THE GLEANERS 81 



The slough was a great place for ducks 

 that was all they knew of it at first and if 

 there is any land in the world more down- 

 right good-for-nothing as farm land than a 

 duck slough they would like to see it. This 

 patch was a strip of swamp forty-one miles 

 long, containing forty-five thousand acres, just 

 north of the town of Burlington a bottom- 

 less pit of muck to catch the wash from the 

 prairies. So far it had failed to attract any 

 attention outside of sporting circles, except for 

 a line in the mortality statistics every ten years 

 a line running something like this : 



"Deaths from malaria, per thousand total, 

 52.5 in 1870." 



The State of Iowa had accepted it with the 

 scorn of a well-fed tramp back in 1850, when 

 the lawmakers at Washington, finding that 

 land was not being given away fast enough by 

 any of the methods then known, devised a 

 statute transferring all the swamp and over- 

 flow land to the various states. 



A suspicion that they might be giving away 

 more than they knew caused them to limit the 

 gift eight years later to the states actually 



