LAND SPECULATION. 336 
be found to amount to more than what the 
poor man had promised to pay for it; but a 
man taking up land in America in this man¬ 
ner, at a moderate price, cannot fail, if in¬ 
dustrious, of making money sufficient to pay 
for it, as well as for a house, at the appointed 
time. 
The numbers that have been induced by 
these temptations, not to be met with else¬ 
where in the States, to settle in the Genesee 
Country, is astonishing; and numbers aie still 
flocking to it every year, as not one-third of 
the lands are yet disposed of. It was currently 
reported in the county, as I passed through it, 
that this gentleman, of whom I have been 
speaking, bad in the notes of the people to 
whom he had sold land payable at the end of 
three, or four, or five years, the immense sum 
of two millions of dollars. The original cost 
of the land was not more than a few pence per 
acre; what therefore must be the profits ! 
It may readily be imagined, that the grant¬ 
ing of land on such very easy terms could not 
fail to draw crowds of speculators (a sort of 
gentry with which America abounds in every 
quarter) to this part of the country; and in¬ 
deed we found, as we passed along, that every 
little town and village throughout the country 
abounded with them, and each place, in con¬ 
sequence, exhibited a picture of idleness and 
