The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-18 00:00:00

T lIE WESTERN STATES.

(nom . :the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, Sept. 2.

It d oes, not take many days' residence at Chicago
to mal Le a traveller aware that he has reached the
very lie art of American life. The valley of the
MiSElif .ppi is a great bread basket, and so long as
man lit -es by bread it will have a great ascendancy
over 1-1 .e destinies, not merely of this continent, but
of the world at large. The Americans are very fond
of pc )i nting to their " glorious institutions," or else
to aLe it stirring, thrifty, mettlesome race, for the
rapi d growth of their communities, and the rise of
the it colossal power. The fact, is, however, that
thore are here material advantages sufficient to
account for any phenomenon of great and sudden
social increase. The wealth and prosperity are of
pature's own making, and the Anglo-Saxon tribe
has achieved here no greater prodigies than such
as, u oder the same circumstances, would be exhi-
bited, by any other human family.

In, the early part of the present century this cen-
tral, region of the American continent was hardly
explored, yet the rich sail of the western divisions
of the Atlantic States, and the as yet unsettled ter-
rit arias of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.held out
tb e strongest inducement to immigrant enterprise,
and the West—the far West—waa looked upon as the
common refuge, no less than the common storehouse,
of mankind. Those territories became States, new
ones were added, the great west receded further and
further still, till the whole of the great valley was,
if not actually colonised, at least meted out
and apportioned into various lots, to which the
World was freely invited to help itself. Ohio,
Tennessee, and Kentucky are now old settle-
ments—indeed, the inhabitants of the latter
State are never so happy as when they can
designate their country as " Old Kentuck."
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, have sprung up within
score of years, and count their people by millions.
The new fledglings are now lowa, Wisconsin, Mis
nessota ; then will come the turn of Kansas, Ne-
braska, Dacotah ; not to push our observations
beyond our limits, and to say nothing of the regions
lying to the west of the Rocity Mountains.
The valley of the Mississippi, with all its tribu-
taries, makes up an area of 1,210,000 square miles.
All of it is not Eden, certainly, but there is no
doubt as to the health and wealth, the vastness and
inexhaustibleness of these north- western districts.
" The soil on the river bottoms of Illinois is often
25 or 30 feet deep, and the upper prairie districts
are hardly less productive. Forty bushels of wheat
or 100 bushels of Indian corn to the acre is a com-
mon product here." In West Virginia, Kentucky,
°Ai°, or Tennessee the colonist was at least at the

trouble to clear the ground, and wage war to the
ail-encumbering forests ; but in these more western
districts man's work has been most carefully and
providentially done by nature. " These prairies,"
says a writer whose words I would not quote if I
could substitute anything more graphic and im-

pressive :
" These boundless prairies seem as if they had been cleared
by the patient labour of another racel of men, removing all
the forests, and stumps, and bramb es, and smoothing them
down as if with mighty rollers, and sowing them with grass
and flowers ; a race which then passed away, having built
no houses of their own, and made no fences, and set out no
trees, and established no landmarks, to lay the foundation of
any future claim. You ascend the Mississippi amid scenery
unsurpassed in beauty probably in the world. You see
the waters making their way along an interval of from
two to four miles in width, between bluffs of from 100
to 600 feet in height. Now the river makes its way
along the eastern range of bluffs, and now thp western
and now in the centre, and now it divides itself into nume-
rous channels, forming thousands of beautiful islands,
covered with long grass ready for the sithe of the mower.
purse blnffs, rounded with taste and skill, such as could be
imitated by no art of man, and set out with trees here and
there gracefully arranged like orchards, seem to have been
sawn with grain to the summit, and are clothed with beau-
tiful green. You look out instinctively for the house and
barn, for flocks and herds, for men and women and chil-
dren, but they are not there. A race that is gone seems to
have cultivated those fields, and then to have silently dis-
appeared, leaving them tor the first man that should come
from the older parts of our own country. or•from foreign
lands, to take possession of them. It is only by a proc,ss
of reflection that you aro convinced that it is not so. But
it is not the work of man. It is God who has done it,
when there was no man there save the wandering savage,

-alike ignorant and unconcerned as to the design of the great
processes in the land where ho roamed. God who did all
this, that he might prepare it for the abode of a civilised
and Christian people."
It is not merely as a pretty picture that I have

laid the above striking extract before the reader.

