29 



LARGE COMMERCIAL ORCHARDS. 



And while many of the counties possess a world- wide reputa- 

 tion for wheat and flour, much of this land is now, or shortly 

 will be, planted with apple orchards. The sums for which 

 crops of apples have been sold in past years are almost beyond 

 belief. Men have frequently sold one crop for enough to pay 

 for the land and all the expenses of culture, and so confident 

 are others of reaching success that the size of their orchards 

 is limited only by their ability to buy the land and trees. 

 When we state that land in these counties may be had at from 

 ten to twenty-five dollars per acre we tell the simple truth, 

 which can be verified by a visit to them. 



ARE THERE DRAWBACKS ? 



The reader doubtless asks himself, why, if these state- 

 ments are true, that the field has not been entered upon ere 

 this? " There are certainly drawbacks of which no one can 

 learn until dear experience has exposed them." Such is not 

 the case, although, as we have said, there are always some 

 disappointments to fruit-growers as well as to others. 



It will be remembered that with the building of the Pacific 

 railways and the settling of difficulties with the Indians in the 

 then territories of Nebraska, Dakota, Colorado, etc., a great 

 effort was made by the railway companies to induce people to 

 go West and settle. The liberal "Homestead law" drew the 

 young men and those with little capital to the West, and for 

 twenty-five years after the close of the war, men, women, and 

 children hurried through the states of Indiana, Illinois, and 

 Iowa to the Eldorado beyond the Missouri, hoping to become 

 suddenly well-to-do, if not wealthy. Now people are begin- 

 ning to discover that the "boomer" states are inferior in 

 many respects to the ones that were passed so hastily and 

 blindly over, and as a result more inquiries than usual are 

 being made for lands in Illinois. For this class of inquirers 

 these pages are written. 



THE KING OF FRUIT, 



if such a term may be permitted, is the apple. Growing as it 

 does to greater or less perfection in nearly every state of the 

 3 



