KENTUCKY OHIO. 110 



ing. The cattle are well-bred short-horns. Very large herds 

 of mules may be seen penned together, 100 or more in one lot. 

 No stock pays better. Pigs are likewise fed in large numbers 

 together, penned on a cleared piece of Indian corn, with which 

 they are regularly and abundantly supplied. In Bourbon 

 county a famous whisky is made from Indian corn, which 

 bears as high a character in the States as Islay or Glenlivat 

 does in Scotland. This is a slave State, and the field labourers 

 are mostly slaves. 



After returning to Cincinnati we pursued our journey e|st- 

 wards, passing for some miles through the pretty valley of the 

 Little Miami. The rest of the country to Columbus, the cap- 

 ital of the State, is partially cleared, but chiefly covered with 

 primeval forest. An American in the railway carriage was 

 complaining that this State was rapidly going into the hands 

 of large landholders, and that the poor man would soon have 

 no place. But the poor men are voluntary emigrants. They 

 find it a thankless task to struggle with the forest, sell their 

 farms to the adjoining proprietors, and push off westwards to 

 the rich open prairies. Those who remain gradually absorb the 

 neighbouring lands, and the uncleared country continues un- 

 disturbed. Nor will it be much disturbed for a generation or 

 two, for there is lake and railroad access to the prairies, and 

 men will not toil at these wooded solitudes when they can turn 

 their furrow without impediment on the black prairie. 



In the Ohio State Eeport for 1857, this movement of the 

 agricultural population is referred to at some length, and it is 

 there shown that a decrease in numbers had taken place in 

 many counties, and that in five townships named, in one of the 

 best wheat counties of the State, the farming population had 

 decreased 6 per cent, through the emigration of " small farmers 

 seeking a better home on the virgin soil of the West." It is 

 there stated that not less than 140,000 persons had thus emi- 



