20 The Condition of the Western Farmer. [298 



still more needy home-seeker who happened to pass his way. 

 To such, lodging and a meal could not be refused, though to 

 give them required an appreciable sacrifice, and rarely was it 

 that any payment was tendered in return. The pioneer was 

 hotel-keeper and distributer of alms to all the world that 

 came his way. This, needless to say, was often a serious 

 drain. 



The amount of land granted to the railroad companies in 

 Nebraska before July 1st, 1880, was 6,409,376 acres, and this 

 fact made considerable difference in the settlements after 1864 

 and '66, the time when the first grants went into effect. For, 

 although the railroads offered their lands at low rates and on 

 long time, the settler, if he was qualified, naturally preferred 

 to enter government land which cost him nothing, and this 

 led to a less thick but probably more widely extended popula- 

 tion than would have otherwise been the case. In fact there 

 is, in many cases, even yet a marked difference between the 

 number and the condition of settlers on the two classes of 

 lands. 1 



SETTLEMENT OF HALL COUNTY. 



Hall county, within the limits of which most of the mater- 

 ial for this paper has been gathered, is one of those counties 

 lying along the Platte river, which, as we have seen, were in 

 course of settlement at a comparatively early date. The 

 Union Pacific Railroad runs through it, and the eastern bor- 

 der of the county is some one hundred and fifty miles from the 

 Missouri river by rail, or perhaps twenty-five miles less than 

 that by a direct line. Somewhere near its southern corner 

 the several channels of the Platte enter the county, running 

 through it in a northeasterly direction, and passing out of the 

 county near the center of its eastern boundary line. The dis- 

 tance between the north and south channels of the river 

 varies in this county from two and a half to four and a half 

 miles. Along the south bank of the river are bluffs, and from 

 them a rich table-land stretches off to the south. 



1 See Part III. 



