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types of boats in use before the steamboat. Illustrate in your own words how the Mississippi River and the Steamboat brought the life of New Orleans and the eastern seaboard face to face with the pioneer conditions of the backwoods.

XXIV

THE OHIO VALLEY IN 1817

Morris Birkbeck was an English Radical who, in 1817, bought land for the founding of an English settlement at English Prairie, Illinois. Disgusted with the narrow and intolerant Toryism of the English government at that period, he was quick to sympathize with the democratic ideals of the West and to become enthusiastic over the rapid growth of the Western country. To Birkbeck's account is added a more detailed account of the land system, a year or two later, from another resident of English Prairie.

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June 18. At Chillicothe is the office for the several transactions regarding the disposal of the public lands, of this district, which is a large tract, bounded on the west by the river Sciota. This business is conducted with great exactness on a principle of checks, which are said to prevent the abuses formerly prevailing among the land-jobbers and surveyor. The following, if I am rightly informed, is an cutline of the measures now adopted in the sale of government lands.

The tract of country which is to be disposed of is surveyed, and laid out in sections of a mile square, containing six hundred and forty acres, and these are subdivided into quarters, and, in particular situations, half-quarters. The country is also laid out in counties of about twenty miles square and townships of six miles square in some instances, and in others eight. The townships are numbered in ranges from north to south, and the ranges are numbered from west to east; and lastly, the sections

in each township are marked numerically. All these lines are well defined in the woods by marks on the trees. This done, at a period of which public notice is given, the lands in question are put up to auction, excepting the sixteenth section in every township, which is reserved for the support of schools and the maintenance of the poor. There are also sundry reserves of entire townships as funds for the support of seminaries on a more extensive scale, and sometimes for other purposes of general interest. No government lands are sold under two dollars per acre; and I believe they are put up at this price in quarter sections, at the auction, and if there be no bidding they pass on. The best lands and most favorable situations are sometimes run up to ten or twelve dollars, and in some late instances much higher. The lots which remain unsold are from that time open to the public, at the price of two dollars per acre; one-fourth to be paid down, and the remaining three-fourths to be paid by installments in five years; at which time, if the payments are not completed, the lands revert to the state, and the prior advances are forfeited.

When a purchaser has made his election of one, or any number of vacant quarters, he repairs to the land office, pays eighty dollars, or as many times that sum as he purchases quarters, and receives a certificate, which is the basis of the complete title, which will be given him when he pays all; this he may do immediately, and receive eight per cent. interest for prompt payment. The sections thust sold are marked immediately on the general plan, which is always open at the land office to public inspection, with the letters A. P., "Advance paid." There is a receiver and a register at each land office, who are checks on each other, and are remunerated by a percentage of the receipts..

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Cincinnati, like most American towns, stands too low; it is built on the banks of the Ohio and the lower part is not out of reach of spring floods.

As if "life was not more than meat, and the body than raiment," every consideration of health and enjoyment yields to views of mercantile convenience. Shortsighted and narrow economy! by which the lives of thousands are shortened, and the comfort of all sacrificed to mistaken notions of private interest.

Cincinnati is, however, a most thriving place, and backed as it is already by a great population and a most fruitful country, bids fair to be one of the first cities of the West. We are told, and we cannot doubt the fact, that the chief of what we see is the work of four years. The hundreds of commodious, well-finished brick houses, the spacious and busy markets, the substantial public buildings, the thousands of prosperous well-dressed, industrious inhabitants; the numerous waggons and drays, the gay carriages and elegant females; the shoals of craft on the river, the busy stir prevailing everywhere; house building, boat building, paving and leveling streets; the numbers of country people, constantly coming and going; with the spacious taverns, crowded with travellers from a distance.

All this is so much more than I could comprehend, from a description of a new town just risen from the woods, that I despair of conveying an adequate idea of it to my English friends. It is enchantment, and Liberty is the fair enchantress.

July 6. We are now at the town of Madison, on our way through the State of Indiana towards Vincennes. This place is on the banks of the Ohio, about seventy-five miles from Cincinnati.

Our road has been mostly from three to six miles from the river, passing over fertile hills and alluvial bottoms.

The whole is appropriated; but although settlements. multiply daily, many large intervals remain between the clearings.

Indiana is evidently newer than the State of Ohio; and, if I mistake not, the character of the settlers is different,

and superior to that of the first settlers in Ohio, who were generally very indigent people: those who are now fixing themselves in Indiana bring with them habits of comfort, and the means of procuring the conveniences of life: I observe this in the construction of their cabins, and the neatness surrounding them, and especially in their wellstocked gardens, so frequent here, and so rare in the State of Ohio, where their earlier and longer settlement would have afforded them better opportunities of making this great provision for domestic comfort.

I have also had the pleasure of seeing many families of healthy children; and from my own continued observation, confirmed by the testimony of every competent evidence that has fallen in my way, I repeat with still more confidence that the diseases so alarming to all emigrants, and which have been fatal to so many, are not attached to the climate, but to local situation. Repetitions will be excused on this important subject. Hills on a dry soil are healthy, after some progress has been made in clearing; for deep and close woods are not salubrious either to new comers or old settlers. The neighbourhood of overflowing streams, and all wet, marshy soils, are productive of agues and bilious fevers in the autumn.

Such is the influx of strangers into this State, that the industry of the settlers is severely taxed to provide food for themselves, and a superfluity for new comers: and thus it is probable there will be a market for all the spare produce for a series of years, owing to the accession of strangers, as well as the rapid internal growth of population. This is a favourable condition of a new colony, which has not been calculated on by those who take a distinct [distant] view of the subject. This year Kentucky has sent a supply in aid of this hungry infant State.

July 7. I have good authority for contradicting a supposition that I have met with in England, respecting the inhabitants of Indiana - that they are lawless, semibar

barous vagabonds, dangerous to live among. On the contrary, the laws are respected, and are effectual; and the manners of the people are kind and gentle to each other and to strangers.

An unsettled country, lying contiguous to one that is settled, is always a place of retreat for rude and even abandoned characters, who find the regulations of society intolerable; and such, no doubt, had taken up their unfixed abode in Indiana. These people retire, with the wolves, from the regular colonists, keeping always to the outside of civilized settlements. They rely for their subsistence on their rifle, and a scanty cultivation of corn, and live in great poverty and privation, a degree only short of the savage state of Indians. . .

July 18. On any spot where a few settlers cluster together, attracted by ancient neighbourhood, or by the goodness of the soil, or vicinity to a mill, or by whatever cause, some enterprising proprietor finds in his section what he deems a good site for a town: he has it surveyed and laid out in lots, which he sells, or offers for sale by auction.

The new town then assumes the name of its founder: a storekeeper builds a little framed store, and sends for a few cases of goods; and then a tavern starts up, which becomes the residence of a doctor and a lawyer, and the boarding-house of the storekeeper, as well as the resort of the weary traveler: soon follow a blacksmith and other handicraftsmen in useful succession: a schoolmaster, who is also the minister of religion, becomes an important accession to this rising community. Thus the town proceeds, if it proceeds at all, with accumulating force, until it becomes the metropolis of the neighbourhood. Hundreds of these speculations may have failed, but hundreds prosper; and thus trade begins and thrives, as population grows around these lucky spots; imports and exports maintaining their just proportion. One year ago the neighborhood of this very town of Princeton, was clad in “buck

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