than he can create them. He should confine himself to the east.
Mr. Phillips, the English gentleman on whom I called yesterday, returned my call this evening. He seems a mass of contradiction, and states that this western country is the best he knows, but that it costs more to live in it than in London; that it is idle for a farmer to raise more produce than he can use himself; but that there are farmers making money as fast as they can count it, by raising large quantities of farm produce in this and the neighbouring state of Illinois; that others might do the same; that there is now a market better than in the east, and that in five or seven years the {228} market at New Orleans down the river will be good and great; yet that the parties to whom you must sell are all dd rogues. Feeding beef and pork he deems a good trade, especially when the land shall come to be clovered and sown with other grass seeds. He thinks there is little or no good beef in the wilderness, because it is raised and fed on natural wild vegetables, many of which are ill-flavoured and poisonous. Beasts often die suddenly in the fall of the year in consequence of being confined to such food. The natural white clover, in the month of June, salivates cattle and horses, which, however, still devour it greedily, and seem to thrive thereon.
Our party this evening were all agreed in this particular; that the western country is only fit for the little hard-*working farmer with a small capital. He must live, and better than he could elsewhere, on and from the productions of his own hands and lands. He can retail his produce, and be gardener and farmer both; vegetables every where being scarce and dear, because people are too idle
