Mark W. Schwartz Soon after we came into extensive meadows: and I was assured that those meadows continue for a hundred and fifty miles. being in winter drowned lands and marshes. By the dryness of the season they were now beautiful pastures, and here presented itself one of the most delightful prospects I have ever beheld; all low grounds being meadow, and without wood, and all of the high grounds being covered with trees and appearing like islands: the whole scene seemed an elysium. Capt. Thomas Morris. 1791 I am sitting in a 60-mile-an-hour bus sailing over a highway originally laid out for horse and buggy. The ribbon of concrete has been widened and widened until the field fences threaten to topple into the road cuts. In the narrow thread of sod between the shaved banks and the toppling fences grow the relics of what once was Illinois: the prairie.