Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/157

 {146} 8th.—I moved on to the seat and pleasant farmhouse of Johnson, Esq. a young gentleman married to a delicate young lady of taste and amiable manners. Mr. Johnson lives in capital style in a house of stone, the labour only of which cost 3,000 dollars, on a large estate near the Sugar-loaf mountain. It was left him by his father, and contains mines of iron and a foundry, very profitable. "I travelled," said he, "through the western country by Kentucky, Ohio, and Tenessee, seven years since, but saw nothing to induce me to leave the eastern states. It is there impossible to turn produce into cash when wanted: no market but distant Orleans. Produce is surrendered to enterprizing men, as they are called, on the rivers, but who frequently prove to be thieves; for if the boat is stove in, or markets are bad or dull, there are no returns; you hear no more of either produce or the boat-men. Companies and steam-boats' folks are safer to entrust it with. To go yourself to market is impossible, for while selling one crop, you would lose the time for raising another. This impediment to the success of capitalists in the west, is likely long to continue, or to remove only slowly. The west is only fit at present for a father who has many sons whom he wishes to settle on estates of their own, and who will be able to live there, but not in eastern comfort and respectability. I know many men of capital tempted to sell out in the east and {147} purchase largely and settle down in the west, but who continued there only a short time, being right glad to sell out with loss and repurchase their old eastern estates, or others at a considerable advance."

Mr. Johnson thinks these are good arguments in favour of the east, with which he is satisfied, and that satisfaction he gained by seeing the west. Mr. Johnson, now only 32,