Nine years from this time a most unfavorable report of the place was sent to the Government and from this report the picture is called up of a wretched, unclean and disreputable community. But this state of affairs was not to last long. An event of importance took place here in 1833, when the United States commissioners and chiefs of the Pottawatomie, Chippewa and Ottawa tribes met, that the former might persuade the latter to give up more of their valuable land in Illinois and Michigan and ultimately to relinquish it altogether. The exact amount stipulated for was twenty millions of acres. Then population increased, for one of the points agreed upon, along with the land, was that the Indians should move west of the Mississippi. As a result, Chicago became the centre of much speculating. Eastern capitalists were interested, invested and lost heavily, but after the depression which inevitably followed, the people went to work in earnest and brought the town out of her trouble. The one point of advantage that Chicago possessed--her possibilities as a commercial post--was put to the test, and so rapidly did she advance, that in 1842, after several remarkable advances, she sent out 600,000 bushels of wheat. She was already becoming a big cattle market, ranchmen further west driving their stock here and helping to increase the importance of the place as a centre of trade. At this time a canal was in process of construction, to connect the Illinois and Chicago rivers, thus making Chicago the centre for commerce between the Southwest and East, and giving her the opportunity to extend her business from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean. This was a splendid opening, and, with the co-operation of the railroads which soon afterwards were extended to this point, the future prosperity of the place was secured. It then only remained for Chicago to improve her appearance and sanitary condition. This she did by having the streets drained, filled up and graded. Local pride was manifesting itself in various improvements and in private and public buildings, so that by 1871 there was plenty of fuel for the great fire which laid so much of the city waste. The well-known origin of the conflagration was in a barn where "Mrs. Scully's cow" innocently turned over a lighted lantern on some dry hay. Soon the barn was in flames and the fire quickly spread to the lumber yards along the river and from thence, the dry timber and wind favoring, leaped along and licked up the homes on the North Side and the business houses on the South Side.