and vegetable constituents of a soil accumulated upon a lake-bottom. We find in it, moreover, abundant fossil remains of a lacustrine character. Fresh-water shells of species still existing in Lake Michigan are found in localities many miles from the existing shore. Finally, we have found all around the chain of the great lakes abundant proofs that their waters once occupied a much higher level than at present. We have discovered the obstacle which dammed the waters to this extraordinary height. In short, we have ascertained that the prairie region of Illinois must have been a long time inundated, whether such inundation contributed to the characteristics of the prairies or not. I think it did. If I ascertain that the cause for an inundation exists; if I see the traces of an inundation all the way from Niagara River to Illinois; if the barrier which shuts out Illinois from the lake is not one third the height of the ancient lake-flood; if I find throughout the region exposed to inundation the peculiar soil deposited by fresh waters, together with traces of lacustrine animals which never wander over land, do I not discover a chain of facts which necessitates my conclusion? During the flood-tide of the lakes, Lake Michigan must have found an outlet toward the south. We find corroboration of this. The broad, and deep, and bluff-lined valley of the Illinois River was never excavated by the present inconsiderable stream. The deserted river valley discoverable at intervals farther north, indicates the former southward flow of a large volume of water. At Lemont this valley is distinct, with its bounding bluffs, and its "pot-holes" worn in the solid rock of the ancient river-bed. This was the work of the lake in its declining stages. At the earlier period, when the waters of Lake Michigan stood one or two hundred feet above their present level, how much of the region south and west of Chicago must have been submerged?

The ancient lake must have reached its arms into Iowa, Northern Indiana, and Southwestern Michigan.

While the expanse of lacustrine waters was brooding over the region destined to become a prairie, they busied themselves in strewing over the tombs of pre-glacial germs a bed of mud which should forever prevent a resurrection. Lake sediments themselves inclose no living germs. You will see the seeds of grasses and the fruits of trees, washed in by the recent storm, floating upon the surface, and eventually drifting to the lee-shore. If they ever sink to the bottom, and wrap themselves in the accumulating mud, it is after they have lost their vitality. Sunken and buried, they go to decay. Let a lake be drained, and the bottom remains a naked, barren, parching, shrinking waste. No herbs, or grasses, or trees burst up through the potterylike surface. But every where, from beds of ancient glacial materials, vegetation is bursting forth and announcing itself. Lo, here I am! speaks the nodding young pine that had been slumbering just beneath the surface through the long and undisputed possession of the deciduous forest which the axe has just mown down. Not so in a lakebottom. Here are the cerements of the dead, not the wrappings of the slumbering.

When, therefore, the ancient lake relinquished dominion over Central Illinois, he left a devastated and desolate country. Around the ancient shores of the abandoned area the emerald forest had stood nodding, and blossoming, and fruiting, while the inundating lake had washed the slopes down which the oaken and beechen roots descended to sip refreshing draughts. Ever since the time when the Atlantic and Pacific last held carnival in the Mississippi Valley, these vigorous trees had stood smiling upon the face of the freshening residuum left in Illinois on the final retreat of the oceans. A resurrected forest had

risen from the tombs of the preceding epoch. And not alone around the borders of the widened lake, but upon every island knoll which raised its head above the denuding waters. This encircling forest and these isolated island clumps still stood and flourished when at length the lake receded.

No turf carpeted the abandoned lake-bottom. No oak, or beech, or pine raised its head through the covering of lake-slime which separated the slumbering-place of vegetable germs from the animating influence of sun and air. By degrees, however, the floods washed down the seeds of grasses and herbs upon the desert area, and humbler forms of vegetation crept from the borders toward the centre. At length the entire area smiled with vernal flowers, and browned in the frosty blasts of winter. The bulky acorn, and walnut, and hickory-nut traveled with less facility, and the forest more sluggishly encroached upon the lake's abandoned domain. In this stage of the history the Indian was here. For aught I know, he was here while yet the prairies were a lake-bottom. His canoe may have been paddled over the future spires of Bloomington and Springfield, and the muscalonge may have been pursued through the future streets of Chicago; but, at least, the Indian was present in the interval of time by which the herb distanced the tree in their race for possession of the new soil. In this interval he plied the firebrand in the brown sedges of autumn, and made for himself an Indian-summer sky, while he cleared his favorite hunting-ground of the rank growths which impeded both eye and foot. While the Indian was engaged in these pursuits, and while yet the forest had not had time to extend itself over the prairie, the white man came up the lake from Mackinac, crossed over the prairies to the Mississippi, saw the Indian engaged in his burnings, and hastily concluded that this was the means by which

the trees had been swept off-ignorant of the history that had passed, and which was even then, as now, in very progress, and which was even then, as now, actually crowding the forest upon the prairie, and bringing about the day when, perhaps a thousand years hence, the prairies, like the forests of Lancashire, will live only in history.

CHAPTER XXV.

SOMETHING ABOUT OIL.

THE very word has wrought like magic. The smell of the article has turned men crazy. It has opened purse-strings which the cries of the orphaned, the tears of the widowed, and the pleas of religion could never loose. It has made men lavish in a hopeless enterprise who had no pence to spare under the counsels of wisdom. It has caused men to scorn the admonitions of the instructed and professional, to trust their own stark ignorance in the stake of a fortune. It has led the self-reliant and pursey capitalist to heap contempt on the wisdom and experience of science, to follow the lead of his own olfactory. All this because oil" is a synonym for gold.

66

Auri sacra fames! quid non mortalia pectora cogis?

Since the historical excitement of the "South-Sea Bubble," the business world has hardly been invaded by such a fever of speculation as raged over the Northern United States from 1862 to 1866. When it was positively settled that oil could be drawn from the solid rocks-oil suited to the uses of illumination, gas-making, fuel, and lubrication— men who have the keenest eye to utility, and who counterpoise all values with bullion, were constrained to admit that Providence had done more for our race than they had ever dreamed. No doubt many men made suitable recognition of the services of the Almighty in facilitating the ends of money-getting. The picture which memory treasures, however, is that of a herd of porcine quadrupeds jos