The average estimate of a large number of intelligent farmers is that it costs about thirty-five dollars to raise a colt to the age of four years. For years past the price of a good work colt, at that age, has been one hundred and fifty dollars.
The choice of markets, enjoyed by agriculturists here, is of great advantage. It often happens that the eastern markets are depressed while the southern markets are buoyant, and vice versa.--The location upon the navigable waters of a tributary of the Mississippi, and upon the canal connecting with the Lakes, gives a valuable option to farmers.
One great bug bear of the prairies was formerly the scarcity of timber. The early settlers skirted with their farms and homesteads the borders of timber, and deemed the central parts of the prairie as valueless as an African desert. Experience has shown that these are the most valuable lands, and that no serious inconvenience is felt on account of remoteness from timber. Lumber from Michigan, transported by canal or rail road, is cheaper for fencing than rails, though the timber were at hand. Wire is also used to considerable extent. The abundance, cheapness, contiguity, and excellent quality of the bituminous coal, underlying portions of all three of these counties, obviate all necessity of wood for fuel.
Society is already established and settled, as in older communities. The present race of farmers is as intelligent and enterprising, as a class, as those of the eastern States. The tone of morals and integrity is as high as elsewhere. Schools are everywhere sustained and fostered, and are no where so remote as to render their advantages unavailable. Churches, of all the several Christian denominations, are in reasonable proximity. The price of land varies from five to fifty dollars per acre.
What a difference in the condition of the emigrant farmer now and twenty years ago! Then, having bade good bye to the home and scenes of his childhood, having sold a portion and packed a portion of his household goods, and having exchanged the last sad and faltering salutations with kindred and early and life long friends--each believing that never more on earth should they meet--with wife and children who tore themselves reluctantly from each cherished face and object, he set his face towards the setting sun. A long and tedious journey by land, through primeval forests; over gullied and precipitous roads and paths; across bog, and morass, and fen, and unbridged torrents, and dreary wastes of sand, and scarcely less desolate prairie; with wearied and jaded animals, and lagging and loitering gait; camping out by night and pacing through its long watches, by turns, as sentries; or by canal boat, steamboat, stage and wagon, at length terminated in a bleak and lonely prairie. Miles across an ocean of verdure or a charred and blackened waste, as the season was summer or late autumn, glistened the roof of a settlers cabin; or if this were hidden by the swells of prairie or the convexity of the earth, rose a small, faint column of smoke against the sky. Away on the furthest verge of vision stretched a blue and indistinct thread, like the first glimpse of coastline, as caught from the deck of a vessel at sea. This was the timber which skirted some distant water course. No other object relieved the eye, as it wandered around the circle. The loneliness of ocean--the wearisome expanse of sea and sky--had here its counterpart. The few articles of furniture and clothing, of prime necessity, were hastily unpacked; a rude and uncomfortable domicil was extemporized; a stable, covered with long grass, to shelter a horse and cow, was erected; and a hole was dug in the nearest slough, whence was obtained a limited supply of dirty and impure water. These were the comforts and accessories which welcomed the early emigrant. No running brooks, no trees, no shade, no merry children frolicking to school, no music of Church bells, no decorous and well dressed people, wending their way to the edifice, where the organ's diapason and the solemn chant, in memory, rose with their stately swell, no cheerful faces of neighbors and friends, no kind voices to congratulate in good fortune and console in bad, surrounded and cheered the saddened pilgrims. Soon, fatigue, exposure, privations, bad water, unwholesome diet, repining and discontent brought on the inevitable "ager." Doctors, calomel, quinine, yellow and jaundiced faces, emaciated forms, broken spirits and general misery followed.