braska Railway. And I was very careful at dinner - tables, bars, cafés, and railway cars, to elicit all available information with respect to the resources of the West. What I heard was, of course, vague; but on the whole it contained some comfort. It appeared certain that a great trade was carried on by land and water; that towns started up with incredible quickness in the midst of desolate prairies, or, like Chicago, on piles in a swamp; and that hardy men were taming the wilderness. So far so good. But it did not appear to me that security to life and property went in exactly the same ratio as the increase of wealth. I heard odd stories about regulators, vigilance committees, and Judge Lynch. Mob-law seemed paramount to written statutes; and the fiat of a legal court required to be backed by the good pleasure of a majority before its execution could be guaranteed. Besides, the moral standard of the community did not rank as high as perhaps a very delicate sense of honour required. Commercial tricks were spoken of as "clever," or " ingenious," which in other lands would have engaged the serious attention of the law-officers of the Crown; and the most unprincipled ruse was mentioned with laughter and indulgence, if not with approbation. All this augured badly, methought, for the prospects of the Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway. And yet I did not despair, and still less did I drop a hint of my suspicions to any casual acquaintance. It was not for me, a managing director, to denounce the project with which my name was, alas! inextricably linked, until it should be proved a bubble on the very clearest evidence. I reached Fort Madison, the most remote point to which the steam-horse could convey me, and had, at any rate, the satisfaction of knowing that I was within a few miles of Nauvoo. I hired a mule-waggon for the journey, and sitting down to dinner at the public table of the hotel, I in VOL. XCIII.—NO. DLXXI. quired what sort of a place Nauvoo might be? 66 Nauvoo, mister," said a tall gaunt man whom his friends addressed as "Major," "Nauvoo is a pretty considerable sprig of a city. It is a tall place, sir. There air good points and great developments about Nauvoo. Do you settle down there, stranger? I could sell you a lot of land awful cheap." 66 'Thank you," said I, "I have no intention of becoming a resident at Nauvoo; I merely wish to visit it." "I see," observed another guest; "you want to have a peep at the great temple the Mormons built before Joe Smith was shot at Springfield. "Tain't much you'll see, though, stranger, for the place is all to ruin. The bhoys were not soft enough to let so much cedarpine and dressed limestone stand, when houses were costing hatfulls of dollars. But Nauvoo has some fine bluffs, con-sidered aiqual to any scenery the old Rhine can show." "Air you in the hardware line? If so, we might trade, I guess ;” said a little man at my elbow. "No, no;" I returned, my journey is not of a commercial character, exactly." "Political, eh?" asked the Major: "picking up news, perhaps, for your Downing Street wiseacres, and feeling Uncle Sam's pulse to know when the old gentleman is at fever heat, eh, mister?" 66 "Not at all," said I; I have no mission of the sort; nor, indeed, do I believe the British Government to entertain any peculiar anxiety on the subject you mention." A cough and shrug of disapprobation pervaded the assembly. "It is well known, sir," said the tall Major, "that the Government of your benighted land is ever on the watch for the expression of American opinion. American opinion, sir, has great weight in your House of Commons." "I was not aware of it, I give you my word;" I answered with a smile. 2 s "Perhaps not, sir, perhaps not," replied the Major, pityingly. "Do you never read the 'Evening Planet,' sir, when you are at home?" I winced. The truth was, that I did take in the Evening Planet,' and heedfully perused therein the valuable dicta of its eloquent proprietor, a celebrated parliamentary and platform orator. And I had been accustomed to give credence to the confident assurance of this gentleman, that we were miles behind the Northern States of the American Union in all that was useful and good, and that we could not do better than copy so shining a model in all things. I had read and heard the bold statement, made in defiance of statistics, that America was floating peacefully on the tide of prosperity into the haven of universal empire-an empire won by bloodless means, of course; for what nation, unsaddled with an aristocracy, would dream of war, while Britain was sinking into decrepitude and decay! All this, and much more, had