Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/297

 summer, he gains from 100 to 200 per cent.; but he is sued and the corn goes. And in summer he buys it at one dollar per bushel, for his own eating!

Fifty cents is the usual price of carriage for 100lbs. for every 20 miles; sometimes higher, never lower. One bushel of corn weighs 50 to 56lbs., so that if it was hauled by weight, it would not pay the carriage for 20 miles.

Western labourers, some of whom are quarter-section farmers, very poor, dirty, and wretched, because idle and semi-barbarians, work about half the day and camp out all night, in all seasons and weathers. They surround a large fire, and lie on leaves under a clap-board tent, or wooden umbrella, wrapped in a blanket, with their clothes on. Their houses and families (if any) are perhaps, from 12 to 20 miles off, to whom they go when the job is done, or their shirts are rotting off their backs. They rarely shave, but clip off the beard, and their flesh is never washed; they look pale, wan, yellow, and smoke-dried. They live on the deer which they shoot. They are high-minded, not suffering their children to go to service, because it is disgraceful, but not so to live at home, in rags, idleness, and filth. The father is seldom at home, because of being sued. If he has land, he farms it not, because of bailiffs. He must then {316} work out, until judgment is had against him; when he either pays or makes arrangements, or the property, real and personal, is sold. These labourers, though complete workmen when they like, are pests to the English farmers for whom they work, generally, at meals, haunting the fire-side, where they stand in pairs with their backs towards the fire, to the exclusion of the family, at whom they gaze, expecting to be asked to dinner, breakfast, or supper. They come too, for work, and brush in at meal times with their hats on, expecting