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Show 1836- 1837! Ffogg's F* r West 127 gloomy forest, luxuriant in foliage and vast in extent. It is not surprising that all these regions should be subject to the visitations of disease, when we look upon the miserable cabin of the woodcutter, reared upon the very verge of the water, surrounded on every side by swamps, and enveloped in their damp dews and the poisonous exhalations rising from the seething decomposition of the monstrous vegetation around. The traveller wonders not at the sallow complexion, the withered features, and the fleshless, ague-racked limbs, which, as he passes, peep forth upon him from the luxuriant foliage of this region of sepulchres; his only astonishment is, that in such an atmosphere the human constitution [ 99] can maintain vitality at all. And yet, never did the poet's dream image scenery more enchanting than is sometimes unfolded upon this beautiful stream. I loved, on a bright sunny morning, to linger hours away upon the lofty deck, as our steamer . thridded the green islets of the winding waters, and gaze upon the reflection of the bhie sky flecked with cloudlets in the bluer wave beneath, and watch the startling splash of the glittering fish, as, in exhilarated joyousness, he flung himself from its tranquil bosom, and then fell back again into its cool depths. Along the shore strode the bluebacked wader; the wild buck bounded to his thicket; the graceful buzzard - vulture of the West - soared majestically over the tree- tops, while the fitful chant of the fireman at his toil echoed and re- echoed through the recesses of the forests. Upon the left, in ascending the Illinois, He the lands called the " Military Bounty Tract," reserved by Congress for distribution among the soldiers of the late war with Great Britain. 90 It is comprehended within the peninsula 99 By act of Congress approved May 6,1812, three tracts of land, not exceeding on the whole six million acres, were authorized to be surveyed and used as a bounty far the soldiers engaged in the war begun with Great Britain in that year. The |