T A B L E_T A L K

What are your favorite travel books? Talk about your favorites in Wanderlust

R E C E N T L Y

The new Dublin
By David Moore
Cappuccinos, computers and quaffing with stars
(03/17/98)

The elf of Sligo
By C.J. Sullivan
An Irish lesson in fairies, giants, queens and Yeats
(03/16/98)

Mondo Weirdo
By "Au Chateau"
The case of the permutating toilet
(03/13/98)

Auckland unplugged
By Cameron Williamson
Life in a city without electricity
(03/12/98)

A romp in Rome
By Fiona Morgan
An American feminist is liberated by Italian men
(03/11/98)

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BY JAN MORRIS | At a loose end for a few days in the United States of America, I decided to go to a very epitome of Americanness, Springfield, Ill., which is situated in the heart of the Midwest at 39.49 degrees north, 89.39 degrees west -- more or less on a line, that is to say, with Lisbon one way and the Galapagos Islands the other.

I offer up this detail because the American prairies have always seemed to me less an actual place than a geographical notion -- a sprawled and unenticing plain, sometimes icy cold, sometimes appallingly hot, over which combine harvesters perpetually grind their way through the illimitable fields of corn, and in which very slow-speaking raconteurs swap laborious anecdotes in provincial and all too likely teetotal saloons. Springfield was just the place to go for a short immersion course in prairiedom, and having sorted out which Springfield it was I wanted to visit -- there are at least 14 Springfields in the United States -- I found myself one morning on the train called the Ann Rutledge, which stops at the Prairie Capital on its daily way from Chicago to Kansas City.

On the train? Of course. Who would not wish to take the train on such an expedition? It was the train that enabled these prairies to grow rich, and made it possible for Springfield itself, situated more or less in the middle of nowhere, to become the capital of Illinois -- still, with its 106,000 inhabitants, the political superior of Chicago up the line.

It was winter when I made my journey, and Amtrak itself would not claim that there was much to see through our windows. The prairies may look wonderful in summer, when the tall grass waves and the wildflowers blossom, but at my time of the year it all looked pretty dismal out there. The towns we passed through reminded me of Albania, so run-down seemed to be their railside factories and warehouses, and the wide prairie itself, speckled with farmhouses and windbreaks, was like some stretch of wartime ocean, in which the masts and superstructures of sunken ships protruded here and there from the swell.

The man across the aisle from me, who took his jacket off the better to cope with the mass of papers and correspondence he took from his briefcase, was also bound for Springfield, and the very look of him cheered me up. Surely he was a state senator, or at least an influential political lawyer, and was a portent of the vivid political goings-on that I was going to find in the capital, the sotto voce conferences in smoke-filled corners of the Sangamo Club, the politicos intriguing arm-in-arm as they strolled up to the State Capitol. I watched him with professional satisfaction as he resumed his jacket and his expensive overcoat, gathered up his papers and looked out of the window expectantly, I thought, for his waiting limousine.

But no, he stumbled out of the train like everyone else, and I last saw him wandering rather helplessly around the station yard looking for a taxi. I had forgotten it was a holiday season. The Illinois Legislature was not in session, the Sangamo Club proved to be anything but smoke-filled, the governor was out of town and there were remarkably few people about.

"Which hotel would you suggest," I asked a chattily homespun bystander as I waited for my own cab to appear, "the Hilton or the Renaissance?"

"Six of one, half a dozen of the other," he said, metaphorically spitting out his tobacco chaw, "and there'll be plenty of room in either."

He was right. I chose the Hilton, the only skyscraper in town, towering even over the dome of the State Capitol, which is itself, so the man told me, higher than the Capitol in Washington. It seemed to be entirely empty of guests. I found a clutch of tourist publicity material in my room on the 22nd floor, and tried to identify, in the vast melancholy expanse outside my window, some of the tourist sites it recommended. Could I see, for example, the site of the Old Tyme Tractor Show at Hillsboro, or the Two-Story Train Depot Museum at Greenup, or Taylorville where Kay the Circus Elephant is buried -- only the second elephant, as my brochure winningly told me, to die in Illinois?

But a veil of cloud and mist lay low over the prairie, and if these varied marvels were ever visible from the Hilton, I could not see them that day. On the other hand, I could make out, close beneath the lee of the skyscraper, a little cluster of clapboard houses that was identified on my map as "Mr. Lincoln's Neighborhood." I hastened there at once -- down my 22 floors on the elevator, past the municipal parking garage on Seventh Street and the First Presbyterian Church on the corner, turn left and lo! all my supercilious feelings about Springfield and its prairies evaporated.

N E X T+P A G E+| Birthplace of the Gettysburg Address?