AGRICULTURAL TOUR SOUTH AND WEST.-NO. 1. 
19 
Hundreds, aye, thousands of bushels will lie and 
rot unheeded, here in the Wabash Valley. Many 
hundreds of wagon loads are hauled near two 
hundred miles to Chicago. If nice, they will sell 
well, but common ones are no longer worth haul¬ 
ing. 
Mr. Gookins told me of an orchard which was 
set eight years ago, in the ordinary, careless way, 
that is not now near so good bearing as his. 
In 1818, Terre Haute was laid out a few miles 
from the “ frontier post,” Fort Harrison. All of 
northern Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa and Wiscon- 
san, was then a vast, untrodden wilderness. Look 
at it now. See what a change in thirty years. 
A region larger, and far richer than some European 
empires, full of civilized life; and although not 
one tenth cultivated, talking about furnishing the 
world with human food. 
Nothing is now so much wanted as facilities of 
transportation. No eastern reader, not even around 
"Buffalo, can form an idea what wretched bad roads the 
dwellers upon this rich soil have to travel over, 
such a time as this fall, for instance, has been. It 
is worth more than produce brings, to haul it fifty 
miles to market. And every effort to makegood 
roads out of the soil alone, has proved an entire 
failure. The national road is an example in point. 
For, after an expenditure of more than ^30,000 a 
mile, the road is now what a decent Yankee grand 
jury would indict as impassable. 
There is a new bridge over the Wabash, and a 
very muddy road west, though not near so bad as 
the one I came over from Indianapolis. The part 
of Illinois lying along the national road, between 
the Wabash and Kaskaskia River, at Vandalia, is, 
perhaps, the poorest of any part of the state. At 
any rate, the people and cultivation bear no com¬ 
parison with the northern counties. Not but what 
there is sufficient fertility in the soil, although the 
prairie land is very flat, and apparently wet and 
cold; but there is no show of “go-ahead-ative- 
ness.” There is not a good-looking, well-cultivat¬ 
ed farm in the whole hundred miles. And I saw 
nothing that looked like a good school house. But 
I did see a great many whiskey shops. I am sorry 
to write against any county, but this is a region 
that I 'would not settle in myself, if in search of a 
new home. Others may if they like it. 
Vandalia, once the capital of the state, now wears 
the gloomy weeds of the “ deserted village.” The 
Kaskaskia, w r hich runs at the foot of the hill on 
which the town is crumbling to decay, is the only 
permanent mill stream 1 have seen since I left the 
Wabash. Out of this in flood time, go flat boats, 
300 miles by water to the Mississippi, and this is 
the only way of getting off produce that will not 
bear hauling sixty odd miles to St. Louis. 
The country between Vandalia and St. Louis, is 
far better than that eastward. Yet here is a great 
want of improvement. In Bond and Madison 
counties, there are some good orchards, and a few 
good-looking farms. But the traveller is surprised 
to see within twenty or thirty miles of St. Louis, 
vast tracts of rich, rolling, healthy prairie, lying 
uncultivated, and even unbought of government. 
Even the far-famed American bottom, opposite St. 
Louis, is not one half of it in the very rough state 
^f improvement that the other half is. 
There is a very great want of water mills in all 
this part of the state. Page’s patent circular saw 
mills, are getting considerably into use, and are 
much approved. Most of the grain for family use 
is ground with horse mills. 1 saw two windmills, 
and was told that they did pretty well. 
In the interior counties of the state, very little 
wheat is grown; as the inhabitants mostly use 
corn, and wheat will hardly pay transportation. 
If it were not for the fact that farmers who haul 
produce to market, live in the cheapest manner on 
the road, their loads would often be insufficient to 
pay expenses. What would a New-England far¬ 
mer think of hauling produce 200 miles to market; 
and during the whole trip sleep in his wagon and 
eat his cheerless meals by his camp fire, along the 
roadside % Such is the condition of things in por¬ 
tions of the great west. 
Although this is not the case upon the fertile 
lands opposite St. Louis, yet there are times when 
to get a load of wheat only a dozen miles along 
what the inhabitants are pleased to call “ the big 
road,” would be such an undertaking as no load of 
wheat would be sufficient to pay me for. I don’t 
know as the American bottom ever becomes abso~ 
lutely impassable; but if it does not, it is because 
that no state of roads can prevent western people 
from passing them. It is probably impossible for 
any eastern man to conceive anything half so 
bad. 
In my journey across the state of Illinois, I did 
not see a lierd of good cattle, notwithstanding it is 
such an excellent grazing region. The cattle are 
all of the scrub breed, and small at that. On the 
Kaskaskia, the milk sickness prevails. It is a cu¬ 
rious fact that beeves affected by this complaint, 
cannot be driven to market. I saw some upon the 
road that had given out. Cattle slightly affected 
often recover. Care should be taken to keep them 
from salt, as that aggravates and often kills. 
It is a common practice to run a beeve, before 
butchering, to prove it free from this disease, as fa¬ 
tal effects follow from eating beef badly affected 
with this strange poison, as well as eating milk or 
butter from cows so affected. 
I saw very few sheep along the road, and all of 
them of the common kind, yet looking remarkably 
well. There is one difficulty in growing wool, in 
the great.quantity of burrs and “ stick tights;” but 
yet these are not insuperable, and it is. wondrous 
that no wool of any account is grown in this part 
of the state for exportation. It is an article that 
will bear hauling. 
Corn and hogs, hogs and corn, are the almost 
universal rotation. And yet in the whole distance 
(160 miles), I saw but one good lot—that is, of 
good, improved breeds. I saw droves going to St. 
Louis, for pork, nearly 100 miles distance, which 
as a matter of course could only be in good work¬ 
ing order, averaging, perhaps, 175 lbs., and some 
of them showing tushes three or four inches long. 
Bah ! What pork ! 
In that whole distance, I saw but one threshing 
machine. How curiously this contrasts with a trip 
through the northern counties, where a traveller 
Lwill often see twenty in a single day’s ride. 
I At St. Louis, I had intended to make some ac- 
I quaintance with those who should feel an interest 
