24 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



sold for enough to pay the cost of cutting, the case is 

 different ; but I know right well that digging a farm 

 out of the high woods is, to any but a man of wealth, 

 a slow, hard task. Making one out of naked prairie, 

 five to ten miles from timber, is less difficult, but not 

 much. He who can locate where he has good timber 

 on one side and rich prairie on the other is fortunate, 

 and may hope, if his health be spared, to surround 

 himself with every n.eeded comfort within ten years. 

 Still, the pioneer's life is a ragged one, especially for 

 women and children ; and I should advise any man 

 who is worth $2,000 and has a family, to buy out an 

 " improvement " (which, in most cases, badly needs 

 improving) on the outskirt of civilization, rather than 

 plunge into the pathless forest or push out upon the 

 unbroken prairie. I rejoice that our Public Lands 

 are free to actual settlers ; I believe that many are 

 thereby enabled to make for themselves homes who 

 otherwise would have nothing to leave their children ; 

 yet I much prefer a home within the boundaries of 

 civilization to one clearly beyond them. There is a 

 class of drinking, hunting, frolicking, rarely working, 

 frontiersmen, who seem to have been created on pur- 

 pose to erect log cabins and break paths in advance 

 of a different class of settlers, who regularly come in 

 to buy them out and start them along after a few 

 years. I should here prefer to follow rather than lead. 

 If Co-operation shall ever be successfully applied to 

 the improvement of wild lands, I trust it may be 

 otherwise. 



