80 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



is plenty, everybody (but the lambs) is getting rich ; but 

 yet, not a sod has been turned on the adjacent land, and the 

 whole country is in its native wildness. Between these at- 

 tractive railroad points and fancy "town sites " the scene 

 changes ; but the bottom motive power and the controlling 

 actors are the same. The railroad in the form of friends is 

 abroad in the land. All the desirable railroad lands arc 

 taken at a nominal price (to be resold of course for a con- 

 sideration), and all the desirable government sections be- 

 tween have been secured " in ways that are very peculiar," 

 under the homestead and tree-planting acts ; and they can 

 always find as many names to be used as there are desirable 

 sections to be covered in, but which in due time turn back 

 to the projectors of the scheme, who become the owners of 

 domains of from ten to fifty thousand acres, but all for sale 

 at a speculator's profit. These parties are not here to stay, 

 except with an "if; " and, with an " if," they unload and 

 "light out." 



But now comes the great army of honest, guileless 

 settlers, hundreds of thousands of them seeking homes. 

 Many of them are from fairly comfortable homes in the 

 Middle States ; other many are from New England, with 

 New England loves, and New England a part of their 

 very being. They have believed the story of " land for the 

 landless, free homes for the emigrant ; " they come to make 

 homes of broad acres and to leave them to their children, 

 surrounded by all the blessings of Eastern life, but which 

 Western conditions cannot produce, and money cannot buy. 

 Along the great trunk lines they crowd, accompanied by 

 wife and children, and bearing a few household goods 

 and ffods. Mincjled with forei2:ners babblins; in an unknown 

 tongue, and jostled ])y land sharks and sharpers, they swarm 

 around the land-offices, to obtain the first title to that mag- 

 nificent fann of which they have heard so much, and which 

 in their mind's eye they have so often seen. But they find 

 that somebody has been there before them ; land is not so 

 free or so near at hand as they supposed. Their Uncle Sam- 

 uel is not at home to walk out along the railroad, and 

 stake off the alternate sections for their occupancy. But 

 they are told that there is such land as they want at a dis- 



