One line from this odd little station, right in the middle of the Iowa prairies, which slope away right out of sight in every direction. It is the highest point between Fort Dodge and Sioux City. Fifteen months ago there were not three settlers’ cabins on the whole 140 miles; now they are dotted along every mile or so, sometimes turf huts, sometimes wooden, with generally a group of barefooted, healthy children tumbling about the doors. We are sitting in the little wooden post-office here, on the walls of which hang maps of the splendid town which is to be run up in the next three or four years, and notices of a meeting of the citizens of Storm Lake to hear the addresses of Captain Jackson Orr, the Republican candidate for Congress of the district, and of Governor G———, who comes to support him. The whole place at present consists of some ten or twelve wooden huts, with two more ambitious buildings running up, one an hotel and the other a big store. The settlers are a fine rough set of fellows, but full of intelligence, and determined to make their place the most important city in the State. It is a most exquisite climate, with a lake four miles by two, in which there are plenty of pickerel, and as we came along in our express train we have put up lots of coveys of prairie hens, like big tame grouse, most delicious eating too. Express train, you will look at with wondering eyes. Well, or rather wÂÀl, as they pronounce it here, that is the explanation of the whole city, and accounts for all that is going to happen on this glorious prairie. A line of rail has been built right across it by some enterprising folk in New York, who want now to lease it to the Illinois Central Railway, with which it makes connections at Fort Dodge. We left Chicago yesterday morning, got to Dubuque on the Mississippi by night, travelled all through the night to Fort Dodge, and are on here now fifty-three miles farther inspecting. It is regal travelling. We have two carriages,—one a charming sleeping-car, in which I have a beautiful little state-room, another carriage for dining, etc., equally commodious, all our stores on board, so that we live splendidly, two negro boys to wait on us. O———, the present president, and the vice-president of the line, are our only fellow-passengers, each of whom is as well lodged as I am. We go along as we please, sometimes at forty, sometimes at ten miles an hour, talking to the people at each little log-house station, and enjoying the confines of civilisation in the most perfect luxury. While they are talking about the price of land round here I have just this ten minutes, and find I can fire off this note with some chance that it may get off by the New York boat of Saturday, so that I shan’t lose a post or you a letter.