For I am too sure of your genius and goodness,
and too glad that they shine steadily for all, to importune you
to make assurance sure by a private beam very often. There is
very little in this village to be said to you, and, with all my
love of your letters, I think it the kind part to defend you from
our imbecilities,--my own, and other men's. Besides, my eyes are
bad, and prone to mutiny at any hint of white paper.
And yet I owe you all my story, if story I have. I have been
something of a traveler the last year, and went down the Ohio
River to its mouth; walked nine miles into, and nine miles out
of the Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky,--walked or sailed, for we
crossed small underground streams,--and lost one day's light;
then steamed up the Mississippi, five days, to Galena. In the
Upper Mississippi, you are always in a lake with many islands.
"The Far West" is the right name for these verdant deserts. On
all the shores, interminable silent forest. If you land, there
is prairie behind prairie, forest behind forest, sites of
nations, no nations.
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