The

sia, carbonic acid, and carburetted hy- | appears to have yet commenced. drogen gases, with nitrogen. Their traveller on some of the routes through medical properties are aperient, alterative, diuretic, and diaphoretic.

BLOOMINGTON, forty-nine miles from Indianapolis, is situated at the head of a branch of White river, and contains nearly 3,000 inhabitants. It has five churches and the Indiana university.

Indiana, meets in succession with small communities which offer striking pictures of several distinct European nations, alternating with others marked with the peculiarities of the east and the south, the west, the middle and the northern parts of our own country.

Cut-off River.-This wild scene, repThe history of New Harmony, already resented in the engraving, is on the given, presents a striking picture of one course of a stream of this singular name, community of a peculiar nature, and eswhich is a branch of the Wabash, flow-sentially different from any other within ing into that river at New Harmony. the limits of the state; but there are othThe banks are high, steep, and very ers, of different kinds, which are hardly remarkable for their picturesque char- more exclusive, and but little less afacter, being steep, and thickly grown fected by surrounding influences. Such with gigantic oaks and other trees of circumstances are unfavorable to some large size, while the surface is broken of the best interests of the state, and by rocks and ledges. The stream in must tend to retard such improvements some parts is beautifully variegated with as the public need. They may, persmall islands, which add a most pleas- haps, be best counteracted by the uniing character to the scene; while the versal diffusion of education, and prihigh, rude, and frowning banks, crowd-marily by the multiplication of good ed eď with thick, natural forests, give an public schools. Unhappily, Indiana has air of wildness and sublimity, strongly contrasting with the smooth surface of the stream; and the gentler aspect of some of the islets which seem to float on the water.

Evergreen-trees are rare in these regions; but the catalpa-tree and plane, with the maples, rise from an undergrowth of pawpaws, spinewood, and redbud, presenting a rich variety of form and color, remarkably agreeable to the eye.

not yet shown becoming zeal in this important department of public improvement; and she must expect to see some of her more sagacious neighbors leading the way in solid progress, in prosperity, wealth, and numbers, as well as in general intelligence, refinement, and power. She must, notwithstanding, continue to increase, and with rapidity. Her soil, situation, and various natural resources, will constantly attract new-comers, while Circumstances have led to some pe- they will well reward those who have culiarities in the settlements of large already adopted the land as their own. portions of Indiana. The cheapness of With the strong inducements which the the land attracted many settlers from state has to lay wide and deep the founPennsylvania and further south, as well dations of public intelligence and vir as Germans and foreigners from several tue, and the strong stimulus offered by nations in Europe. These did not gen- the examples of some of her sister states, erally meet and mingle in one mass: it may be hoped that she will hereafter they were not drawn to particular points, become not less conspicuous for her patbut usually scattered and planted at dis-ronage of learning, than for her numercances from each other. Later immigrants, therefore, naturally obeyed the laws of affinity, ard bent their steps to the neighborhoods where they found the languages or the customs in which they had been educated. Thus the process of amalgamation has not gone as far in this state as in many other newly-settled regions; and in some parts it hardly

ous and superior natural advantages. Certain it is, that whenever such a period shall arrive, Indiana will find her career attended with many facilities and improvements; and such of her citizens as may anticipate the change of public opinion, will find their active and persevering exertions rewarded by great and honorable and lasting results.

the settler, unable to pay for sheep, may better take them on these terms than do without them. Nearly every cabin is surrounded with hogs, which run at large in summer, and convert the superabundant corn into pork in the fall.

sheep, and everywhere inviting their of wool annually per head, and return presence-everywhere proffering a har- a flock equal in all respects after a term vest to the mower's scythe-seems, alike of years; and, exorbitant as is the usury, with the neighboring expanse of corn and wheat, too bounteous, too beneficent, to have waved there spontaneously, through summer after summer, since the deluge. The new and the old do not palpably wrestle here as in the forest clearings, where the narrow field of man's victory stands out in scathed and blackened contrast with the verdure and stateliness surrounding it; but all seems peaceful, genial, and bounteous. The prairies are the Capua of nature. May they not lure into indolence and sensuality the Hannibals of our continentthe hardy pioneer race, whose rapid and mighty conquests have been more truly wondrous, and far more beneficent, than those of any warrior!

The pioneer who erects his shanty in the midst of a forest, must struggle long or very efficiently before he lets in sunshine enough to give him a surplus of grain, or justify him in keeping a herd of cattle. But here be can not have too many cattle, even though his cabin is not yet built; a hundred head would enrich and could not embarrass him; while, give him but team enough, he may grow his own grain the first year, and a surplus of a thousand bushels the The best natural dispositions of prai- next. The wet lands (termed 'sloos,' rie and timber, and the most tasteful or 'sloughs'), at first unavailable, are improvements, are on the cross-roads richest of all, and need but a little drainand by-ways, quite aside from the three age to render them the most productive or four great roads leading west from Even the higher timbered lands, thinly Chicago, which are mainly travelled. covered with patriarchal oaks, overlookThese routes are injured by land specu-ing a thick undergrowth of busheslation and non-resident ownership; they though here termed "barrens"— are traverse immense breadths of treeless prairie, threaded by narrow ridges of scattered and scanty timber; while in crossing diagonally from one western road to another, especially in the valley of the Fox, the Sycamore, or the Blackberry, the country is better timbered, better improved, and every way more inviting.

As to cattle and sheep, they cost literally nothing here. From April to November they thrive and fatten on the broad, unappropriated prairies uncared for, and the settler will cut hay enough in a fortnight, within half a mile of his cabin, to carry a large herd through the winter. Good cows might be raised here for five dollars a head, and a yoke of well-broken oxen turned off at a net | cost of twenty. Herds of a hundred head are no rarity, new as are the settlements here, and they bid fair to be soon swelled to thousands. Sheep are brought in by thousands and loaned to settlers, on covenants with good security to pay one and a half to two pounds

really only less fertile than the prairies. They produce abundantly when broken up and planted.

And now let us look at the other side of the picture, and see what are the disadvantages of settlement and life on the prairies.

But

Deficiency of timber is the first to strike the eye of one familiar with rural or pioneer life at the east. The denizen of a log cabin in western New York or Ohio may at times be short of meal or of meat, but he has always good. fuel in abundance within a stone's throw of his door, fencing stuff as near, and building timber not much less so. here he finds the accessible sections embracing portions of timber and prarie, all clutched by speculators, or appropriated by earlier immigrants, and he can obtain land at government price only by pitching his tent on the broad, treeless prairie, where not even an aʊmful of wood can be picked up within a mile. Hither he must haul his building materials (pine) from Chicago, his fuel