I heard and read, and I had believed that Britannia ought to sit at the feet of her flighty offspring for instruction, and to remodel her old institutions after a republican pattern. But, as not seldom happens, a nearer view of the United States did not precisely confirm the loud assertions of the Americanising party in the British press and senate, and I was gradually losing my ideal admiration for transatlantic liberty and customs. After the rapid dinner, and the more leisurely supplement of juleps and brandy-cobblers imbibed in the bar-room of the hotel, I asked a coloured waiter if my waggon and mules were forthcoming, as I was desirous of reaching Nauvoo before dark. "Iss, massa!" answered the negro, and whisked off with his napkin to inquire after the lingering equipage. The Major said he was going to Nauvoo too, and begged the favour of a lift, which I willingly conceded. The mules and waggon, with their whipcracking teamster, soon rattled up to the door; my bill was promptly paid, my baggage transferred to the vehicle; the Major and I climbed into our places, and we started. "How comes it, Major," said I, that there is no line open to NauVOO?" The Major knocked the ashes off his cigar as he replied, "Wall, I suppose it wouldn't pay. Rail to Fort Madison is all right and spry, because Uncle Sam has property there; but I guess not a dime could be drawed from Washington treasury to make a line on to Nauvoo." "And from Nauvoo, westward through Iowa, say to Nebraska," observed I, with affected carelessness; "what should you say to the prospects of a railroad in that direction?" My heart throbbed audibly as I spoke, for all my feigned indifference, and I listened with anxiety for the Major's reply. I had not long to wait. 66 That depends," said my fellowtraveller, with sagacious deliberation, "on the sort of rail you talk about. Is it a line to go no farther than Wall Street, and perhaps your London Capel Court, that you are speaking of, mister?" "Wall Street and Capel Court! Upon my life, I hardly comprehend you," returned I. "Moonshine, flummery, make-believe, sleepers, rails, stations, all of paper, that's what I mean, stranger;" rejoined the Major, somewhat impatiently. 66 "But I spoke of a bona fide concern-of a real railway, honestly made and fairly worked," answered I; "what would you say to that?" "Say!" replied the Major, with infinite contempt, " say! Let me see the gonies. Trot 'em up to me, sir. Just let me have a look at the simple ones that are at the head of the business, and I'll tell them what I think, fast enough. No, Nauvoo is a rising place, a neat location, but it can wait for a rail one while, unless every sage plant on the prairie turns to silver dollars." After this I asked the Major no more questions. We reached Nauvoo, and through the dusk I espied the shingled roofs of its houses, the bold bluffs of limestone, the rushing coffee-coloured river, and the unfinished building lots with their heaps of wreck and rubbish. We put up at the General Jackson Hotel. I had a letter of introduction to Squire Park of Nauvoo, a gentleman in the flatboat interest, who owed his title of Squire to his being in the commission of the peace. But on repairing to his house I was doomed to disappointment-the more vexatious because Mr Park had been eulogised by Judge Tips as a man who knew the West thoroughly. Squire Park was gone to Cairo on business, and was not expected back before the end of the month. On consulting the map I carried, I found that a place called Keosauque was the nearest of the few towns in Iowa to the line of railway, real or imaginary, in connection with which my name, and those of other men of respectability and substance, were flaming, in advertisements and on the broadsheets of a prospectus, throughout the British metropolis. I set off to Keosauque, mounted on an Indian pony, and accompanied by a guide in the shape of a wiry backwoodsman, in an enduring costume of leather, and who gave accommodation to my portmanteau behind his saddle. For some miles we rode in silence over the apparently boundless sea of grass, mottled with weeds and flowers, and occasionally studded with lone farmhouses and maize fields, or by herds of grazing cattle. Those half-reclaimed mustangs are not the most pleasant mount for a timid rider, nor am I, George Bulkeley of Stamford Hill, a very adventurous horseman; and before we had got far, I began to wish the brute I rode would desist from what seemed an alternation of starts and stumbles. My guide, a good-humoured wild man, observed my embarrassment, and undertook its removal. "See here, Colonel,” said hestrangers in the West are usually