out and had just left the foot of the hill on 

 the road leading down into the .swanijis west 

 from Knoxall, when lie drove into a mud hole 

 of large proportions and as his animal was 

 hitched to the vehicle with breast harness and 

 they were not stout enough for these Swamp- 

 east Missouri roads, the old gray mare just 

 went on and left Mr. Rathert sitting there 30 

 feet at least from either solid or dry land — 

 there he was, there was the oUl. gra>' mai'e, 

 he had on his best bib and tucker and there 

 was only one thing to do, off came the iiants 

 and he waded around there in the mud on that 

 bright Sunday morning and coupled the power 

 to the vehicle and came out. The best way 

 to go sight-seeing in a muddy time down here 

 is astride a good mule. 



I would not speak of giving chattel mort- 

 gages to secure accounts for supplies as I don't 

 think it more than right that a man protect 

 himself when he can, but as it figures out in 

 the general summary of my experience with 

 the people down here, I only think it right to 

 mention the fact here as I go along, that on 

 the 29th of April, 1910. I was called in by Mr. 

 C. D. Matthews to secure him for my grocery 

 account and did so by giving him a chattel 

 mortgage on my wheat crop. 



On the 24th of May, 1910, lost a mule, dropped 

 dead, but that is the way it goes; quite a loss 

 to us but we had to stand it. Now in digging 

 the grave to bury her learned something of 

 the nature of the black lands. After about 

 one spade down we ran into what seemed to 

 be a species of iron ore and it really is. It Is 

 this material that gives the water of these low 

 lands such a sulphur taste, in fact, there is 

 a scum raises on most all the water of this 

 country if you let it stand for a little while, 

 so it looks to you as though you were drink- 

 ing oil. It is this scum on the water in the 

 ditches and sloughs that fools people into 

 thinking this an oil country and this some of 

 the oil that has seeped through and come to 

 the top. At least there has been no oil found 

 yet in the several attempts to locate it. 



This sulphate of iron in the water might not 

 hurt you but it gets most of the people and I 

 know of several cases where people that left 

 the country claimed that their worst objection 

 was their inability to drink the water. 



I give you herewith a clipping from the Sikes- 

 ton Standard of December 12th, 1912, that bears 

 right on the above point. 



KEWANEE FARMERS LEAVING, TAKING 



WATER. 



Take Precautions Against Fever to Get Back 



to the Swamps. 



Jim Followell and John Hale loaded their 

 household goods, live stock and chickens this 

 week and with their families move to Keys- 

 ville, Crawford County, where they will build 

 homes for themselves. They owned no land 

 here. They filled their water kegs with good 

 swamp water and placed them safely in the 

 car so as to have some of the life-giving H20 

 to take at times when they feel the ties that 

 bind to the swamps tightening upon them. It 

 is said that once a person drinks of this swamp 

 water and get their feet wet they are sure to 

 come back. So these fellows are taking pre- 

 cautions. 



Now, friend, there are numerous cures of- 

 fered for home-sickness, but these fellows cer- 

 tainly took the remedy with them to kill all 

 of those kind of microbes that might awake 

 in their system. 



To come into this country from some distance 

 like we did naturally you are a stranger to 

 the people and the country, its ways and its 

 people's ways, but if you will start in to farm- 

 ing and are trying to get along on small cap- 

 ital you will soon meet up with a very dis- 

 gusting practice that seems to be capitalized 

 to the fullness of its possibilities and that is 

 — I have no better name to call it by — the spy 

 system. Everybody around you keeps tab on 

 you and if you meet up with some misfor- 

 tune, such as the loss of a. horse or a pig, they 

 have business in town the next day, if not the 



same, to inform any one and every one that 

 might have an interest in your success or fail- 

 ure of the fact. Wliile to the west of us lived 

 tenants on W. A. VVliite's farm, who is now 

 president of the Hoosiei' Land & Investment 

 Company, to the north of us a Mr. Joe Weed- 

 mand, yet to the east of us lived Mr. Jimmy 

 Smith, a boyhood friend of Mr. C. D. Matthews, 

 and it was no unsual sight to see Mi-. Smith 

 walking around and across our farm the day 

 before his town days and of course we felt that 

 Mr. Matthews would be informed as to how 

 we were progressing whether' we went to town 

 or not. As to whether these people were paid 

 anything for this service or not I never learned, 

 tiut all the large landlords of this country have 

 regularly paid riders to keep a tab on the rent- 

 ers and their progress either forward or back- 

 ward. 



No doubt where you live there are cockle 

 Ijurrs; I never heard of a country where they 

 did not grow, but down here I learned of a 

 new use for them. You know a cockle burr 

 when it sprouts carries the burr up with it and 

 thus tops out, so to speak, the little green plant, 

 stock coming along and especially little pigs, 

 gathering everything that is green, eat plant 

 and burr. The burr being too hard a fibre for 

 the little pig to digest and equipped with the 

 hard projections that they are, set up an irri- 

 tation that kills lots of pigs. We lost several 

 in the month of June and in trying to account 

 for it were informed by the natives of the 

 cause. Now when you come to this country to 

 farm and grow pigs, that is a good thing for 

 you to look out for. 



In the North when a person stuck in the 

 mud they usually spoke of it as mireing down, 

 but here when you, your animal, wagon, corn 

 plow, binder or anything sinks down, they 

 speak of it as "mireing up," just why they 

 use the expression I never learned, but that 

 you do "mire up" there is no getting away 

 from the fact. On our farm we had all the 

 neces.sary kinds of -land or soil for all the dif- 

 ferent kinds of mireing up, such as in the 

 sloughs, in the quicksand deposits, in the sand 

 blows, and sink holes. In the "sloughs" you 

 could mire up most any time, in fact, it had 

 to be an awfully dry time when a team or 

 wagon could not find a place to sink down a 

 ways. On ovir farm there is about 15 or 20 

 acres of land that look like plate "B," page 

 SI of the New Madrid Earthquake Bulletin, 

 issued by the U. S. Geological Survey, little 

 basins that hold water with an impervious 

 soil between so that the water usually has to 

 evaporate to get away. Now, around some of 

 them there is an outcropping of the quicksand 

 and when it is the least bit wet in this field it 

 is no trouble at all to get a team "mired up," 

 in fact, in plowing we would find patches of 

 one-eighth of an acre in extent that we could 

 neither get the teams to plow through or would 

 we try after finding out they were too soft. 

 But mireing up cutting wheat was the hardest 

 thing for me to understand when people told 

 me they had seen Dover work for a half day 

 to get his binder going again after mireing up. 

 The only idea I had of mireing up was from 

 wet weather and like the Yankee I would not 

 show my ignorance by asking questions, but I 

 found out all right when we went to cutting 

 wheat. The sand blows, being composed of 

 almost pure sand, offers no foundation to pull 

 a machine on and run the machinery, and the 

 team simply drags the machine down into the 

 sand. You can throw it out of gear and yet 

 the weight of it will in some sand blows sink 

 it down until it is hard to get through one of 

 them of an acre in extent. Now right here I 

 want to call your attention to the fact that 

 this is one of the worst drawbacks to steam 

 plowing in this country and were you expect- 

 ing to bring a gang outfit with you, as I have 

 heard some prospectors talk, it would be well 

 for you to farm here a season before investing 

 in either gang plow or land. Still I have seen 

 it wet enough in cutting wheat to "mire up" 

 not only in the "sand blows," but in the low 

 spots in the wheat field. We had such an ex- 

 perience cutting wheat in 1912 and when we 



13 



