Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/244

 per pound. No fear of surplus produce from such farmers.

The hope, it seemed, of preserving and increasing his property, was amongst Mr. Birkbeck's ruling motives for emigration. To those to whom he is known, he is very hearty and sociable. To J. Ingle he said, "There are so many thousand dollars in that drawer; they are of no use to me: go, and take what you like." He is very careless and improvident, like the rest of his literary fraternity, and unconscious of what his powerful pen and high reputation were effecting by exciting a strong feeling in favour of emigration, at a moment when the people of England were despairing; so strong, indeed, that what he did and wrote, burst in upon them like a discovery. Unconscious of all this, he left undone all which he ought in common policy to {251} have done. The weakest head could see that after purchasing land and alluring settlers, he ought to have guarded against a famine by providing for their accommodation, building a few log-houses, store-houses, and a tavern, and cultivating corn, so that the numerous callers in this inhospitable waste might have found food, and a shelter, and a person to shew the land, which he had to resell. Whereas a stable, a covered waggon, and prairie-grass, formed their only shelter and bed; and not having food sufficient for himself, there was little or none for strangers, and no person to shew the land, nor did he know himself where it lay. He idly thought that if they wished land they would find it themselves; and being in expectation of many such families from England, he thought he had no land to spare, so that the real practical farmers of both worlds who called, turned away disgusted to other and better neighbourhoods, the Kaskasky, and Missouri, and Red River, where more important settle