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In pursuance of this authority, the commissioners sold during the year 1791, by estimate, five millions five hundred and forty-two thousand one hundred and seventy acres of waste land, for the sum of one million and thirty thousand four hundred and thirty-three dollars; leaving in the possession of the state, yet to be disposed of, about two millions of acres.
The railroad was only five miles away, and Hendricks was sitting in his office in the bank going over and over his estimates of the year's crop which was still lying in the field, save the crop from less than two thousand acres that was harvested and threshed.
The usual log house was built; the boys, with the oxen, "broke up," or cleared, fifteen acres of land, and split enough rails to fence it in. Abraham could swing his broad-axe better than any man or boy in the West; at one stroke he could bury the axe-blade to the haft, in a log, and he was already famous as an expert rail-splitter.
It's all very well for the lords of the manor and such sort of folk to make their wills, for, what with one thing and another, their property runs cross and cross, and there's scarce any knowing what way it lies; but for a statesman owning maybe a hundred or two of acres and a thousand or two of sheep, forby a house and the like, it's not needful at all. The willing is all done by the law."
Upon one occasion, when visiting a farm of a hundred and thirty acres, we found the farmer and his mother, rich people, both hard at work in the field, the former casting away straw the corn being threshed by machinery on the field the latter tying it up. The look of cheerfulness animating all faces was delightful to behold.
Forty acres of good farm-land about a mile from town have been secured. A model crop is now growing on this farm. We have erected a building a two-story frame at a cost of something over $2,000. I hope you will not get, from what I have said, an idea that I am measuring the success of my efforts by material advancement. I am not.
Arriving at the first hills of the Everard, I found they were all very peculiar, bare, red, granite mounds, being the most extraordinary ranges one could possibly imagine, if indeed any one could imagine such a scene. They have thousands of acres of bare rock, piled up into mountainous shapes and lay in isolated masses, forming something like a broken circle, all round a central and higher mass.
A railroad system, connecting the lines of the Lake States and Provinces at La Crosse with the international frontier on the Red River at Pembina, was not only projected, but had secured in aid of its construction a grant by the Congress of the United States of three thousand eight hundred and forty acres a mile, and a loan of State credit to the amount of twenty thousand dollars a mile, not exceeding an aggregate of five million dollars.
The Oregon Country of that day included the present states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and parts of Montana and Wyoming. It was a special consideration for us that if we went to Oregon the government would give us three hundred and twenty acres of land, whereas in Iowa we should have to purchase it. The price would be low, to be sure, but the land must be bought and paid for on the spot.
There is money in it either way and any way we work it; we get it coming and going. First of all, if the Siowitha people find that they really cannot get on without controlling these acres why" and he snickered so that his nose curved into a thin, ruddy beak "why, Captain, I suppose we could let them have the land. Eh? Oh, yes if they must have it!" Selwyn frowned slightly.
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