A FEW ITEMS FOR SETTLERS. 481 



tainable. Then come lands which have been improved more or less, and 

 which may be bought for $1.50, $3, $5 and upwards per acre. There are 

 thousands of acres of such scattered throughout the counties named. As 

 I have no cheap lands in Missouri for sale, I shall speak generally of the 

 country on this, the sunny side of the Ozark mountains, and refer the 

 reader who wishes detailed knowledge of lands in this or that county, to 

 know how to reach them, how to procure them, together with kindred 

 information, to the passenger department of the Memphis route at Kan- 

 sas City, Mo. 



Let me first ask the stranger who visits this section to get off his 

 train every ten or fifteen miles and spend a day or several days in look- 

 ing at the country on both sides of his line of travel. In this way, and in 

 this way alone, he will learn that southern Missouri is not a great moun- 

 tain fastness ; that it is not a stone quarry ; that it is not an impenetra- 

 ble forest ; that its red clay soil is not worthless by a large majority ; 

 that its numberless streams of clear, running water are not without their 

 complement of fishes, and that among her citizens there are many not 

 wanting in thrift, enterprise, intelligence, general information, morals 

 and the observance and enforcement of the laws. The strangers who 

 thus investigate this wonderful country will not have spent their pros- 

 pecting money in vain, and, were I disposed to gamble, I would ofTer 

 odds of two dollars to one dollar that, after such investigation, the ma- 

 jority of them would at once become the owners of cheap homes in and, 

 ere long, citizens of grand old Missouri. 



This country banks — I mean this literally — a great deal on its cli- 

 mate. The long autumn has just cleverly begun. The crops can be pro- 

 perly harvested. Much work will be done in the fields for next year's 

 planting. Stock will thrive in the woods and pastures until Christmas. 

 Then six weeks of cold weather will follow. In that period the maximum 

 snowfall has seldom exceeded three inches and the thermometer has seldom 

 indicated the zero mark. Blizzards, so common in the same latitude in 

 Kansas, are unknown. Next comes our early spring-time, and wkile our 

 stock is fattening on the early grasses, the farmers on the cheap lands 

 of the Sunflower State are still feeding theirs, or seeing them starve to 

 death for want of grain or hay. The heat of our summers is not so op- 

 pre.ssive as it is in even higher latitudes, and the hot winds which crisp 

 and blight all vegetable growth in western Kansas, never molest us here. 

 Our annual rainfall is ample and generally seems to have a way of falling 

 when it will do the most good. The poor farmer, Kansas bent, should 

 note these facts well. 

 II. R.— 31. 



