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146 20 Grand Prairie Beginning, at the east, somewhere in Indiana; at the north on the shore of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan; at the south in the woods of southern Illinois; at the Wabash and the Ohio; [and] bordered at the west by the Mississippi River, there is an immense, irregular, undulating plain of alluvial country to which the early French explorers gave the name of “Grand Prairie.” They were entirely justified in so doing. For further geographical particulars, please consult the maps. These will give all outlines and some of the watercourses, but will not give any idea whatever of what so large a prairie really is. In the first place, it is a deceptive humbug, giving to the eye of the innocent observer the impression of a vast level, when the fact is that the waves of land which became solid to make the prairie are some of them very high. No such thing as might truthfully be called a “table land” actually exists. Anyhow, it was down into the heart of this plain that I was going, at the end of my remarkable residence in Chicago. I was not to go alone, for I had picked out as my companion and partner a stalwart young fellow named Ezra Kendall. He was from Chautauqua County, New York, and had been raised on a farm. He had been a drygoods clerk in Chicago. Just at this time, all real estate was a drug on the market and sales thereof, except by the sheriffs, had almost ceased. Perhaps it would be the more easy for me to obtain a partly cultivated patch of prairie, of about four hundred acres, with a provisional contract for another section. A section is a square mile and would contain 640 acres if the surveys were accurate and the earth not 147 grand prairie so round. The curve continually lets in more land and I knew one section which stretched itself out over 700 acres and more. The Chicago branch of the Illinois Central Railroad runs nearly due south, and if your eye follows it on the map about 170 miles you will see a point where it is crossed by the Toledo, Wabash and Western road, on its way to the Mississippi River. That road takes you to the capital, where Lincoln lived and the day came when I had passes on it and used them. At this railway junction were a hotel, a stationhouse, a corncrib, a real estate office, two dwellings, and a barn, the whole constituting the town of Tolono. Ten miles north was the old town of Urbana and at its right elbow was the new railway station town of West Urbana, now the thriving city of Champaign, standing in the middle of the large prairie county of that name. It was to the southern edge of this county, on the border of what was then Coles County, that my land title was to take me, with the help of the road.1 Ten miles due east from Tolono is the village of Homer, and a plumb line dropped from it to the county line would hit my farm but I did not get to it that way. Ezra Kendall and I left Chicago in the night and I had to buy a ticket for him as my pass would not carry double. We left the cars at what we had been told was the town of Pesotum, ten miles south of Tolono, and we did so in the dark which comes before the dawn. It was a lovely morning in early October, and there we sat on our trunks, on the station platform, waiting for the sun to rise. When at last it rose, we saw the town. It was about a hundred yards from the station, and appeared to be full of corn in the ear. That was the south half of Pesotum. The north half was further off and resembled a farmhouse but not in any direction did we see any fences. Far away southward, on a roll of prairie high enough to be called a hill, was a bit of forest. We were informed that it was “Lost Grove,” but could not learn where it had wandered from. There was no hotel in Pesotum, but we heard of a good-hearted young farmer at three miles or so southerly, and we left our baggage in the lockup and went for him. I will...

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