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Show 1836- 1837] Flagg's Far West 297 degrees, yet when we consider that this place, if it ever becomes of any importance, must become a grand thoroughfare and d6p6t on the route from St. Louis and the agricultural regions of the Missouri to the northern counties of Illinois, the design seems less chimerical than it might be. A charter, indeed, for a railroad [ 42] from Grafton, through Carrolton to Springfield, has been obtained, a company organized, and a portion of the stock subscribed;"° while another corporation is to erect a splendid hotel. The traveller over the bluffs, long before he stands upon their summit, heartily covets any species of locomotion other than the back of a quadruped. But the scenery, as he ascends, caught at glimpses through the forest, is increasingly beautiful. Upon one of the loftiest eminences to the right stand the ruins of a huge stone- heap; the tumulus, perchance, of some red- browed chieftain of other days. It was a beautiful custom of these simple- hearted sons of the wilderness to lay away the relics of their loved and honoured ones even upon the loftiest, greenest spots of the whole earth; where the freed spirit might often rise to look abroad over the glories of that pleasant forest- home where once it roved in the chase or bounded forth upon the path of war. And it is a circumstance not a little worthy of notice, that veneration for the dead is a feeling universally betrayed by uncivilized nations. The Indian widow of Florida annually despoils herself of her luxuriant tresses to wreathe the headstone beneath which reposes the bones of her husband. The Canadian mother, when her infant is torn from her bosom by the chill hand of death, and, with a heart almost breaking, she has been forced to lay him away m An Illinois legislative act approved January 16, 1836, granted to Paris Mason, Alfred Caveriy, John Wyatt, and William Craig a charter to construct a railroad from Grafton, in Greene County, to Springfield, by way of Carrollton, Point Pleasant, and MUlville, under the title of Mississippi and Springfield Railroad Company. The road was, however, not built- ED. |