It happened on the twenty-seventh day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-two, that I, PETER VON GEIST, found myself, in the natural course of events, journeying on horse-back along the northern bank of the Ohio river, in the state of Illinois. The space between me and the house where I designed to stop, and the time between then and sun-down, were somewhat disproportionate; so I pricked gallantly forward; as gallantly at least as could be expected from a tired horse, and a knight whose recreant thoughts were intensely fixed on dollars and cents, supper, and other trifling affairs. By dint however of much patience in the steed, and much impatience in the rider, we got over the ground, and approached a house that had been in sight for some distance. It was placed on the summit of a steep, conical hill; there was no smoke from its chimney, or voices to be heard, or persons to be seen, or other signs of life, in its precincts. The grass grew high and green all around the hillock, and there was no road, not even a foot-path, visible on its side. Nevertheless, I dismounted, left my horse to improve the opportunity of snatching a light repast on the abundant herbage, and forced my way up to the top of the knoll. The building was constructed in the rude fashion of the country; but the chinking had fallen out from between the logs; the chimney had partly tumbled down; tall weeds sprung up between the stones of the door-steps; the door itself was fastened with a huge padlock; the windows were nearly all beaten in, and every thing about it gave evidence that it had not been inhabited for several years. The summit of the hill was smooth and level. A few stumps grew around the edge; and the ground seemed to have been, at some former time, a garden. The situation was exceedingly fine, and the view on all sides very beautiful. The eminence commanded on one hand three or four miles of the river, and on the other an unlimited tract of prairie. At the particular moment when I first visited it, the level sun-light came glancing over the face of flood and field, tinging every thing that it touched with its own mellow hue, and casting gigantic and ill-defined shadows of the hill, the house, and myself, on the plain beyond. At the distance of a mile and a half below, stood a couple of one-story houses, the logs of which they were built newly hewed, evidently of recent construction. The inhabitants of this old building, then, must have stood where I am standing, and gazed over the vast extent of country that is spread out before me, without meeting a single habitation of man, or any thing having life, except perhaps a wolf or a buffalo. And it could not have been desire of wealth that induced a family of refinement and taste, such as the little decorations and ornaments show that this was, to select this solitude for their home; for not more than an acre of land, at the foot of the hill, had ever been invaded by the plough.