Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/245

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  • ments are rising. He, therefore, as the rich families did

not come, has no real farmers in his settlement, and hoped J. Ingle, being one, would come and make one solitary farmer amongst them. Trusting too, to his own judgment, he has settled down on and entered indiscriminately good and bad land, much of which will never be worth any thing, being wet, marshy, spongy, on a stratum of unporous clay, over which pestilential fogs rise and hang continually. {252} A United States' surveyor would, for a few dollars, have prevented such a choice. Common policy and prudence, too, ought to have induced him to reduce his fine farming theory into practice, otherwise it seemed as if intended merely to deceive others. Even if he should, (as he now says) lose by it, or could buy produce cheaper than he could raise it, he still ought not so to buy it, but set an example of farming. For of what use is land, if it is not worth cultivating?

As a proof of his improvident conduct, and bad management, his thirteen horses were all miserably poor and unfit for use, and when any were wanted, he would say to a hunter, "Here's five dollars for you, if you find and drive up the horses;" for he had no inclosure. The man knew where they were, and soon found them and received the fee; none then were fit for use. "Oh! don't tease me about horses."

This evening, J. Ingle sat down by the fire, and cleaned the shoes of all the family, which he does every week.

Sunday, 14th.—Called on a Caledonian Yankee farmer, busy at work in his garden, who said he had no Sunday in his week, but would buy one if he could. He is a quarter-section man, without wife or child, shoes or hose.

After a meeting of 16 persons of this little settlement, in the log-house of my friend, who read a sermon and