Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 9).djvu/187

 particularly as to the spot chosen for purchase, and without loss of time they should return to the land-office and make entry.

The new abode being fixed, the settler may be surrounded by strangers. Polite and obliging behaviour with circumspection in every transaction, become him in this new situation.

{156} LETTER XIII

Comparative Advantages of several Parts of the United States—Temperature of the Climate at Philadelphia and at Cincinnati—Pennsylvania—Ohio—Kentucky, and the Western Part of Virginia—Indiana—Illinois—Missouri—Reflections on Slave-Keeping.

Jeffersonville, (Indiana,) October, 16, 1819.

To determine the most proper parts of America for new settlers, is a proposition interesting in its nature, but one that cannot be solved with precision. This general fact is to be kept in view, that, in the old populous settlements, land is already too dear to admit of that spontaneous increase in value so profitable in back-wood districts. The sea-board then is to be rejected by those who would go in search of the most profitable investment of their capital, and some part of the interior country is to be selected. The vast migration from the eastern States to the western, is satisfactory evidence of this state of the land market; and, besides, countenances the opinion, that the country first peopled by Europeans is not destined to such population and wealth as that rationally anticipated in the more fertile western States.

In the most inland parts of the old States, there are still abundance of good wood-lands reserved for future culti