Page:John O. Meusebach - Answer to Interragatories.djvu/33

 Colony. Since 1847, I had nothing more to do with the German Emigration Company. Already, at the end of 1845, when I saw the mismanagement of the leading director in Europe, I tendered my resignation, which neither then, nor at several repetitions in 1846, was accepted. Early in 1847, at my return from the treaty grounds with the Comanches, I turned over my office to the first man whom I found willing to take it, and who had a kind of preliminary authority to accept it. I can therefore speak only from hearsay as to events which happened later. I believe that the agents of the Company have tried to get formal transfers from the emigrants for half of their land in behalf of the Company, with what success I do not know. So far as these transfers were willingly made by the emigrants, I believe that they will hold good, and be considered as equitable and binding.

As to the considerations and inducements held out to the emigrants in exchange for the transfer of half their lands, and the conditions and obligations agreed to in their contracts, the Company promised to them:

1. To make the rivers navigable.

2. To canalize them, if necessary.

3. To see that steamboat lines were established.

4. To establish and build good roads and bridges.

5. To build churches.

6. To establish saving banks.

7. To establish one or more free schools.

8. To build hospitals, infirmaries, orphan asylums and establish drug stores.

9. To furnish to each settlement a grist mill, a saw mill, and a cotton gin.

10. To advance the surveying fees on all colonists lands.

11. To deliver a house to each emigrant in the colony on his land for $24 (which could not have been made for less than $100).