On this walk we found two of the oldest and most gnarled hemlocks that ever afforded study for a painter.  They were the only ones we saw; they seemed the veterans of a former race.

At Milwaukie, as at Chicago, are many pleasant people, drawn together from all parts of the world.  A resident here would find great piquancy in the associations,—­those he met having such dissimilar histories and topics.  And several persons I saw evidently transplanted from the most refined circles to be met in this country.  There are lures enough in the West for people of all kinds;—­the enthusiast and the cunning man; the naturalist, and the lover who needs to be rich for the sake of her he loves.

The torrent of emigration swells very strongly towards this place.  During the fine weather, the poor refugees arrive daily, in their national dresses, all travel-soiled and worn.  The night they pass in rude shantees, in a particular quarter of the town, then walk off into the country—­the mothers carrying their infants, the fathers leading the little children by the hand, seeking a home, where their hands may maintain them.

One morning we set off in their track, and travelled a day’s journey into this country,—­fair, yet not, in that part which I saw, comparable, in my eyes, to the Rock River region.  It alternates rich fields, proper for grain, with oak openings, as they are called; bold, various and beautiful were the features of the scene, but I saw not those majestic sweeps, those boundless distances, those heavenly fields; it was not the same world.

Neither did we travel in the same delightful manner.  We were now in a nice carriage, which must not go off the road, for fear of breakage, with a regular coachman, whose chief care was not to tire his horses, and who had no taste for entering fields in pursuit of wild flowers, or tempting some strange wood path in search of whatever might befall.  It was pleasant, but almost as tame as New England.

But charming indeed was the place where we stopped.  It was in the vicinity of a chain of lakes, and on the bank of the loveliest little stream, called the Bark river, which flowed in rapid amber brightness, through fields, and dells, and stately knolls, of most idylic beauty.

The little log cabin where we slept, with its flower garden in front, disturbed the scene no more than a stray lock on the fair cheek.  The hospitality of that house I may well call princely; it was the boundless hospitality of the heart, which, if it has no Aladdin’s lamp to create a palace for the guest, does him still higher service by the freedom of its bounty up to the very last drop of its powers.

Sweet were the sunsets seen in the valley of this stream, though here, and, I grieve to say, no less near the Rock River, the fiend, who has ever liberty to tempt the happy in this world, appeared in the shape of mosquitoes, and allowed us no bodily to enjoy our mental peace.