40 MICHIGAN AND WINSCONSIN FEVERS. 



cousin fevers have all had their turn, and now the Cali 

 fornia paroxysm is at its height. 



The intensity of these fevers, as I have already 

 explained, is pretty well indicated by the yearly sales of 

 public lands effected in the several States which awakened 

 them.* For though the lands were not always sold to 

 &quot;bond fide settlers, yet the sales were made at a time when 

 the western tide was so strong that speculators looked 

 forward to an early re-sale, and to the speedy realisation 

 of large profits. In 1835, 1836, and 1837, the fever 

 was highest in Indiana and Illinois, and the sales of 

 land very great. Since that time it has nearly subsided, 

 the unhealthiness of the rich lands in these States, to 

 the unacclimatised, being alleged as one cause of this. In 

 Michigan it was at its height in 1836, 4,000,000 out of 

 the 9,000,000 acres sold in that State, up to the end 

 of 1849, being disposed of in that year. The moisture 

 of the climate of this lake-surrounded peninsula, the 

 savannahs, which cover 4,500,000 acres of its surface, 

 and the thin oak-barrens it possesses, being among the 

 objections discovered to this State. The Wisconsin fever 

 never raged so violently as those of the other States, 

 the largest quantity of land sold in any one year being 

 little over 650,000 acres. In 1836 it rose to this height, 

 again in 1839, and in 1846 and 1847 it has, after a 

 great falling off, reached the same amount. As I have 

 not myself visited these States, I cannot of course judge 

 so well of the representations by which the first great 

 rush to these several States was excited. In so far as 

 emigration from Europe is concerned, however, it must 

 be considered as a bad sign of a State if the tide, having 

 once set towards it, falls off very materially while there 

 remain still large tracts of public land to be disposed of. 

 There is a tendency in those who have gone before to 



* See vol. i. p. 236. 



