A FAVOURABLE FIELD. 11 



ative value of land here and elsewhere. But the British em- 

 igrant, when he purchases this land, secures to himself not only 

 the profits of farming it, but has also the growing increase in 

 the value of the land itself a right to which he can have no 

 share at home. The country is now brought within a fort- 

 night's journey from, our shores, and is actually more accessible 

 from Great Britain than most parts of Ireland were fifty years 

 ago. 



There is one drawback to which I have several times ad- 

 verted in these letters. Besides the ordinary hardships to 

 which men are content to submit when they leave the com- 

 forts of an old country for the prospect of fiiture great benefit 

 to themselves and their families, emigrants to rich new coun- 

 tries, south of the 45th degree of latitude, are in certain seasons 

 more or less liable to an attack of ague. It is very fatal to 

 old people, but the young seldom suffer more than temporary 

 inconvenience from it ; and the climate which produces ague is 

 nearly free from some other and more fatal complaints which 

 are met with in colder latitudes. By degrees the emigrant 

 becomes acclimated, and very many never experience the dis- 

 ease at all. Care and remedial measures prevent or remove 

 it, and it gradually disappears with the general settlement and 

 cultivation of the country. The population returns prove that 

 the ague has no serious effect on the health of the people. A 

 country whose people double in ten years, as Illinois did be- 

 tween 1845 and 1855, cannot be very unhealthy. Indeed, 

 compared with many States in the Union. Illinois stands high 

 in the tables of health. She is before New York, Connecticut, 

 and Massachusetts, Eastern States which are generally deemed 

 healthy. And in comparison with England, the mortality in 

 Illinois contrasts most favourably, De Bow's compendium of 

 the seventh census of the United States showing that her death 

 rate in 1S50 was less than 14 in the lOOd, while that of Eng 



