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Show 290 Early Western Travels [ Vol 26 curiosity at the apparition of a stranger in their streets at such an advanced hour of the day. The little village seemed completely cut off from all the world beside, and as totally unconscious of the proceedings of the community around as if it were a portion of another hemisphere. The place lies buried in forest except upon the south, where it looks out upon the Mamelle Prairie, and to the north is an opening in the belt of woods along the river- bank, through which, beyond the stream, rise the white cliffs in points and pinnacles like the towers and turrets of a castellated town, to the perpendicular altitude of several hundred feet. The scene was one of romantic beauty, as the moonbeams silvered the forest- tops and cliffs, flinging their broad shadows athwart the bosom of the waters, gliding in ofly rippling at their base. The site of Portage des Sioux is about seven miles above [ 54] the town of Alton, and five below the embouchure of the Illinois. Its landing is good; it contains three or four hundred inhabitants, chiefly French; can boast a few trading establishments, and, as is invariably the case in the villages of this singular people, however inconsiderable, has an ancient Catholic church rearing its gray spire above the low- roofed cottages. Attached to it, also, is a " common field" of twelve hundred arpens - something less than as many acres - stretching out into the prairie. The soil is, of course, incomparably fertile. The garden- plats around each door were dark with vegetation, overtopping the pickets of the enclosures; and away to the south into the prairie swept the broad maize-fields nodding and rustling in all the goigeous garniture of summer. My conducteur stopped, at length, at the gate of a small brick tenement, the only one in the village, whose modern air contrasted strangely enough with the venerable aspect of everything else; and having made known my necessities |