Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/210

 by it, he likes better than farming; "and besides," says he, "we had at first so many wild beasts about us, that we could not keep pigs, poultry, sheep, nor any thing else." Called on another quarter-section man, sick, and who therefore has done but little himself; two young boys have cleared five or six acres. The tavern keeps them all; a tavern, with one miserable hole of a room.

I stopped again at a two quarter-section farmer's, who said; "I am an old man, and have only my boys; we cannot hire, but we do all the labour, and get 60 bushels of corn per acre, but {210} no wheat of any consequence yet. We can always sell all the produce we raise from the land to travellers like you, and others, new comers." "But," said I, "what will you do when your said new comers and neighbours have as much to spare and sell as you have?" "O, then we'll give it to cattle and pigs, which can travel to a market somewhere. I see no fear of a market in some shape or other." This was a shrewd old fellow.

I met and passed five or six huge waggons laden with goods, chattels, and children, and families, attended by horsemen, cattle, and footmen, and many negroes, all returning from the Missouri territory to their native home and state of Kentucky, which they had rashly left only two months since. Having sold out there in good times at 30 dollars an acre, and being now scared out of Missouri by sickness, they are returning to repurchase their former homes in Kentucky at 15 dollars an acre; or perhaps, says my informant, they may return to the Missouri, when the fear of sickness subsides. They have left their father behind, as a pledge of returning; but still 100 acres in Old Kentuck are worth 300 in Missouri, except in river-bottoms, that is, valleys of rivers.