Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/184

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

great benefit to all kinds of settlers in the neighbourhood, disposed to build and settle down. Mr. Flower must enrich himself and family by the increasing value of land bought; the only way now of making money any where. Land generally in the west is fallen 50 per cent., and farming there is slow money-making, but farmers can live." "And what more," said I, "can they do in the east?" He believes that raising and grazing cattle and pigs, is here a more certain game than agriculture, and, for a small family with capital, he thinks that the east is to be preferred, especially as land improved can be now purchased there at a low price, with the certainty of a convenient market. He thinks that Ohio and Kentucky do not average above 20 bushels of wheat per acre; nor even that, because the management is so bad. "There is more ignorance, sir, in the state of Ohio than in any other part of the union. Not many are able to write their {179} names, and in the thinly settled parts of Kentucky, ten dollars will procure you the life and blood of any man. Negroes, you see, are here in Ohio equal, and placed at the same table with whites. I knew a party of whites who last year in Kentucky roasted to death, before a large log fire, one of their friends, because he refused to drink. They did it thus:—Three or four of them shoved and held him up to the fire until they themselves could stand it no longer; and he died in 20 hours after. No legal inquiry took place, nor, indeed, ever takes place amongst Rowdies, as the back-woodsmen are called."

"In America," says Mr. Chichester, "gentlemen seek not to marry young ladies with fortunes: they are too high minded to have it said that they marry for money; but, if the lady's father has money, they expect that he will give her some, either during his life or at his death. Children,