ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



57 



filling of those blanks, and I know that it can be made the means of val- 

 uable education to the creamery man and the dairy farmers. 



Singing — By the Illinois Quartette. Responded to an encore. 



Colored specialties. Responded to an encore. 



ADDRESS BY A, B. HOSTETTER, 



SECRETARY ILLILNOIS FARMERS' INSTITUTE. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 



If the remarks to you are worthy of a title, I will call them "Looking 

 Backward." I thought it might be interesting to you, being the dawn 

 of a new century, to call your att enton to a few facts which will ill(usw 

 trate some of the conditions which have existed in Illinois during the last 

 century, which will never recur, a nd which wll only be known hereafter 

 in the annals of history. 



When the century, which has just passed, was yet in her teens, Illi- 

 nois was practically a wild and un settled territory, with the exception of 

 a few settlements along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and a few trap- 

 pers; it was uninhabited by white people. 



A traveler, or rather an explorer, about the beginning of the last cen- 

 tury, wrote back to his friends in New England as follows: That the 

 territory bordering on the Rock and Fox rivers was habitable; that 

 these rivers were navigable, Rock river as far as some point in Wiscon- 

 sin, and Fox river as far as Fox lake. He told them that any people who 

 were willing to face the hardships of a pioneer life for two or three gen- 

 erations, could find in the territo ry drained by these rivers, natural ad- 

 vantages almost equal to New England. As for the rest of Illinois, it 

 was a great waste of barren land. That is was as flat as a pancake; rich 

 in grass, where gnats were as big as toads, and where there were 



