220 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



over a waste of waters, would have cast her anchor op- 

 posite the mouth of your useless and unapproachable 

 river, and after the tedious operation of discharging her 

 little cargo, she would have gone away empty. 



But the husbandman came and he looked upon an 

 almost boundless extent of soil, which was not surpassed 

 in fertility by the garden of Eden, and his arts soon drew 

 forth the riches of the earth, and lo ! in the place of the 

 lowly cabins, up springs this great and growing empo- 

 rium of the West. Husbandmen, brother farmers, let 

 us take credit to ourselves, for that which is our due. 

 Remember as you follow the plough, that if it had not 

 been for that, and your humble occupation, the waving 

 grass would have still continued to wave over all this 

 vast field — this rich soil would have still remained un- 

 productive and useless, and this now flourishing city 

 would have been among the unknown things. This is 

 the magic of agricultural improvement. What a mighty 

 blaze hath a little spark kindled. Now, if you have the 

 power to kindle such a blaze from so small a spark, what 

 can you do if you lend your united strength to fan the 

 blaze already kindled. While I am holding up the work 

 of the magician's wand before you, let me carry you 

 magicly forward for fifty years — a period that looks to 

 those youths before me, almost interminable — but to 

 yonder grey headed father, oh how short. 



Can you fancy the time when the plough instead of the 

 autumnal fires, shall have blackened all this green pas- 

 ture — when the succulent corn and golden wheat shall 

 move where now waves the coarse and useless prairie 

 grass. Can you fancy to yourselves, that if the few little 

 patches of cultivated ground within your district, can 

 have been the moving cause of raising up all these fine 

 mansions around us in the place of the Indian's wigwam, 

 what will be the effect that will be produced when the 

 whole of this vast expanse before us is brought under the 

 dominion of the plough. Can you fancy to yourselves the 

 time when all the buildings now composing this city, 



