Part 18 (1/2)
The soil of this bottom is an argillaceous or a silicious loam, according as clay or sand happens to predominate in its formation.
On the margin of the river, and of some of its lakes, is a strip of heavy timber, with a thick undergrowth, which extends from half a mile to two miles in width; but from thence to the bluffs, it is princ.i.p.ally prairie. It is interspersed with sloughs, lakes, and ponds, the most of which become dry in autumn.
The soil of the American bottom is inexhaustibly rich. About the French towns it has been cultivated, and produced corn in succession for more than a century, without exhausting its fertilizing powers. The only objection that can be offered to this tract is its unhealthy character.
This, however, has diminished considerably within eight or ten years.
The geological feature noticed in the last article--that all our bottoms are higher on the margin of the stream, than towards the bluffs, explains the cause why so much standing water is on the bottom land, which, during the summer, stagnates and throws off noxious effluvia.
These lakes are usually full of vegetable matter undergoing decomposition, and which produces large quant.i.ties of miasm. Some of the lakes are clear and of a sandy bottom, but the most are of a different character. The French settled near a lake or a river, apparently in the most unhealthy places, and yet their const.i.tutions are little affected, and they usually enjoy good health, though dwarfish and shrivelled in their form and features.
”The villages of Kaskaskia, Prairie du Rocher, and Cahokia, were built up by their industry in places where Americans would have perished.
Cultivation has, no doubt, rendered this tract more salubrious than formerly; and an increase of it, together with the construction of drains and ca.n.a.ls, will make it one of the most eligible in the States.
The old inhabitants advise the emigrants not to plant corn in the immediate vicinity of their dwellings, as its rich and ma.s.sive foliage prevents the sun from dispelling the deleterious vapors.”[11]
These lakes and ponds could be drained at a small expense, and the soil would be susceptible of cultivation. The early settlements of the Americans were either on this bottom, or the contiguous bluffs.
Besides the American bottom, there are others that resemble it in its general character, but not in extent. In Union county, there is an extensive bottom on the borders of the Mississippi. Above the mouth of the Illinois, and along the borders of the counties of Calhoun, Pike, and Adams, there are a series of bottoms, with much good and elevated land; but the inundated grounds around, present objections to a dense population at present.
The bottoms of Illinois, where not inundated, are equal in fertility, and the soil is less adhesive than most parts of the American bottom.
This is likewise the character of the bottoms in the northern parts of the State.
The bottoms of the Kaskaskia are generally covered with a heavy growth of timber, and in many places inundated when the river is at its highest floods.
The extensive prairies adjoining, will create a demand for all this timber. The bottom lands on the Wabash are of various qualities. Near the mouth, much of it is inundated. Higher up it overflows in high freshets.
These bottoms, especially the American are the best regions in the United States for raising stock, particularly horses, cattle, and swine.
Seventy-five bushels of corn to the acre is an ordinary crop. The roots and worms of the soil, the acorns and other fruits from the trees, and the fish of the lakes, accelerate the growth of swine. Horses and cattle find exhaustless supplies of gra.s.s in the prairies; and pea vines, buffalo gra.s.s, wild oats, and other herbage in the timber, for summer range; and often throughout most of the winter. In all the rush bottoms, they fatten during the severe weather on rushes. The bottom soil is not so well adapted to the production of small grain, as of maize or Indian corn, on account of its rank growth, and being more subject to blast, or fall down before harvest, than on the uplands.
3. _Prairies._ Much the largest proportion is undulating, dry, and extremely fertile. Other portions are level, and the soil in some cases proves to be wet;--the water, not running off freely, is left to be absorbed by the soil, or evaporated by the sun. Crawfish throw up their hillocks in this soil, and the farmer who cultivates it, will find his labors impeded by the water.
In the southern part, that is, south of the National road leading from Terre Haute to the Mississippi, the prairies are comparatively small, varying in size from those of several miles in width, to those which contain only a few acres. As we go northward, they widen and extend on the more elevated ground between the water courses to a vast distance, and are frequently from six to twelve miles in width. Their borders are by no means uniform. Long points of timber project into the prairies, and line the banks of the streams, and points of prairie project into the timber between these streams. In many instances are copses and groves of timber, from one hundred to two thousand acres, in the midst of prairies, like islands in the ocean. This is a common feature in the country between the Sangamon river and lake Michigan, and in the northern parts of the State. The lead mine region, both in this State and the Wisconsin territory, abounds with these groves.
