Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 22.djvu/133



OREGON BOUND 1853 123

Pella, a village of 400 Dutch and Yankees, is the only town on the road where we saw gardens, fruit and ornamental trees, walks, good buildings, and such other evidences of taste and enterprise as you see in Wisconsin towns.

Lyons has about 200, De Witt 200, Tipton 400, Iowa City 1200, Pella 400, Kanesville 500 people in all less than 3000 and there are not 400 more in all the many of what the Hoosiers call "right smart villages" on this road. Instead of taverns, they have here "wagon yards" the sign of which is over the barnyard bars. The Hoosiers seldom go from home, and go in covered wagons, carrying their living with them, and merely wanting a place where they can cook and feed. Their wants are all supplied in the barnyard and that is the extent of the hotel. They have no railroads, plankroads, turn- pikes, not even bridges and their public roads are laid gen- erally where the land is poorest and most broken, and there only from two to three rods wide. The Hoosiers, many of them, understand that it will take the Yankees to make any- thing of the country, and freely expressed the hope that the railroads from Lyons and Savannah to the Bluffs will bring them in.

I believe there is more mail matter delivered in Jefferson county than at all the offices on the great road and I ques- tion, indeed, whether there is not more delivered in Water- town alone. Having seen nothing that looked like U. S. mail, I asked a postmaster how they got their letters. He said a man brought them on a horse every week from the east through Iowa City. I asked if "in his breeches pocket." He said, "he might." And that is the eastern mail to Kanesville weekly but, says the P. M. here, we have two a week from the south!

Until I reached here I have not seen a newspaper since we crossed the Mississippi ; and you may be assured that those four Chronicles you sent me to this office were right gladly received. I read one and keep the others to read on "the plains." Our people all seized upon them with the avidity of children. We have plenty of books, but we are all Yankees