What a shock will such a spectacle be to their feelings! He went, during the summer, five miles for water, though a well might have been dug on his farm. He grumbles about having given 50l. per cent. profit to Birkbeck for his land, for by this policy the latter has injured the settlement and himself; and as he does not farm, as was expected, he must lose his capital as well as Mr. Flower. He says prairie lands cost as much getting into cultivation as the woodland. People coming here without fortune, must have industry and work, if they would live. He does not, however, regret emigrating, but people should be taught the truth, and come with no inflated notions. Birkbeck has deceived himself and the public. Cobbett's rubs against him are good, but some are false.[91]
I rested this night at the one-room log-cabin of Mr. Woods and family, a real Nottinghamshire farmer, on 400 acres of good land.[92] Here we found an excellent cleanly supper, good whiskey, segars, and a friendly welcome. The room contained four beds, for nine of us, standing on a {289} dirt floor, while the chimney poured nearly all its smoke upon us. With a scolding wife, instead of his pretty, cleanly English niece, things had been complete. But Mr. Woods lost his wife on the Ohio river, where many poor English, this summer, have either died or been drowned. He has brought with him four bushels of English hawthorn, for green fencing; without green fencing, woe be to the prairies! Mr. Woods seems a plain, judicious, industrious man, sensible of the wisdom of his choice. The Woods are men either for the prairie or the wood country. Not far from Mr. Woods lives a
