82 THE FARMER OF TO-MORROW 



enrolled in the Union in 1850, and two years 

 later to include Oregon and Minnesota. 



This particular swamp, like all others, pro- 

 duced nothing but chills and fever for another 

 generation. Along toward the 'eighties it be- 

 gan to be a positive nuisance, because at high 

 water steamboats plying the river got into the 

 habit of getting lost among its bogs and bay- 

 ous. The government thereupon walled in this 

 slough with a good, strong levee not to en- 

 courage agriculture, but to keep the river in 

 its proper place. 



A few adventurous settlers, returning from 

 western Kansas with the tale of its having 

 forgotten to rain out there for five years, 

 squatted back of the river wall. A village 

 sprang up on a bump of muck. It was called 

 Oakville; later, Oakville Prairie by courtesy 

 there being no prairie in sight except on top 

 of the bluff. Oakville didn't thrive. It wasn't 

 a boom town. The wash from the hills, the 

 seepage from the river, and the spring rains 

 kept it pretty well submerged. And the cost 

 of quinine outran tax bills. 



Then an imaginative seer, whose name has 

 been lost in the whirl of subsequent events, 

 propounded this query: 



