A traveller has just returned from attending the sales of public lands in the Missouri country.—They are exposed by auction, in quarter sections of 160 acres each. A considerable part of them sold at from three to six dollars per acre. Lots, not sold at auction, may be subsequently bought at the land-office for two dollars per acre, on paying half a dollar in ready money, and the remainder within five years. Land dealers are very vigilant in securing for themselves great quantities of the best land. It is not uncommon for reconnoitring parties of them to lodge in the woods for a whole week. By such means much of the best land, mill-seats, and other local advantages, are withdrawn from the market at the first public sales. This gentleman describes the Missouri country as one possessing a fine climate, and containing many extensive prairies of a rich soil, but destitute of timber and stone. The most advantageous purchases are considered to be those on the edges of prairies, with a part of the open land, and a part of the woods. Many of the settlers that I have seen by the river, and elsewhere, were on their way for the Missouri territory. The Illinois country, according to the account given by this traveller, is a very unhealthy one. He travelled twenty days in that State, and on his return home, found that many of the people were afflicted with bilious fevers and agues. He affirmed that he had seen more sick people during these twenty days than during the whole of his preceding life in Kentucky. Other reports corroborate his statement, so that there can be no doubt that the autumn has been a sickly one in that low country.
{106} The best taverns in town charge higher than those in the country, where accommodation is inferior. At Paris I paid 621/2 cents (2s. 93/4d. English) for supper and lodgings.
In this western country there is a great diversity of paper money.[64] Small bills are in circulation of a half, a fourth, an eighth, and even a sixteenth part of a dollar. These small rags are not current at a great distance from the places of their nativity. A considerable proportion of the little specie to be seen is of what is called cut money.—Dollars cut into two, four, eight, or sixteen pieces. This practice prevents such money from being received in banks, or sent out of the country in the character of coin, and would be highly commendable were it not for the frauds committed by those who clip the pieces in reserving a part of the metal for themselves.
November 28. To-day I have crossed several flooded creeks: one by a tree which has accidentally fallen across it, and one has a tree that has been felled intentionally for a bridge; one I crossed on an accumulated heap of driftwood; and once by a horse, where a farmer allows a Negro boy to derive a perquisite from carrying over travellers.—Goods are now carried from Limestone to Lexington for a dollar per hundred pounds weight.—This is somewhat lower than the usual rate. Waggoners are occasionally interrupted by flooded streams.
Between the river Ohio and Lexington, limestone is the only rock which I have observed. Like that noticed in Ohio State, it is crowded with organic remains. The variety of the surface, in this part of the country, is pleasant. The eminences are gentle swells rather than hills, and the intervals between them are smooth, rich, and dry {107} ground. Marshy land is scarcely to be seen.—These are convincing marks of the excellence of the subsoil.
FOOTNOTES:
[55] Piketown, first settled about 1796 by pioneers from Pennsylvania and Virginia, and laid out about 1814, is on the Scioto River sixty-four miles south of Columbus, and about thirty miles from the Ohio.—Ed.
[56] Paint Creek, a stream about sixty miles long, empties into the Scioto from the west, five miles below Chillicothe.—Ed.
[57] For a brief description of Chillicothe, see F. A. Michaux’s Travels, volume iii of our series, note 35.—Ed.
[58] Flint travelled from Chillicothe to Limestone over Zane’s Trace. For an account of this road, see Cuming’s Tour, volume iv of our series, note 135.—Ed.