124 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



wants, a life time ; while this, after proving its total un- 

 fitness for this soil, will go, as many others have done, to 

 the smith's shop for old iron. ****** An unwelcome 

 shake of ague, here shakes off the balance of this article. 



Solon Robinson. 



On the Mississippi River, Nov. lith, 1848. 



Agricultural Tour South and West. 

 No. 2. 



[New York American Agriculturist, 8:51-53; Feb., 1849'] 



[November 22, 1848] 



I think the close of my last letter left us at St. Louis. 

 The importance of the trade of this western town may be 

 imagined from a view of the quay. For nearly a mile, 

 the shore is crowded with large steamboats, lying so 

 thickly that only bows reach the shore. At this season, 

 most of the New-Orleans boats go down with decks 

 crowded with fat cattle, cows, calves, sheep, hogs, fowls, 

 and horses, and with holds full of flour and grain, while 

 every space on the decks and guards, is piled up with bags 

 of corn, oats, and wheat. 



The freight of cattle from St. Louis to New Orleans is 

 $6 a head. Among the hundreds that I saw shipped for 

 beef, I did not see one that would have sold for that pur- 

 pose at one fourth the usual price, in the New- York mar- 

 ket, except, perhaps, some young steers. The sheep were 

 better; some of them really good mutton, though all of 

 them of a small size. I do not think I saw any that would 

 exceed twenty pounds to the quarter; generally not fif- 

 teen pounds. 



From St. Louis to Vicksburg, my place of debarkation, 

 there is but very little to interest the traveller. The 

 weather was gloomy, and a great portion of the shores of 

 the Mississippi River are still in a wilderness condition, 

 or in a most primitive state of cultivation. Between St. 



'Reprinted in Southern Cultivator, Augusta, Georgia, 7:59ff. 

 (April, 1849). 



