STEAM AND MANUAL LABOTJK. 75 



liability to injury from wet seasons, where the land has not a 

 sufficient undulation to keep it free from surface water. 



This day (middle of October) was bitterly cold, colder than 

 I ever felt the wind at home, and we were glad to get off the 

 bare prairie, and into the shelter of the woodlands. 



We passed a steam plough which was moving itself along 

 a prairie road to a farm where it was about to be tried. It was 

 a rude-like implement, with six common ploughs fixed to a 

 framework, which could be let down or raised at the back of 

 the machine. Nobody could tell us whether it had succeeded 

 or not, though certainly no land in the world is better suited 

 to steam culture. But its general introduction here may be 

 retarded by the low value of the food of working cattle. Work- 

 ing oxen can be kept on the prairie for absolutely nothing, and 

 in winter may be fed on prairie hay, which costs very little la- 

 bour indeed. And corn for horses is also very cheap. There 

 is thus not the same necessity for saving ox or horse labour as 

 in England. Machines which economise human labour are in 

 far greater demand. 



I saw also a rude kind of mole plough. It was simply a 

 clog of wood fixed to a strong rope, which is drawn by a pow- 

 erful team of oxen through the hollow parts of a farm, two feet 

 below the surface, and which thus leaves a passage for draining 

 off the water. 



We stayed all night at Bement, a village and station, on 

 the Great Western Kailway. Many of the people had been 

 suffering from ague, and this, with the bad wheat crop and fall 

 in prices, produced a considerable depression of spirits. A few 

 miles west we came upon the farm of a Kentucky gentleman, 

 who, with his brother, had bought 8000 acres of land, fine 

 gently rolling prairie, which he was bringing under cultivation. 

 They had 800 acres sown with wheat, but the crop of the pre- 

 vious harvest had been a failure, having yielded little more 



