carriages, market- people, horses, and hotels. Jacksonville, III. timbered tract situated in the middle of this prairie, two miles south of Jacksonville. It was some 700 or 800 acres in extent.- ED. m Illinois College was founded in 1829 through the effort of a group of Jacksonville citizens directed by the Reverend John M. Ellis and the Yale Band- the latter composed of seven men from that college who had pledged themselves to the cause of Christian education in the home missions of the West The latter secured from the friends of the enterprise in the East a fund of $ 10,000. Late in 1839 the organisation was completed and in December, 1830, Reverend Edward Beecher, elder brother of Henry Ward Beecher, was persuaded to leave his large church in Boston and accept the presidency of this institution. In 1903 the Jacksonville Female Academy, started in 1830, was merged with the Illinois College, which had from the first been dominated by the Presbyterian Church.- ED. |