But these great flats--what a paradise of snipe they are, and how golf-players might revel on them! Birds were abundant. Crows went about in bands recruiting "black marauders" in every copse; blackbirds flew over in flocks, and small things of the linnet kind rose in wisps from the sedges and osiers. And there was another bird of which I did not then know the name, that was a surprise every time it left the ground, for it sate all black and flew half scarlet. Could not these marsh levels be utilized for the Indian water-nut, the singhara? In Asia where it is cultivated it ranks almost as a local staple of food, and is delicious. A noteworthy feature of the country, by the way, is the sudden appearance of hedge-rows. No detail of landscape that I know of makes scenery at once so English. And then we find ourselves steaming along past beds of osiers, with long waterways stretching up northwards, with here and there painted duck, like the European sheldrake, floating under the shadows of the fir-trees, and then I became aware of a great green expanse of water showing through the trees, and I asked "What is that? The water must be very deep to be such a colour." "That is Lake Michigan," was the answer, "and this is Chicago we are coming to now." And very soon we found ourselves in the station of the great city by the lake, with the masts of shipping alongside the funnels of engines. But not a pig in sight! I had thought that Chicago was all pigs. And what a city it is, this central wonder of the States! As a whole, Chicago is nearly terrific. The real significance of this phoenix city is almost appalling. Its astonishing resurrection from its ashes and its tremendous energy terrify jelly-fishes like myself. Before they have got roads that are fit to be called roads, these Chicago men have piled up the new County Hall, to my mind one of the most imposing structures I have ever seen in all my wide travels. Chicago does not altogether seem to like it, for every one spoke of it as "too solid-looking," but for my part I think it almost superb. The architect's name, I believe, is Egan; but whence he got his architectural inspiration I cannot say. It reminds me in part of a wing of the Tuileries, but why it does I could not make up my mind.