UJBBANA. PEACH GROWING. 73 



market "for everything in the West, the spirit of " trading " is 

 so thoroughly ingrained in the people. At every station is 

 to be seen a large wooden store with the words " cash for 

 wheat " conspicuously printed up. The daily quotations at 

 Chicago are known by telegraph at every station, and the price, 

 less cost of transport, risk and profit, are arranged without dif- 

 ficulty. The wheat this year on the southern prairie is worth 

 twice as much per bushel as that of the northern black land. 



From Farina I took the railway to Urbana, nearly 100 

 miles farther north, the intervening country being parallel with 

 and much the same kind of land as that already described at 

 Pana and Decatur. The town of Urbana is situated in the 

 midst of a fine rolling black prairie, with a solid mass of some 

 6000 acres of timber as a background. I spent two days in 

 driving through the prairie in the neighbourhood, taking a 

 circle of about twenty miles. The wheat farmers all complained 

 of the nearly total loss they had this year sustained in their 

 wheat crop, and some large landholders, not farmers by pro- 

 fession, were so much alarmed by the loss of the crop that they 

 had discontinued sowing wheat. One man spoke of peach grow- 

 ing as a matter of profitable farming, and said that he had pro- 

 duced on his own land here at the rate of 5000 bushels an acre. 

 This was done, however, on a very limited scale. There was 

 a steam thrashing mill at work here, the owner of which as- 

 sured me that he could thrash with it 1000 bushels of good 

 wheat in a -day, and that he had thrashed 150 bushels in an 

 hour. But in that case the wheat had been cut with little 

 straw, and the yield was very prolific. 



Pushing on through the long prairie grass for some five or 

 six miles farther, we came to the land of a large cattle farmer, 

 a celebrated Illinois grazier. He is the owner of several thou- 

 sand acres of land, and has been so successful as a feeder as on 

 one occasion to have delivered 100 cattle at Chicago in one lot, 

 4 



