Litchfield enquirer., 1859-01-13
Whole No. 1754.
Editorial Correspondence of the N. Y, Tribune.
SYCAMORE. H.. Dec 90 1s5s

| have been looking through Illinois ip vari.
 ous directions for the last fortnight from Kan
 kakee on the East to Quincy on the West, and
 from its northern border to Springfield and
 Jacksonville toward the South. This letter
 will be devoted to general conclusions from
 what have seen and heard, with such facts as illustrate those conclusions F'i 1 The first impression made on the traveller over the railroads of Illinois is that of vacancy
 and solitude. For miles and miles you are | swept along over prairie as rich and beautiful | as blow ever penetrated, yet of which the primitive sod is still unbroken and which has
 never yet yielded kernel of grain to the so- | I'cltation ot civilized man. This occurs not in
 one place merely but in hundred-rot on a | single railroad only but on dozen of tiem.
 Sometimes you are fairly "out of sight of l land"-not tree, house, or even fence in sight-nothng but sky and virgin prairie,
 with the iron track slightly raised above the
 latter and fading from sight at it's junction
 with the former I asked an intelligent old settler, as We were swept over one of these long reaches of unbroken prairie the other day, what proportion of the soil of Illinois he
 supposed to have been thus far brought under cultivation, and was rather startled by his an- swer-" About one-thirtieth." My own esti- mate is oneeighth for bear in mind that the railroads run maiuly through the lowest and most level districts, while the highways, and consequently the early settlements, follow
 the ridges and higher grounds as far as possi- ble. It is pregnant fact that Illinois, with
 over One Million and Half of People, and
 with the largest export of Breadstufs of any
 State in the Union, is but about one-tenth so productive as she must ultimately become.
 TLe circumstance most likely next to arrest the travellers attention is the number, mpor- tancc, and still rapid growth of the cities and villages. After Chicago, which is supposed to have from 100000 to 10000 inhabitants, come Quincy, Spring gfeld, Peoria and Galeno, with some l5,000 each then Rockford, Al. ton, Galesburg, Bloomington, Jacksonville, Dixon, Aurora, with from 5 5,000 10 1000. Of the villages ranging from 2,500 to 5000 like Elgin, Belvidere, Freeport, Waukegan, Kan- kakee &c., there must be thirty or forty, and of tho ranging from 1000 to 2,500, at least one hundred. l estimate that half the prest mt population of Illinois live in cities and villa ges which, considering that two-thirds of her
 inhabitants have migrated hither within the last fifteen years, or are the children of those who have done so, strikes me as quite uhusu- al If this were manufacturing State, there would be nothing to marvel at but since pro- bably threefourths even of the Hats, Boots and Shoes worn in Illinois are made at tie East while not one yard in hundred of the Fabrics worn out here are made here, the fact seems quite anomalous. The current presump- ton is, that almost every family in Illinois is engaged in Agriculture. But not so is the fact. In some places, the unbroken prairie surrounds a smart thriving village so closely that it is doubtful whether enough grain is or is not grown in the vicinity to supply it's ir- habitants with bread. And the villages are still growing faster, and seem decidedly more flonrishing than the rural districts. Quincy is thriving like no city in all the Eastern States, having now over 10000 inhabitants, though the first white man who ever settled upon it's site, (John Wood, now Lieut.. Governor of the State) is still hale and hearty, bidding fair to live though many future years. He settled there thirty-fve years ago. l cCnverscd to- day with gentleman who attended Court at
 Peoria some thirty years ago, when Peoria County included Chicago (l50 miles dstaht),
 and it was difficult to collect jurors enough l from that county-@considerabl larger tban l Massachusetts-to make two panels so as to
 keep the wheels of justice in motion "and
 they couldn't doit," said my informant, "with-
 out taking good many who were utterly ull- 1 fit to serye." We do not have so good excn- ses for impanneling incompetent jurors in our day. hsA
 Galesburg, think, is now about twenty five years old at all events, its deviser ald founder still lives there in full bodily and men, tai vigor, and can hardly be more than sixty years of age. It is now the seat of two col
 leges in full operation, with another at Abine-
 don, only ten miles distant. This village (Sycamore) I first visited in 1347, when it
 consisted of fifteen or twenty welngs. maill- ly of logs with one poor tavern and no church it has now 1000 inhabitants, though
 it is four miles from the nearest railroad, Ka,i-
 kakce, in the northeast quarter of the State,
 on the Illinois Central, is less than seven years
 old, yet is about the size of Syeamore--an so
 on. l think the city and village population
 of Illinois has trebled within the last ten
 years. Jacksonville, the literary and philan- thropic capital of the that is, the seat of it's Deaf and Dumb, Blind and Insane Asylum, as we'll as of it's oldest college, is si
 miles west of Springfield, it's political capital,
 on railroad which runs through the latter
 city to the eastern boundary of the State, aid
 connects there with the Toledo and Wabasl,, | while it extends west of the Illinois river tt
 Naples, and is very soon to be finished through I via Meredosia to Quincy. The grading is l nearly complete, and the iron is being laid. l Then, twelve miles more of Railroad in Ai;-
 souri, from opposite Quincy to the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, will give a complete line of Railroad, broken only by river cross ings from Bangor in Maine to the frontier of
 Kansas, placing Decatur, Springfield, Jack
 sonyille, Quincy, &c., in the most direct ard
 expeditions route from New York and the
 East to Kansas. Nebraska, Pike's Peak, and New Mexico. Bloomington, sixty miles north Iof Springfield, has initiated a rivalry w.th <.