The Story Of The Pioneer Who Was Disturbed By Society, When His Nearest Neighbor Lived Fifteen Miles Off, Even If It Be True, Fails To Give The Correct Reason For The Migratory Life Of This Class Of Men.

It almost always happens that wherever we go somebody else has preceded us.

Accident or enterprise has led some one to surpass us. Many of the most useful pioneers of this country have been attracted hither by the accounts given of its advantages by some one of their friends who had previously located himself here. Ask a man why he comes, and he says a neighbor of his, or a son, or a brother, has been in the territory for so many months, and he likes it so well I concluded to come also. A very respectable gentleman from Maine, a shipowner and a man of wealth, who came up on the boat with me to St. Paul, said his son-in-law was in the territory, and he had another son at home who was bound to come, and if his wife was willing he believed the whole family would come. Indeed the excellent state of society in the territory is to be attributed very much to the fact that parents have followed after their children.

It is pretty obvious too why men will leave poor farms in New England, and good farms in Ohio, to try their fortunes here. The farmer in New England, it may be in New Hampshire, hears that the soil of Minnesota is rich and free from rocks, that there are other favorable resources, and a salubrious climate such as he has been accustomed to. He concludes that it is best to sell out the place he has, and try ploughing where there are no rocks to obstruct him. The farmer of Ohio does not expect to find better soil than he leaves; but his inducements are that he can sell his land at forty or fifty dollars an acre, and preempt as good in Minnesota for a dollar and a quarter an acre. This operation leaves him a surplus fund, and he becomes a more opulent man, with better means to adorn his farm and to educate his children.

Those who contemplate coming West to engage in agricultural employment should leave their families, if families they have, behind till they have selected a location and erected some kind of a habitation; provided, however, they have no particular friend whose hospitality they can avail themselves of till their preliminary arrangements are effected. It will require three months, I judge, for a man to select a good claim (a quarter section, being 160 acres), and fence and plough a part of it and to erect thereon a cabin. There is never a want of land to preempt in a new country. The settler can always get an original claim, or buy out the claim of another very cheap, near some other settlers. The liberal policy of our government in regard to the disposal of public lands is peculiarly beneficial to the settler.

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