102 A LOSTDOX CARPENTER'S EXPERIEKCE. 



ger, tliat yon are about right. I don't think custom would 

 carry it. Least I knew a case where it didn't. Two steamers 

 were racing on the Mississippi. A passenger was seen, — ^hoth 

 made for him. A plank was shot ashore from the foremost 

 boat and he stepped on to it. But they were in such a hurry 

 that they drew in the plank and threw him into the river. An 

 action was raised, and the owners of the hoat pleaded 'custom.' 

 But the judge held that a contract to ' carry ' could not be ful- 

 filled by throwing a man into the water, notwithstanding cus- 

 tom." ^*^ Was the man drowned ? " said I. ''■ No, but he war 

 darn't near't." 



On my way across the State to Prairie du Chien I met a 

 Comishman, who had worked for many years in London at his 

 trade as a carpenter, and who had come out to "Wisconsin and 

 bought eighty acres of " oak opening." His first crop of wheat 

 yielded twenty bushels an acre ; and the second, notwithstand- 

 ing the unfavourable season, fifteen bushels of spring wheat, 

 which he was then selling at 3s. 9d a bushel. Besides looking 

 after his farm, he works at his trade, at which he earns 55. a 

 week more than he used to make in England. But a trades- 

 man without land will, in his opinion, spend all the difference 

 in keeping himself. Men with families, he said, could get on 

 better here than at home, provided they can buy land enough 

 to support their famiKes, and when they save any money they 

 can buy more land, an impossibility at home. He thinks that 

 agricultural labourers would benefit by a change to the West 

 more than any other class, because their wages at home are so 

 low, and their peculiar skill is the thing most needed in an ag- 

 ricultural country. 



At Prairie du Chien we found ourselves on the Mississippi, 

 the Father of Waters, which at this point is nearly 2000 miles 

 from the sea. This was formerly a French trading post, and 

 more recently a frontier post of the Americans. There is here 