It is because it bears me out in my conviction that
American progress is mainly owing to material
ruses. The growth of Illinois, from 12,288 inhabi
tants in 1810 to 1,711,951 in 1860, showing an in-
crease of 101.03 per 100, exceeds all previous re-
sults obtained in other States, chiefly, if not alto-
gether, owing to the fact that the tide of immigra-
tion, after struggling for years against the difficul-
ties of mere forest regions, was able to expand un-
trammelled over the open prairies. These advan-
tages of Illinois ate equally extended to lowa,
-Wisconsin, and to the vaster zones of the Mine-
sota, Nebraska, and Dacotah territories. Talk about
the activity of the American branch of the Anglo-
Saxon race! why, the invading tide comes in just
now as strong from Germany and Scandinavia as
from the States themselves. It is Providence has
laid out these magnificent regions for the whole of
mankind, and it is very questionable whether De-
mocratic or any other institutions ever did or ever
will rather help than retard the spontaneous work
of colonisation.

However it maybe, the bread basket is half-full,
the Mississippi valley is settled as far at least as the
current of the main river itself, and the produce of
this western region is so portentously great es not
only to constitute the main wealth of the American
Union, but to render the prosperity of all the other
States, the whole social and political movement of
the commonwealth, in a great measure subservient
to its interests and exigencies.
The Atlantic States are to the Great West merely
in the light of fetchers and carriers. Those who
have in their hands the bread basket are entitled to

the choice of the means by which its contents shall
spread through the world. I have had occasion to
say before this that the main natural outlets for the
agricultural wealth of the West are three—the
Mississippi river at the south, the great lakes, and
the St. Lawrence in the north, and the railway and
canal lines through New York State down to the
Hudson river in the east.

Chicago can hardly be said to lie in the Mississippi

valley. y Its watershed slopes down to the lake
region, but it has a point of contact with the
southern waters by the means of the Michigan and
Illinois canal, a hydraulic work about 90 miles in
length, which from this city to La Salle or Peru
establishes a communication between Lake an
and the Illinois river, and through this latter with
the great Mississippi stream. The great object of
the Chicago people is now to convert it into a great
ship canal. All round the city from which lam now
writing no less than 17 railway lines spread out as
far as Sr. .Tosenh, Des Moines and Council Bluffs,
Galena, Dubuque, Cedar Falls, and Fort Dodge,
Prairie-du-Chien, Milwaukee, LA Crosse, and St.
Paul, into Kansas, lowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and
Minesota, into the whole north-western district.
Chicago is the great centre of western commerce,
and when its treasures are accumulated in its ware

houses and wharfs, the great question arises how
they can be best disposed of. One of the great chan-
ne!s of export lies along the line of the lake Michi-
gan and Huron, St. Clair river and lake, and hence
through the pass of Detroit into Lake Erie, out of
which the British canal Welland opens into Lake
Ontario, and from this again through the canal and
river of St. Lawrence, finds an outlet into the At-
lantic to Europe. Another line of water communica-
tion, going equally through the lakes of Michigan,
and St. Clair into Lako Erie, proceeds through
the Erie Canal from Buffalo to Albany, and hence
!down the beautiful Hudson river to New York.
There can be doubt as to which of these two routes is
better suited to the western trade. The industry and
magnificence of the British Government have made
the Canada line so convenient that vessels of 400 to
590 tons have already sailed all the way frcm Chi-
c,:go to Liverpool, and vice versa. But the jealousy
and cupidity of the New York merchants, on whose
good pleas-ure. these Western producers are, owing to
their poverty, to a great extent dependent, have had
the tendency to give their narrow and crooked lines ;