SOLON ROBINSON, 1845 425 



as noble and enduring as that which overlooks the city 

 cf Boston. It is a monument of industry, enterprise and 

 yankee perseverance that has within a few short years 

 converted a wide tract of rich rolling prairie, although 

 not very convenient to timber or mills, into one of the 

 most flourishing communities and highly improved farms 

 that I have seen in the State. The location is undoubtedly 

 a healthy one, well water convenient and good, but stock 

 water upon the surface, I judge not so. There is more 

 grass, more fruit trees, more barns, more good houses, 

 more scholars at school, and more readers of agricultural 

 papers in this eight year old settlement, than there is in 

 some of the oldest settlements in the State, where the 

 population is double. 



I took dinner with Moses True, 1 who is a worthy fol- 

 lower of his great namesake, in regard to perseverance, 

 and whom I wish I could induce some thousands of his 

 fellow-citizens to take as a pattern of the True way to 

 acquire a comfortable independence in the cultivation of 

 the soil. He showed me a flock of 200 wedder sheep fat- 

 tening for the St. Louis market, 40 miles distant. He 

 intends fattening about this number every year, as he 

 finds it one of the most profitable of his farming opera- 

 tions. His flock consists of about 800 at this time. I 

 have also noticed several other flocks to-day, and also 

 a disease called the sore mouth, which is affecting several 

 flocks. If you will publish a cure if known, it will oblige 

 many in this part of the country. In the course of a two 

 hours drive after leaving this place, where every thing 

 looked as though created but yesterday, one might sup- 

 pose that he had indulged in an unconscious nap, and 

 awaked in "the old settlemeets," so great is the change. 

 For here we are amid old buildings, old farms and 



'Moses True arrived at the site of Bunker Hill, Illinois, on 

 Christmas Day, 1835. It was then a wild prairie. In January, 

 1836, he opened the first store in Bunker Hill; his cabin was the 

 first hotel in the town. See Walker, Charles A. (ed.), History of 

 Macoupin County, Illinois, 1:105 (S. J. Clarke Publishing Com- 

 pany, Chicago, 1911). 



