The town of La Salle, unlike some of it neighbors, was conceived and brought forth in the natural way, that is, the people preceded the houses. When the honest Irish laborers came to work on the canal, they according to custom built themselves cabins, about the spot where they commenced their labors. As the land was neither cultivated nor enclosed, they employed their leisure hours in digging ditches about a piece of prairie large enough for a potato-patch, and sometimes a small patch of wheat or corn. Here, with little labor, they raised as much as supplied them with bread, or a substitute; and though the canal has for some years been discontinued for lack of means, these people continue to cultivate their little fields, which are wonderfully productive, frequently making new enclosures, and sometimes erecting frame houses. If the land belonged to the United States they were protected by the right of preemption, and if to a private citizen, it was his interest to let them alone, as there was no danger of the soil being exhausted, and he was thus saved the labor of the first ploughing, which is the most expensive of all the process of cultivation here. Thus these honest, laborious people live quite comfortably, waiting the period of recommencing the canal, and some of them perhaps able to purchase the land on which they reside, provided it is not laid out in cities, which is very probable, for you can hardly put down your foot without crushing one of these mushrooms. Ottawa, like La Salle, is a real _bona fide_ town, with houses and inhabitants. Its age is some twelve or fifteen years, and the number of its people from twelve to fifteen hundred. I found the situation so peculiarly agreeable, and the hotel so comfortable, that I determined to remain awhile, and amuse myself with making little excursions about the neighborhood, than which nothing can be more beautiful. The town stands at the junction of the Fox River with the Illinois. They are both clear, limpid streams, and though coming from far distant lands, meet and mingle together as quietly as if they had been friends from their birth. The scenery is as gentle as the rivers, and as mild and mellow as one of Claude’s pictures, that actually makes a real connoisseur yawn and stretch to look at it. In one direction the eye passes over a long narrow prairie, all one rich expanse of grass and flowers, through which the Illinois sometimes hurries rapidly over a ledge of rocks, at others meanders lazily along. On either side of the river, the prairie is bounded by those remarkable terraces which form one of the more beautiful features of this region. They rise abruptly from the green level sward, to the height, I should imagine, of one hundred and fifty feet, in some places presenting a smooth grassy bank, whose ascent is dotted and their summits crowned with trees; in others, walls of perpendicular rocks disposed in regular strata, of varied tints,