The _origin_ of these prairies has caused much speculation. We might as well dispute about the origin of forests, upon the a.s.sumption that the natural covering of the earth was gra.s.s. Probably one half of the earth's surface, in a state of nature, was prairies or barrens. Much of it, like our western prairies, was covered with a luxuriant coat of gra.s.s and herbage. The _steppes_ of Tartary, the _pampas_ of South America, the _savannas_ of the Southern, and the _prairies_ of the Western States, designate similar tracts of country. Mesopotamia, Syria, and Judea had their ancient prairies, on which the patriarchs fed their flocks. Missionaries in Burmah, and travellers in the interior of Africa, mention the same description of country. Where the tough sward of the prairie is once formed, timber will not take root. Destroy this by the plough, or by any other method, and it is soon converted into forest land. There are large tracts of country in the older settlements, where, thirty or forty years since, the farmers mowed their hay, that are now covered with a forest of young timber of rapid growth.
The fire annually sweeps over the prairies, destroying the gra.s.s and herbage, blackening the surface, and leaving a deposit of ashes to enrich the soil.
4. _Barrens._ This term, in the western dialect, does not indicate _poor land_, but a species of surface of a mixed character, uniting forest and prairie.
The timber is generally scattering, of a rough and stunted appearance, interspersed with patches of hazle and brushwood, and where the contest between the fire and timber is kept up, each striving for the mastery.
In the early settlements of Kentucky, much of the country below and south of Green river presented a dwarfish and stunted growth of timber, scattered over the surface, or collected in clumps, with hazle and shrubbery intermixed. This appearance led the first explorers to the inference that the soil itself must necessarily be poor, to produce so scanty a growth of timber, and they gave the name of _barrens_ to the whole tract of country. Long since, it has been ascertained that this description of land is amongst the most productive soil in the State.
The term _barren_ has since received a very extensive application throughout the West. Like all other tracts of country, the barrens present a considerable diversity of soil. In general, however, the surface is more uneven or rolling than the prairies, and sooner degenerates into ravines and sink-holes. Wherever timber barely sufficient for present purposes can be found, a person need not hesitate to settle in the barrens. These tracts are almost invariably healthy; they possess a greater abundance of pure springs of water, and the soil is better adapted for all kinds of produce, and all descriptions of seasons, wet and dry, than the deeper and richer mould of the bottoms and prairies.
When the fires are stopped, these barrens produce timber, at a rate of which no northern emigrant can have any just conception. Dwarfish shrubs and small trees of oak and hickory are scattered over the surface, where for years they have contended with the fires for a precarious existence, while a ma.s.s of roots, sufficient for the support of large trees, have acc.u.mulated in the earth. As soon as they are protected from the ravages of the annual fires, the more thrifty sprouts shoot forth, and in ten years are large enough for corn cribs and stables.
As the fires on the prairies become stopped by the surrounding settlements, and the wild gra.s.s is eaten out and trodden down by the stock, they begin to a.s.sume the character of barrens; first, hazle and other shrubs, and finally, a thicket of young timber, covers the surface.
5. _Forest, or timbered Land._ In general, Illinois is abundantly supplied with timber, and were it equally distributed through the State, there would be no part in want. The apparent scarcity of timber where the prairie predominates, is not so great an obstacle to the settlement of the country as has been supposed. For many of the purposes to which timber is applied, subst.i.tutes are found. The rapidity with which the young growth pushes itself forward, without a single effort on the part of man to accelerate it, and the readiness with which the prairie becomes converted into thickets, and then into a forest of young timber, shows that, in another generation, timber will not be wanting in any part of Illinois.
The kinds of timber most abundant are oaks of various species, black and white walnut, ash of several kinds, elm, sugar maple, honey locust, hackberry, linden, hickory, cotton wood, pecan, mulberry, buckeye, sycamore, wild cherry, box elder, sa.s.safras, and persimmon. In the southern and eastern parts of the State are yellow poplar, and beech; near the Ohio are cypress, and in several counties are clumps of yellow pine and cedar. On the Calamick, near the south end of lake Michigan, is a small forest of white pine. The undergrowth are redbud, pawpaw, sumach, plum, crab apple, grape vines, dogwood, spice bush, green brier, hazle, &c.