that time and none but the fleeter and stronger survived.

Only once since then has nature shown such extravagant severity in
Illinois, and that was on a day in the winter of 1836, known to
Illinoisans as "the sudden change." At noon on the 20th of December,
after a warm and rainy morning, the ground being covered with mud and
slush, the temperature fell instantly forty degrees. A man riding into
Springfield for a marriage license says a roaring and crackling wind
came upon him and the rain-drops dripping from his bridle-reins and
beard changed in a second into jingling icicles. He rode hastily into
the town and arrived in a few minutes at his destination; but his
clothes were frozen like sheet iron, and man and saddle had to be
taken into the house together to be thawed apart. Geese and chickens
were caught by the feet and wings and frozen to the wet ground. A
drove of a thousand hogs, which were being driven to St. Louis, rushed
together for warmth, and became piled in a great heap. Those inside
smothered and those outside froze, and the ghastly pyramid remained
there on the prairie for weeks: the drovers barely escaped with their
lives. Men killed their horses, disemboweled them, and crept into the
cavity of their bodies to escape the murderous wind. [Footnote:
Although the old settlers of Sangamon County are acquainted with these
facts, and we have often heard them and many others like them from the
lips of eye-witnesses, we have preferred to cite only these incidents
of the sudden change which are given in the careful and conscientious
compilation entitled "The Early Settlers of Sangamon County," by John
Carroll Power.]

The pioneer period of Illinois was ending as Thomas Lincoln and his
tall boy drove their ox-team over the Indiana line. The population of
the State had grown to 157,447. It still clung to the wooded borders