The Illinois waters a country of prairies ever fresh and green, and five new states are rising round the great lakes, whose territory of 280,000 square miles contains 180,000,000 of acres of land of excellent quality. These states, still mostly covered with wood, lie between the lakes and the Ohio, and they reach from the Ohio river to the Upper Mississippi—a country twice as large as France, and six times the size of England. The quantity of water in the north-eastern part of the central plain greatly preponderates over that of the land; the five principal lakes, Huron, Superior, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario, cover an area equal to Great Britain [and Ireland], without reckoning small lakes and rivers innumerable. [The north-west country, or Upper Mississippi valley, comprehends about ten degrees of latitude, from 39° to 49° north, and about fourteen degrees of longitude, from 87° to 101° (from 10° to 24° from the meridian of Washington), and contains about 300,000 square miles. A large part of this tract, consisting of the northern portion, is still held by the Indians. This country has some very peculiar natural features. The most remarkable of these is the numberless lakes which spangle its northern surface, the remains, no doubt, of a vast sea that once covered the whole country extending north from the Gulf of Mexico, possibly to Hudson’s Bay. The country, from the outlets of the Illinois and Missouri rivers to St. Peter’s, and from Lake Michigan to Council Bluffs, and beyond that point westerly, is a vast gently-inclined plane, ascending to the north and to the west. Between the Mississippi and the lake the elevation above the Atlantic has been found to be a little more than 500 feet: and west of the river, on the same parallel, towards the Missouri, something more than 700 feet. At St. Peter’s it is about 700 feet. Nicollet states that Council Bluffs is 1037 feet above the gulf; and the elevation of Rock Island, in the same latitude on the Mississippi, he says, is 528; and the height of Fort Pierre Chouteau, on the Missouri, on the same authority, is 1456; the lower end of Lake Pepin, in the same latitude (44° 24ʹ north), is 710 feet, and the mouth of the St. Peter’s, in about latitude 45°, is 744 feet. There are a few elevations above the general range, called mounds; but with the exception of these, the surface is marked only by ravines running down to the beds of the streams, which are usually from one to two hundred feet lower.