however this may be in the moral world, if any one feels disposed to doubt upon the matter in the item before us, let him disembark from a canal-boat at Pittsburgh on a rainy, misty, miserable morning; and then, unable to secure for his houseless head a shelter from the pitiless peltings, let him hurry away through the filthy streets, deluged with inky water, to a crowded Ohio steamer; and if "_circumstances_" do not force him to dislike Pittsburgh ever after, then his human nature is vastly more forbearing than my own. Change the picture. Let him enter the quiet little Illinois village at the gentle hour of sunset; let him meet warm hospitality, and look upon fair forms and bright faces, and if he fail to be pleased with that place, why, "he's not the man I took him for." The public buildings of Belleville are a handsome courthouse of brick, a wretched old jail of the same material, a public hall belonging to a library company, and a small framed Methodist house of worship. It is situated in the centre of "Turkey-hill Settlement," one of the oldest and most flourishing in the state, and has a fine timber tract and several beautiful country-seats in its vicinity. Leaving Belleville with some reluctance, and not a few "longing, lingering looks behind," my route continued westward over a broken region of alternating forest and prairie, sparsely sprinkled with trees, and yet more sparsely with inhabitants. At length, having descended a precipitous hill, the rounded summit of which, as well as the adjoining heights, commanded an immense expanse of level {241} landscape, stretching off from the base, I stood once more upon the fertile soil of the "_American Bottom_." The sharp, heavy-roofed French cottages, with low verandahs running around; the ungainly outhouses and enclosures; the curiously-fashioned vehicles and instruments of husbandry in the barnyards and before the doors; the foreign garb and dialect of the people; and, above all, the amazing fertility of the soil, over whose exhaustless depths the maize has rustled half a century, constitute the most striking characteristics of this interesting tract, in the section over which I was passing. This settlement, extending from the foot of the bluffs for several miles over the Bottom, was formed about forty years ago by a colony from Cahokia, and known by the name of "_Little French Village_;" it now comprises about twenty houses and a grogshop. In these bluffs lies an exhaustless bed of bituminous coal: vast quantities have been transported to St. Louis, and for this purpose principally is the railway to the river designed. This vein of coal is said to have been discovered by the rivulet of a spring issuing from the base of the bluffs. The stratum is about six feet in thickness, increasing in size as it penetrates the hill horizontally. Though somewhat rotten and slaty, it is in some particulars not inferior to the coal of the Alleghanies; and the vein is thought to extend from the mouth of the