decorated with visionary epaulettes-"you mustn't keep the rein so slack as that, nor yet hold your hand up level with your cravat, or, scalp me, but you'll be spilt! Mustangs want a tight grip on the bit. So steady now. Stick in your knees, Colonel, and scorn to ketch hold of the pummel So. Do as you see me do; give him a touch of the spur, but mind his kickingfor mustangs can kick, they can. You'll do nicely, now." Ichabod was a skilful riding-master, by instinct, I suppose; and,thanks to his forcible instructions, I was soon on better terms with my refractory quadruped. On we rode, over the waving grass, through the rank weeds, through the belts of cottonwood timber and maples that skirted every streamlet, and past the swampy bottoms where sluggish waters wound like wounded snakes. We dined on dried venison, jerked beef, parched corn, and hominy, at a farm which did duty for an inn, and slept at another house of the same character. Next day we resumed our route; and as we rode towards Keosauque, I ventured to ask Ichabod if he had ever heard of the Great Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway. I had been hitherto averse to propounding this query; for how could I tell whether the interests of my informant might conflict with mine?-but with this rough frontiersman I felt I was safe. He, at least, was no rival speculator-no shareholder in a competing line-no steamboat proprietor, or lord of many stage-waggons. But his first answer was not satisfactory. It was comprised in the one word, "Anan!" "The Railway"—asked I again— "from Nauvoo to Nebraska : not a finished, thing, of course; but you surely must have seen or heard of the works-the bridges, the embankments, and the rest of the preparations?" Ichabod shook his head. "You're talking Greek to me, Colonel, and that air a fact." 66 "How is it possible," cried I, in an agony, that there can have been a railway begun in this country, and the settlers unaware of it? Surely you must be a stranger to this part of the State yourself!" "You're wrong there, Colonel," answered Ichabod; "I'm Illinois born, but I'm Iowa bred. In this State I was raised; and I don't believe there's a thing happened over the border sin' I could mount a horse, be it buffler or deer, loping Indian, runaway nigger, or Yankee pedlar, without my hearing on't. Stop" (and he smote his knee with a palm as hard as iron)—“I've got it. You're talking of Harvey's Folly." And I thought the young backwoodsman would have tumbled off his horse in the extravagant burst of mirth which this discovery produced. "Who-whoop!" cried he; "I've seen queer sights, but never did I think to see a stranger come out in a bee-line from the old country—no offence, Colonel!-to ax about Harvey's Folly. I'd nigh forgot that the thing existed at all. Wah! but it beats coon-catching!" With some trouble I got an explanation. It appeared from the borderer's statement that, years ago, a speculative individual of the name of Harvey had undertaken to construct a railway from Nebraska to Nauvoo, with a branch linking it to the Central Illinois line. He had obtained the usual charter and grant of land from the State, and had actually commenced operations between Keosauque and New Buda, two little towns not far from the Missouri boundary. But he had soon desisted from the Sisyphean task, ruined, disheartened, or disappointed of the aid on which he had somewhat sanguinely reckoned; and thenceforth no more had been said of the scheme or the schemer. "But the property," groaned I," the works, surely they must remain ?" "Why," said Ichabod, meditatively, "I kinder think there's rails laid down a bit-yes, for some miles I guess, and they'll be there still. The cussed Indians can't have stampedoed them, like they do the cattle. There's a tidy bridge over a creek or two Harvey built, and some sheds and scantling; and that's about all." "All," said I, think again, Ichabod. Surely there must be more plant than that, and then the rolling stock?" The frontiersman laughed. "We know more about gunstocks than rolling stocks, out here on the pararas," said he; "and I never heard of plants, onless 'twas hickory or sumach. But I've kinder catalogued the hull fixings for you, Colonel, without 'tis a pile of rusty iron, or a few waggon-loads of logs neat bits of oak timber they were, trimmed and dressed, and shaped mighty like a saddle-tree, that Harvey left on the ground.” re "The sleepers, I suppose," turned I; 66 are they there still?" "Well, Colonel, mebbe some of 'em are taking a nap there still," replied Ichabod, "but parara men often camp thereabouts, hunting, cattle-tending, or prospecting, and firewood being mortal