AND WHERE TO FIND ONE. 241 



public improvement for the benefit of the commu 

 nity to be there located ; to found a town in con 

 nection with and as an adjunct to an agricultural 

 settlement ; to develop therein a system of home 

 manufactures and industry ; to promote religion, 

 morals, and a high standard of education, and to 

 provide homes for intelligent and worthy families 

 who might be seeking them. 



It was a gigantic project, such as no other indi 

 vidual in this country had ever undertaken to carry 

 out. It required experience, incessant personal at 

 tention, great administrative and engineering abil 

 ity, and the expenditure of a large capital. There 

 have been owners of tracts as large, but none who 

 undertook to transform them from a desolation into 

 a populous community. The lay of this land was 

 such as to admit of its being plotted out as the 

 owner desired. There were no rocks to blast, no 

 mountains to remove, no unwholesome swamps to 

 drain or fill up. He began the enterprise amid the 

 gloom which overspread the public mind immedi 

 ately after the outbreak of the slaveholders rebel 

 lion. His friends predicted difliculties and discour 

 agements, while all advised him to wait before 

 commencing such an undertaking. But his conn- 



O O 



deuce was not to be shaken he knew that the very 

 convulsion against which his friends were warning 

 him, was one of those which, of all others, induce 

 men to look for pecuniary safety by purchasing 

 land. 



In August, 1861, Mr. Landis went upon his new 

 purchase with a surveyor, for the purpose of locating 



11 



