This little paradise was until recently possessed by the Peoria Indians, a small tribe, which has since receded; and tradition says there was once a considerable settlement of the French on the spot. I was informed there is an extensive old burial-place, not of Indian origin, somewhere on or near the terrace, and noticed that not a few of the names and physiognomies in this quarter were evidently French. There seems a chasm in the forest history of this region, between the relation of Charleroix, which refers to no later period than 1720, and the final cession of the French North American possessions to the English. A series of obscure and unrecorded incidents which have escaped the historian, led to results which for this reason appear unaccountable; and there is, I think, every reason to believe all those discoveries of iron and copper implements, and other evidences of mechanical skill, from which some ingenious writers have inferred that the Indians once possessed arts they have now lost, may be traced to this period, and to adventurous white men, long since forgotten. Some eight or ten miles above Peoria, just at the point where this charming lake again becomes metamorphosed into its parent river, and in the midst of a solitude which requires only the presence and labors of man to make it one of the gayest as well as most fruitful districts in the world, are the ruins, or rather remains of the modern city of Rome, founded, not built, in the palmy days of speculation wild. These remains consist of the skeleton of a single house, which puts the passing traveler in mind of the voice of one crying in the wilderness of rich, waving prairie, blooming with flowers of every hue and odor. If there is not a city here now, there certainly will be in time; and the long-sighted speculator, whoever he was, only anticipated a generation or two in the march of population. This beautiful region only wants inhabitants, which, whatever people may say, are necessary to the prosperity of cities; and I think it by no means improbable that some hundreds, or perhaps thousands of years hence—which, after all, is nothing compared to eternity—when all the past, present and future glories of the ancient mistress of the world are buried in the bottomless pit of oblivion, the founder of this legitimate successor, though not suckled by a wolf, may take rank with Romulus and Remus, and be immortalized as the parent of a new and more illustrious Rome.