May 22. Saw last evening high dune hills along the Lake, and much open oak wood, low, but old (?), with black trunks, but light foliage. Chicago is about fourteen feet above the Lake,—sewers and main drains fall but two feet in a mile.
Rode down Michigan Avenue; men some times see the land loom across the Lake sixty miles. Chicago is built chiefly of limestone from forty miles southwest. Lake Street is the chief business one. The water is milky. The fencing on the railroad in Canada and Michigan is of narrow boards or Virginia fence,—no posts and rails. Another small fenny prairie on the Calumet River, south of Lake Michigan, with that rank, dry grass (not bulrush) in it.
May 23. From Chicago to Dunleith very level the first twenty miles; then considerably more undulating; the greatest rolling prairie without trees is just beyond Winnebago. The last forty miles in the northwest of Illinois quite hilly. The Mississippi causes backwater in the Galena River for eight miles back [from its mouth on the east bank of the Mississippi]. The water is
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