Proceedings of the Farmers? Club. , 383 



Prosperity osr the Prairie. 



Mr. Horace Martin, Corning, Mo. — I have been over a great deal 

 of the land west of the Mississippi river, and I have not seen the 

 place where as large a body of as good land, with advantages of a 

 healthy climate, good water and plenty of timber, can be found as 

 in the three north-western counties of Missouri. Here we have a 

 black soil from six to ten feet deep ; and wheat, both spring and 

 winter, corn, barley, tobacco, hemp, grapes, and fruit of all kinds 

 attain their highest perfection. We gathered strawberries and rasp- 

 berries by the pailful that grew wild ; and in the timber the wild 

 plum, crab-apple and wild grape, festooning from every tree, yield 

 their fruit spontaneously to the new settler, while the stream ;:t 

 empty into the Missouri abound with fish, and for three months in 

 the year swarm with wild fowl, such as some five or six species of 

 wild duck, wild geese, brandts, pelicans and swans. Wild lands can 

 be had from six dollars to ten dollars an acre. I paid ten dollars little 

 over two years ago, and May 20, 1869, I turned my first furrow. I 

 made no sod corn, for I had no fence. I have two boys, eighteen and 

 twenty-two years old; I am past doing much only chores. Since 

 that time these two boys have made, split and hauled the rails 

 for over two miles of rail fence, staked and double ridered about 

 three-fourths of a mile of board fence, put under cultivation 150 

 acres, and have in 110 acres of corn, that is at this writing 

 from eight to ten feet high (July 12), and in silk ; the remain- 

 der, mostly in barley, about ten of wheat and oats, now nearly har- 

 vested, and in doing this, have not hired a single day's work, except 

 about four days, a hand to work the dropper on the corn-planter. If 

 no hail-storm or frost occurs for the next two months, we shall have 

 8,000 bushels of shelled corn, have barley stacked enough to make 

 6,000 bushels. The fly injured my spring wheat, so I don't count 

 on that. Now, where in New York, Pennsylvania, or in the New 

 England States, can two boys, in two years, take 150 acres in the 

 state of nature, fence it and put it in a good state of cultivation ? 

 In one field, containing 145 acres inside the fence, we can go from 

 one side to the other, in any direction, with a reaper, or gang-plow, 

 or corn-planter. It is as level as a parade-ground, not a twig or 

 bush as large as one's finger, or a stone or pebble as big as a pea in 

 the entire field; with a soil ten feet deep, and the plow, while plow- 

 ing, runs right down to the beam. Now, there are 500,000 acres of 

 land, equally as good, within the limits of these three counties, that 

 can be bought at from six to ten dollars an acre. Good oak fence- 



