MORRIS BIRKBECK, ESQ. 



of course to a person, who has not been brought up in the habits 

 of hard labour. And such a person it is, whom you advise and 

 press to come to the Illinois with a hundred pounds in his pocket 

 to become a farmer ! 



1023. I will pass over the expences previous to this unfortunate 

 man and his family s arriving at the Prairies, though those expences 

 will be double the amount that you state them at. But he arrives 

 with 450 dollars in his pocket. Of these he is to pay down 80 

 for his land, leaving three times that sum to be paid afterwards. 

 He has 370 left. And now what is he to do ? He arrives in 

 May. So that this family has to cross the sea in winter, and the 

 land in spring. There they are, however, and now what are they 

 to do ? Thev are to have built for 50 dollars a house &quot; EX- 

 &quot; TREMELY COMFORTABLE AND CONVENIENT :&quot; 

 the very words that you use in describing the farmer s house, 

 that was to cost, with out- buildings, 1500 dollars ! However, 

 you have described your own cabin whence we may gather the 

 meaning which you attach to the word comfortable. &quot; This cabin 



is built of round straight logs, about a foot in diameter, laying 

 upon each other, and notched in at the corners, forming a room 

 eighteen feet long by sixteen ; the intervals between the logs 

 chunked, that is, filled in with slips of wood ; and mudded, 

 that is, daubed with a plaister of mud ; a spacious chimney, 

 built also of lovs, stands like a bastion at one end ; the roof is well 

 covered with four him red clap boards of cleft oak, very 

 much like the pales used in England for fencing parks. A 

 hole is cut through the side called, very properly, the through, 

 for which there is a shutter, made also of cleft oak, and hung 

 on wooden hinges. All this has been executed by contract, and 

 well executed, for twenty dollars. I have since added ten dollars 

 to the cost, for the luxury of a floor and ceiling of sawn boards, 

 and it is now a comfortable habitation.&quot; 



1024. In plain words, this is a log-hut, such as the free negroes 

 live in about here, and a hole it is, fit only for dogs, or hogs, or 

 cattle. Worse it is than the negro huts ; for they have a bit of 

 glass : but here is none. This miserable hole, black with smoke 

 as it always must be, and without any window, costs, however, 30 

 dollars. And yet this English acquaintance of yours is to have 

 &quot; a house extremely comfortable and convenient for fifty dollars.&quot; 

 Perhaps his 50 dollars might get him a hut, or hole, a few feet 

 longer and divided into two dens. So that here is to be cooking, 

 washing, eating, and sleeping all in the same &quot; extremely con- 

 &quot; venient and comfortable &quot; hole ! And yet, my dear Sir you 

 find fault of the want of cleanliness in the Americans ! You have 

 not seen &quot; the Americans.&quot; You have not seen the nice, clean, 

 neat houses of the farmers in this Island, in New England, in the 

 Quaker counties of Pennsylvania. You have seen nothing but the 

 smoke-dried Ultra-montanians ; and your project seems to be to 

 make the deluded English who may follow you rivals in the 



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