Wisconsin and Missouri Lead Region. 71 
too, their remoteness is a serious objection ; they are one hundred 
and forty miles by road from Cape Girardeau on the Mississippi 
river. The country between is unsettled and poor, and little 
communication is-had across it. All the supplies of weight and 
bulk must come up the Current river, so that.all kinds of store 
goods are of high price and not easily obtained. 
The: hills in the neighborhood can never pay for cultivation. 
It is only the narrow strips along the sides of the large stre. 
that are fertile ; these, however, may be made to support a con- 
siderable Sopaldtion. The climate is exceedingly unfavorable to 
enterprise; six months of the year at least being hot and oppres- 
sive, if not unhealthy ; if the people become accustomed to it, 
they also become very indolent in their habits, and a laborer there 
accomplishes in a day about half as much as in other parts of the 
United States. Still the price of labor for the most common 
hands, is up to from $12 to $25 per month and found, and a regu- 
lar miner receives from $20 to $30. There are few slaves in 
this section of the country. . In regular mining, it is considered 
preferable to pay so much for the ore raised than to give wages, 
no confidence ever being reposed in the faithfulness of agents. 
And this is another serious objection—the liability to encoun- 
ter difficuities with the hands, they being generally of unset- 
tled habits, and all possessing a most independent spirit, that 
hardly permits them to work for others at all, and causes them to 
quit fh the slightest cause, particularly when the lands around 
shall be subject to entry, and they can. for a few dollars 
eee wa a farm of their own. Selling the ore is to them, there- 
fore, the most satisfactory way of ‘Proceedings: awhilegbe amine 
itself is left to suffer from bad n nt 
explorations. The provisions. required by the people are of the 
cheapest kind—corn and bacon, coffee and sugar, being nearly 
all they need. Corn may be bought at prices varying from twen- 
ty five to fifty cents a bushel, and bacon at about eight cents a 
pound; the other articles at about double their value in a civ- 
ilized country. Horses are. suffered to take care of themselves ; 
they will fatten in the woods after the 10th of April; an abun- 
dance of wild hay might be cut if wanted. But, few of the 
settlers keep a supply of hay, fodder or oats; all, however, are 
well supplied with corn. Cattle can do very “well in the woods, 
and with little expense could be raised in great numbers ; so of 
