384 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



swamps, build barns and houses, and of course they have 

 no money to devote to improvement of lands, while there 

 is so much land for sale, every spare dollar is devoted to 

 a further accumulation of acres, to lie like those already 

 owned, idle, untilled and unproductive ; or if tilled, quan- 

 tity and not quality of tillage, seems to be the very height 

 of ambition among western cultivators. 



Do not think that this is an over-wrought picture. It 

 is not a week since I visited one of my friends who owns 

 fifty cows, whose good wife had to make an excuse to 

 mine that she had no cream for her coffee. And this 

 arose wholly from the prevailing western epidemic — 

 carelessness. And do not imagine that your friend Solon 

 is a singular exception to this all-pervading disease. 



Although my log cabin is rather "aristocraticly com- 

 fortable and convenient," and my well is walled with 

 brick, with a pump, &c, and I never was out of pork 

 and potatoes since my first winter here, yet I have some- 

 times looked in vain for my hogs in the woods, and 

 bought land when I had much better been improving 

 that already owned; yet I keep clear of the fever and 

 ague, and candidly believe that this country is generally 

 as healthy as all new countries usually are. The soil is 

 extremely productive, yet it must be acknowledged that 

 few of us at the end of the year are any better able from 

 the profits of farming, "to buy a new pair of boots," 

 than your friend Ketchum used to be, while pursuing the 

 same careless, skinning system of farming. It is true, 

 that manuring our soil produces but little present advan- 

 tage, but the time will come when the waste of it will be 

 seen. One reason, perhaps the greatest one, why a more 

 stable system of farming is not pursued in this country, 

 is because that not one person in a hundred feels as 

 though he was working for himself and children ; such is 

 the universal all-pervading disposition to change. There 

 is no certainty if a man makes improvements this year, 

 that he will enjoy them next; for the fashion of "selling 

 out," and making a new location, is so strong, that no 