scarce on the plains, 'twasn't to be expected the bhoys wouldn't make free with some chips to cook with. I may have had a chop at those logs with my tomahawk, when I wanted a broil, onst or twice, myself." I groaned again. The Great Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway was evidently as brittle a speculation as Alnaschar's basket of glass. I finished the ride to Keosauque in moody reverie. There was no other guest to share such rugged plenty as the wooden tavern, called by courtesy the Eagle Hotel, could afford; and as the landlord was absent, and the landlady busy in the management of her children and Irish helps, no one talked to me, and I sat sullen and dejected the whole evening. Next day, tired as I was, I set out again, under Ichabod's guidance, to visit what he persisted in naming Harvey's Folly. We reached the spot at last. A swampy level, intersected by run lets of water, and with a good deal of thorny brake, and here and there a clump of cottonwood poplars diversifying the scene, had been selected by Mr Harvey for the site of his preliminary operations. Why he had chosen that wet ground at all, when so much dry prairie lay beyond, of very tolerable smoothness, it is difficult to conjecture; but perhaps the more accurate level had tempted him. There were rails, certainly there were rails, half-hidden by the growth of hemlocks and rank grass; but on dismounting I discovered that, for lack of proper metal trams, the rails had been constructed of wood, covered with a thin slip of iron-not an unusual device in out-of-the-way parts of America, as I was afterwards told. The fastenings were very defective, the sleepers loose, and the whole concern had a crazy haphazard look. Such as they were, these precious rails were continued for about 5 miles-5 miles out of 350!—and then they terminated in a mass of ruin and confusion. There were roofless sheds, scantlings and screens blown down by hurricane gusts, heaps of rusty iron, broken tools, damaged wheelbarrows, and a shattered truck with only one wheel left. Also there were a quantity of sleepers of dressed oak, and the fragments of many more, split by the axe and charred to coal, as they lay around the blackened spots of burnt turf, where many a camp-fire had been lit by the frontiersmen. That was all the valuable property left at the disposal of the directors. The sight sickened me. "Harvey's Folly," muttered I between my teeth, "say rather Bulkeley's Folly - Bulkeley's credulity, idiocy, weakness! And not only mine, but Tom Harris's, and that of all of us. What a long-eared pack were we to be lured by the crafty piping of such a dissembling knave as that glib Colonel!" I rode away, sad and careworn. Ichabod's quaint talk was unnoticed. I had another companion that claimed my undivided attention, and that was Care, Black Care, which sat crouching behind my saddle. I was haunted by a ghastly phantom of impending bankruptcy. The London Gazette spread its illomened sheet before me, and in its fatal columns I read, in flaming characters, "George Bulkeley, of Cannon Street in the City of London, and Stamford Hill, Middlesex, to surrender at Portugal Street on Monday the 14th inst. Official Assignee, Mr Wilks!" That it should have come to this! Ruin, ruin, ruin. Ruin and disgrace to us all, the duped directors of this wretched swindle. Were we not responsible for the debts of the undertaking? Was not the paidup capital in the treacherous hands of our Yankee cashier, Dr Titus A. C. Bett, and could there be a doubt that it was lost for ever? Plainly the whole business was a fraudulent trick from the first-a net to catch gold-fish! Ah! already with my mind's eye I saw the broker's men in possession of Magnolia Villa; I saw my costly furniture, the cellar of wines I had been so proud of, carriages, pictures, everything, submitted to public competition by a smirking auctioneer. I heard the hammer fall, knocking down my Lares and Penates to the highest bidder. Going, going, gone! the accursed formula rang in my ears with baleful clearness. Magnolia Cottage to let ! My family hiding in poor lodgings in Boulogne! George Bulkeley, a moody bankrupt, slinking about the pier of that refuge for insolvency, and afraid to face the Stock Exchange! Even though the Court might declare me blameless, even though the commissioner might whitewash me into commercial purity, my conscience was less complaisant, and sternly refused me even a third-class certificate. I might have had the right to ruin myself and family, but what right had I to make desolate the hearths of many helpless and confiding people? How about those shareholders ignorant of business, |