up with the object of reselling it at a profit; and many, no doubt,
did make money. Railway companies were, in fact, companies
combined for the purchase of land. They purchased land, looking to
increase the value of it fivefold by the opening of a railroad. It
may easily be understood that a railway, which could not be in
itself remunerative, might in this way become a lucrative
speculation. No settler could dare to place himself absolutely at
a distance from any thoroughfare. At first the margins of nature's
highways, the navigable rivers and lakes, were cleared. But as the
railway system grew and expanded itself, it became manifest that
lands might be rendered quickly available which were not so
circumstanced by nature. A company which had purchased an enormous
territory from the United States government at five shillings an
acre might well repay itself all the cost of a railway through that
territory, even though the receipts of the railway should do no
more than maintain the current expenses. It is in this way that
the thousands of miles of American railroads have been opened; and
here again must be seen the immense advantages which the States as
a new country have enjoyed. With us the purchase of valuable land
for railways, together with the legal expenses which those
compulsory purchases entailed, have been so great that with all our
traffic railways are not remunerative. But in the States the
railways have created the value of the land. The States have been
able to begin at the right end, and to arrange that the districts
which are benefited shall themselves pay for the benefit they
receive.

The government price of land is 125 cents, or about five shillings
an acre; and even this need not be paid at once if the settler
purchase directly from the government. He must begin by making
certain improvements on the selected land--clearing and cultivating
some small portion, building a hut, and probably sinking a well.
When this has been done--when he has thus given a pledge of his
intentions by depositing on the land the value of a certain amount
of labor, he cannot be removed. He cannot be removed for a term of
years, and then if he pays the price of the land it becomes his own
with an indefeasible title. Many such settlements are made on the
purchase of warrants for land. Soldiers returning from the Mexican
wars were donated with warrants for land--the amount being 160
acres, or the quarter of a section. The localities of such lands
were not specified, but the privilege granted was that of occupying
any quarter-section not hitherto tenanted. It will, of course, be
understood that lands favorably situated would be tenanted. Those
contiguous to railways were of course so occupied, seeing that the
lines were not made till the lands were in the hands of the
companies. It may therefore be understood of what nature would be
the traffic in these warrants. The owner of a single warrant might
find it of no value to him. To go back utterly into the woods,
away from river or road, and there to commence with 160 acres of
forest, or even of prairie, would be a hopeless task even to an
American settler. Some mode of transport for his produce must be
found before his produce would be of value--before, indeed, he
could find the means of living. But a company buying up a large
aggregate of such warrants would possess the means of making such
allotments valuable and of reselling them at greatly increased
prices.

The primary settler, therefore--who, however, will not usually have
been the primary owner--goes to work upon his land amid all the
wildness of nature. He levels and burns the first trees, and
raises his first crop of corn amid stumps still standing four or
five feet above the soil; but he does not do so till some mode of
conveyance has been found for him. So much I have said hoping to
explain the mode in which the frontier speculator paves the way for
the frontier agriculturist. But the permanent farmer very
generally comes on the land as the third owner. The first settler
is a rough fellow, and seems to be so wedded to his rough life that
he leaves his land after his first wild work is done, and goes
again farther off to some untouched allotment. He finds that he
can sell his improvements at a profitable rate and takes the price.
He is a preparer of farms rather than a farmer. He has no love for
the soil which his hand has first turned. He regards it merely as
an investment; and when things about him are beginning to wear an
aspect of comfort, when his property has become valuable, he sells
it, packs up his wife and little ones, and goes again into the
woods. The Western American has no love for his own soil or his
own house. The matter with him is simply one of dollars. To keep
a farm which he could sell at an advantage from any feeling of
affection--from what we should call an association of ideas--would
be to him as ridiculous as the keeping of a family pig would be in
an English farmer's establishment. The pig is a part of the
farmer's stock in trade, and must go the way of all pigs. And so
is it with house and land in the life of the frontier man in the
Western States.

But yet this man has his romance, his high poetic feeling, and
above all his manly dignity. Visit him, and you will find him
without coat or waistcoat, unshorn, in ragged blue trowsers and old
flannel shirt, too often bearing on his lantern jaws the signs of
ague and sickness; but he will stand upright before you and speak
to you with all the ease of a lettered gentleman in his own
library. All the odious incivility of the republican servant has
been banished. He is his own master, standing on his own
threshold, and finds no need to assert his equality by rudeness.
He is delighted to see you, and bids you sit down on his battered
bench without dreaming of any such apology as an English cottier
offers to a Lady Bountiful when she calls. He has worked out his
independence, and shows it in every easy movement of his body. He
tells you of it unconsciously in every tone of his voice. You will
always find in his cabin some newspaper, some book, some token of


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