Bowling Green's log cabin, half a mile north of New Salem, just under
the bluff, still stands, but long since ceased to be a dwelling-house,
and is now a tumble-down old stable. Here Lincoln was a frequent
boarder, especially during the period of his closest application to
the study of the law. Stretched out on the cellar door of his cabin,
reading a book, he met for the first time "Dick" Yates, then a
college student at Jacksonville, and destined to become the great "War
Governor" of the State. Yates had come home with William G. Greene
to spend his vacation, and Greene took him around to Bowling Green's
house to introduce him to "his friend, Abe Lincoln." Unhappily there
is nowhere in existence a picture of the original occupant of this
humble cabin. Bowling Green was one of the leading citizens of the
county. He was County Commissioner from 1826 to 1828; he was for many
years a justice of the peace; he was a prominent member of the Masonic
fraternity, and a very active and uncompromising Whig. The friendship
between him and Lincoln, beginning at a very early day, continued
until his death in 1842.--_J. McCan Davis_.]

At that time the State of Illinois--as, indeed, the whole United
States--was convinced that the future of the country depended on the
opening of canals and railroads, and the clearing out of the rivers.
In the Sangamon country the population felt that a quick way of
getting to Beardstown on the Illinois River, to which point the
steamer came from the Mississippi, was, as Lincoln puts it in his
circular, "indispensably necessary." Of course a railroad was the
dream of the settlers; but when it was considered seriously there was
always, as Lincoln says, "a heart-appalling shock accompanying the
amount of its cost, which forces us to shrink from our pleasing
anticipations." Improvement of the Sangamon River he declared the most