DRAINING THE SWAMPS 

 a delightful country or will be when it is finished. 

 The State is big enough and a considerable por- 

 tion of it has a good foundation. What it wants 

 is building up. There is plenty of water and 

 sand, pucker-brush, roots and cotton trees, 

 swamps and marshes and a wonderful vegeta- 

 tion of grass and vines and wild flowers. What 

 it wants is more land, at least what a Hoosier 

 calls land. But it is coming on. Thousands of 

 acres of this Kankakee /Aarsh where the musk- 

 rat houses used to stand now stands the golden 

 grain shocks. What the change that will be 

 made in the next quarter of a century is I leave 

 to the reader to guess at, /Ar. Jones then goes 

 on to say that he did not trade for a musk-rat 

 town or a cotton-wood grove, Being discour- 

 aged because anyone could have a town who 

 would take a boat and go out in the swamp 

 with a surveyor and make a map of a musk-rat 

 pond, big house and population, The White 

 Star was making a trip up the river to Baum's 

 Bridge when she met /Ar. Jones, the Ohio land 



178 



