Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 June 1870 — Letter from Mr. R. B. James. [ARTICLE]

Letter from Mr. R. B. James.

The following extracts are mndo from a private letter dated May 21st; ' “We have travelled from Kickapoo creek, near Peoria, this week, a distance of about 150 miles and are now some eight miles cast of Quincy, 111. “We did not overtake a mover, or a mover ns, until to-day, when wc crossed thoogreat thoroughfare from the north. Since that wc have overtaken several teams. We saw one man from Lake county, 111., forty miles from Clijcago, with twenty head or more of stock cattle, several head of swine, several wagons, a covered buggy and Fome tons of ‘plunder.’ “We hear daily of travel ahead. We also meet people returning.— Some with rueful faces from the land of droughts and stormy winds, where growing corn is blowcd out by the roots every other day unless a man and two boys stay and watch it over night; others wifli cheeks all in wrinkles going for the wee ones left behind them, to take them to the Paradise of Kansas whete Nature has provided prairies and timber in proper proportions; separated stone at agreeable distances in quarries; and watered every claim with soft and living spring water. There, to them, cultivated crops are lovely, natural productions are abundant, and kind and benignant heaven smiles upon a land without flies, gnats, musketoes or grasshoppers. “But what is to come of this mighty hegifa from the north—of this vast mass of intelligence, piety and energy? It is an annual army of more than 200,000 fighting men, carrying with them their valor, their property, tlieir wives and their children. A great future awaits our country! The development of this teeming wealth that has been buried for ages must revolutionize, by its oiftreaching grasp and reflex force, the institutions of the world. “We have passed through some of the riah counties of this State. Of course we have seen only a slender thread of country, but, with what we have before seen, can form a faint outline of her wealth and power. There is far more cultivated land in this State than I had expected. It looks next to impossible that the vast amount of crops now growing should ever “be harvested.” —-■-