In no other direction could it take you to finer scenery, to a region richer in early history, or bring you among people with customs, a background, and an outlook more different from dwellers of Chicagoland. Waukegan near the Wisconsin line is farther north than Windsor, Ontario, and Cairo at the other extreme is 40 miles farther south than Richmond, Virginia. Signs of the Deep South in those southern counties are cotton growing, cypress swamps, cane brakes, magnolias, and clumps of mistletoe in the trees.
Spring comes a full month earlier there than in northern Illinois.
While we are still in the grip of winter, miles and miles of peach and apple orchards cover Egypt's hills with bloom. The Illinois Ozarks are an extension of the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. They rise abruptly from the surrounding country and stretch for 70 miles in an east-west direction across southern Illinois from Grand Tower on the Mississippi to Shawneetown on the Ohio . Another rugged belt only 5 to 10 miles wide extends northwest almost to East St. Louis. The Ozarks are very ancient mountains, much older than the Rockies.