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land up to that time ; I sold the straw, drew it one-half 

 mile and got 148.50 for it. I then tried to let the jol> to 

 clear the stumps out. I offered $100 per acre for their re- 

 moval and I let the job at those figures to four different 

 parties who tried to dig them, but none of them worked 

 more than a few days. I then offered thirty-five cents a 

 stump and got a few dug at that price but the next fall I 

 had a piece hardly large enough to lie down on cleared, 

 and made up my mind that if I would have it cleared, I 

 must go at it myself, so 1 hired four or five men and went 

 at it. I spent $55 digging stumps, using shovels, picks, 

 bars, stump puller, tackle and falls and anything that 

 suggested itself as likely to prove useful, measured what I 

 had got done and found I had nearly one-quarter of an 

 acre; concluded that after ploughing and digging the stone 

 it would not pay and suspended work. 



During the winter I thought the matter over, got an 

 Etna powder catalogue and concluded to try " Dyna- 

 mite.'' Spring came, I ploughed my fourth of an acre 

 already cleared and planted it with potatoes, getting a 

 fine crop ; in the fall I procured my dynamite and went 

 to work, and the way the stumps and stones flew was 

 pleasing to see. I got an electric battery used for such 

 purposes and tried putting two or three cartridges under 

 some of the largest stumps but after experimenting some 

 I came to the conclusion that it was better and less ex- 

 pensive to use one cartridge at a time, so I have since 

 used it that way, my idea being that after exploding one 

 on a stump you can then see where the next one will do 

 the most good ; after using what dynamite I thought 

 proper, I took my horse, tackle and falls and hitching the 

 ends of the fall to opposite roots, let the horse pull and 

 one or the other would come. I went out one day with 

 twenty pounds dynamite and before dinner time I had 

 blown one-third of an acre of stumps to fire wood (most- 

 ly), the next day with horse and axe, the job was done 

 so far as stumps were concerned. I got on a team of four 



