Diary of a Prairie Missionary  Part 3

27^th July.   I spent in Chicago. Here a small garrison is kept and I was invited by an officer to visit the Barracks but my opportunity was then past. Every kind of property is high here. Flour I am informed is now Twelve Dollars per Bbl., and has been in June twenty four. Mr. Carpenter informed me that their meetinghouse was not on their own ground, and that if they now owned a good lot for building a church it would at present be worth five thousand dollars. They had the offer of a middling lot for three thousand dollars. This place has in commencement one Baptist Congr. one Methodist one Episcopalian, one New School Presbyterian, and a R. Catholic. To the North of this for an hundred miles settlements are forming, both in the State of Illinois, and in the Wisconsin Territory. The country is good for tillage, and much of it will soon be "brought into market” in Green Bay. Drunkenness prevails extensively here not only among the Catholic Irish, and Dutch; some of whom, I saw fighting today; but among the poor Indians.  Several groups of them were about the Town today and nearly all drunk. They present a humiliating picture of human debasement, and wretchedness. This place must form a considerable commercial deposit, but I do not believe that it will equal the expectation of many, as the surrounding country does not admit of a very dense population, and beyond Ottawa, in LaSalle oounty, imported goods are generally brought from the Mississ. River. Pure and undefiled religion has hardly an existence in this region. In the evening I was introduced to Mr. Porter, the Home Missionary of the place, formerly from Mass. who had just returned from the East with a wife. I should suppose him to be rather a weak brother. A sound and faithful minister is much wanted in Chicago.

28^th July.    After calling on a few friends, I left Chicago, and the dwelling of the hospitable Carpenters. My route lay around the Lake shore. At this time the steamboat Michigan had just left Chicago on her second trip thither from Buffalo. About eight or tan schooners lay at anchor, which with the swelling of the waves, and slight rolling of the surf reminded me of the shores of the Atlantic.   For six or eight miles the road lay upon the low prairie Bluff which joins closely upon the Lake, and then I had to travel upon the shore. On the one hand I had the clear and beautiful Lake, and on the other, groves, and small prairies, and sloughs. About 18 or 20 miles from Chicago I crossed the Indiana Line, and left Illinois, which state I had entered on the 30th of April. During that period, (three months wanting two days), I have rode about 1150 miles, in a part of eighteen counties. It Is a country for which Nature has done much; yet even from it, the curse is not removed. If it have no thistles, it has its thorns, and difficulties, always admonishing men to set their affections upon things above, and not on the earth beneath, for it, with its enjoyments, shall vanish away. On the South West corner of the Lake the sandhills commence, and on the South end of it we have to travel upon the Beach.