EARLY FARMING. 603 



all kinds of stock, especially for cattle and sheep, on account of 

 the dry Winters, plenty of feed, and pure water. There is 

 plenty of cheap land to be bought, raw prairie rates being from 

 four to ten dollars, and improved from six to twenty dollars 

 per acre. 



WM. STOLLEY, 



GEAND ISLAND, HALL COUNTS. 

 forestry — Orchard and Vineyard — jStock — Hedges — Buildings. 



I opened up a farm here, in 1857. Tliis county, at that 

 time, was a perfect wilderness, occupied exclusively by Indians, 

 buffaloes, elks, antelopes and avoIvcs. When our colony, which 

 consisted of tliirty-five persons, located here (then sixty-five 

 miles west of the last wliite man's house), we had to make the 

 first wagon trail on the then virgin prairie in the Upper Platte 

 valley of Nebraska. 



Having failed as merchant in Davenport, Iowa, in 1857, I 

 carried with me an indebtedness of about ten tliousand dollars, 

 which I had to honestly liquidate before I could think of im- 

 proving my farm, as I otherwise could have done, and these 

 adverse circumstances are the causes which kept me from 

 making my place a truly model farm before the present time. 



I own one hundred and sixty acres of land, of which about 

 one hundred and five acres are under good cultivation. Eighty 

 acres of this cultivated land are usually sown and planted 

 with field crops, in rotation as follows : One-fourth witli field 

 corn, one-fourth with wheat, one-fourtli with rye or barley, 

 and one-fourth with oats ; always manuring that part of the 

 land planted with corn. 



Twenty-five acres of the cultivated land have been, in time, 

 planted by me with forest trees, fruit trees, grape vines and 

 small fruit. Of the fifty-five acres remaining in natural meadow- 

 land, twenty acres are enclosed with a good fence, and serve as 



