ILLINOIS AND UPPER CANADA. 459 



must pass away before the farm can furnish mutton and wool 

 for family use. Trees must be cut down, chopped into logs, 

 and burned before even a garden can be formed. The first 

 crops suffer both from the effects of frost and the want of a cir 

 culation of air. The plough cannot be profitably used until 

 eight years after the forest is cut down ; during the greater 

 part of this period the harrow and scythe move amongst 

 blackened stumps, and there is difficulty in growing sufficient 

 food for a family. 



The settler of Illinois places his house on the skirts of the 

 forest or on the open field, as fancy may dictate. The prairie 

 furnishes summer and winter-food for any number of cattle 

 and sheep, and poultry and pigs shift for themselves until the 

 crops ripen. With the preliminary of fencing, the plough 

 enters the virgin soil, which in a few months afterwards yields 

 a most abundant crop of Indian corn, and on its removal every 

 agricultural operation may be executed with facility. The 

 first crops are excellent, and seldom suffer from atmospheric 

 effects. Pastoral, arable, or mixed husbandry, may be at once 

 adopted, and produce of all kinds obtained in the utmost pro 

 fusion. 



In Upper Canada the settler is immersed in the forest with 

 roads that are passable for heavy carriages only when frozen. 

 The Illinois settler enjoys a prospect of wood and plain, and 

 the open prairie affords good roads at all times when the 

 weather is dry. In Upper Canada no part of the surface is 

 productive which has not been cleared. In Illinois the whole 

 of a prairie farm is productive without being cultivated. In 

 Upper Canada the forest settler cannot at first produce his 

 own food, and lives for a time on flour and salt provisions. In 

 Illinois the settler at once raises on his farm almost every 

 thing he can consume. In Upper Canada the farmer is not fully 

 repaid for his first operations until the end of six or seven 

 years. In Illinois the farmer is repaid for his first operations 

 in course of a few months. The farmer s reward in Upper 

 Canada is many years distant, and in Illinois it is almost im 

 mediate. In short, the farmer in Upper Canada at first finds 

 difficulty in growing a sufficiency of produce for his own use, 

 and the Illinois farmer difficulty in consuming his produce. 



