We
reached Chicago on the evening of the sixth day, having been out five
days and a half, a rather longer passage than usual at a favorable
season of the year.
Chicago, June 20.
There can be no two places in the world more completely thoroughfares
than this place and Buffalo. They are the two correspondent valves that
open and shut all the time, as the life-blood rushes from east to west,
and back again from west to east.
Since it is their office thus to be the doors, and let in and out, it
would be unfair to expect from them much character of their own. To make
the best provisions for the transmission of produce is their office, and
the people who live there are such as are suited for this; active,
complaisant, inventive, business people. There are no provisions for the
student or idler; to know what the place can give, you should be at work
with the rest, the mere traveller will not find it profitable to loiter
there as I did.
Since circumstances made it necessary for me so to do, I read all the
books I could find about the new region, which now began to become real
to me. All the books about the Indians, a paltry collection, truly, yet
which furnished material for many thoughts. The most narrow-minded and
awkward recital, still bears some lineaments of the great features of
this nature, and the races of men that illustrated them.
Catlin's book is far the best. I was afterwards assured by those
acquainted with the regions he describes, that he is not to be depended
on for the accuracy of his facts, and, indeed, it is obvious, without
the aid of such assertions, that he sometimes yields to the temptation
of making out a story.
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