A SUMMER JOURNEY IN THE WEST. A SUMMER JOURNEY BY MRS. STEELE. [Illustration] NEW-YORK. PUBLISHED BY JOHN S. TAYLOR, 145 Nassau Street. SUMMER JOURNEY IN THE WEST. BY MRS. STEELE, AUTHOR OF HEROINES OF SACRED HISTORY. “I write that which I have seen”--LE BAUM. NEW YORK: JOHN S. TAYLOR, AND CO. (Brick Church Chapel, 145 Nassau-St.) 1841. Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1841, by JOHN S. TAYLOR & CO. in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. PREFACE. This little book assumes to be nothing more than a note book of all that passed before the observation of the author, during a summer tour of four thousand miles, through the great lakes; the prairies of Illinois; the rivers Illinois, Mississippi, and Ohio; and over the Alleghany mountains to New York. Since she has been ‘urged by friends to print,’ the author has added to her notes and letters, some little information regarding the western States, in hopes her book may be of use to future tourists and emigrants, who will here find an account of the distances, prices, and conveyances, throughout the author’s route. Anxious to guard against errors, information acquired upon the road, has been compared with the best Gazeteers. Accuracy, in a newly settled country, is difficult, and accounts differ much; still the author trusts the traveller who may honor her by taking her book for his guide, will not be far mis-led. _New York, May, 1841._ A SUMMER JOURNEY. “I write that which I have seen.”--LE BAUM. LETTER I. JUNE 14th, 1840. _My dear E._--The variety of scenes which have passed before my eyes since I last beheld you, and the crowd of new ideas acquired thereby, have not obliterated your Shaksperian adieu from my mind: “Think on thy Proteus, when thou haply see’st Some rare note-worthy object in thy travels,”