Morning dawns upon "westward-bound" travellers, who, but a few hours before, were enjoying all the loveliness of a bright spring day, and gazing with delight on meadows of grass, wheat fields of liveliest green, peach-trees bursting into bloom, and forests just putting forth their silken leaves, and trembling under the weight of soft April showers.

They now throw up the sash to welcome the return of day, and be refreshed from a night of un-rest, amid new scenes, toward which, at a rapid rate, they have been almost unconsciously moving.

They have reached the shore of the venerable "father of waters " just in time to see the train of cars pass over the Rock Island bridge - the first to span this mighty river; and with true national pride they speak of the ingenuity and perseverance of our people, and the wonderful works of art they are everywhere achieving.

In a few moments more they have passed through the thriving and beautifully located town of Davenport, on the west bank of the Mississippi, rested their feet on the soil of the eastern borders of the "far west," and are borne out upon the broad prairie by the cars of the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad. The wish of years is accomplished, and they are permitted to gaze upon scenes so often glowingly described by others. But from that first view our travellers turn with a feeling of disappointment. However, they console themselves with the thought that they have arrived at a time which is probably the most unfavorable of the year for the credit of this region, and especially with those who have come from a section of country a few weeks earlier in vegetable life.

Naught now meets the eye but a broad expanse of sky above, and bare brown earth around. It is sublime in its vastness, yet wearying to the eye, and makes one feel so little and so lonely 1 and, in the language of the poet, they are forced to exclaim, "But oh! until this lonely hour, What e'er my spirit's mood, I ne'er have felt such saddening power, Such boundless solitude".

Undulations of surface, it is true, break in some degree the monotony, but the swells of land all rise to about an equal height, so that a building upon one may be seen from another many miles away; and the sloughs, or small marshy water-courses which separate these swells or succession of low hills, although they help to vary the near view, are not discernable in the distance; and as the eye stretches far away, the landscape presented appears to be a nearly level plain.

Vegetation has not yet begun to revive from its dormant rest; and the prairie grass of the former year, brown and seared by the winter storms, covers all the scene, giving it, to the eye of the stranger, much the appearance of a succession of low sand-hills stretching in the distance into a vast barren plain.

Occasionally a river or creek is seen wending its serpentine course along the borders of the prairie, and skirted with timber, but this shows not yet the rejuvenating effects of spring. The trees, gnarled and knotted, and stunted in their growth, their bare arms waved to and fro by the fierce winds, look like giant spectres, supplicating the vernal goddess to return and give them back their covering.

Bird, beast, and man, all seem in haste to escape from the wind, which ever " In tempests o'er them raves," and to seek for themselves a shelter. But habitations for man are small, and "few and far between," except in the most thriving towns. Even "city sites" are sometimes destitute of a single building. And now, although accustomed to the comforts and luxuries of the east, the weary travellers, after several days' riding in a lumbering stage-hack, made to encounter deep mud and unbridged sloughs,* most gladly alight to rest and recruit at a shanty on the wide and sparsely settled prairie. April 20th, 1859. "Minnie".