"In New York," said Siebert; "do you know him?"
"Do I know him!" replied Wolfgang; "I passed my happiest time here in America, beside him in Arkansas, and had it not been for my mad endeavour to earn a sum of money, I might have been still with my Maria at the foot of the pleasant Magazine Hill. Oh! that I had never seen the Mississippi again."
"Then you consider this climate very unhealthy?"
"Unhealthy!" said the German, in a low, hollow tone—"unhealthy!" he repeated, even lower still. "In the first year, my wife's sister died—that ought to have been a warning to me; in the same fall, my child; to-day we have buried my wife; and next spring, it is to be hoped, will find me by her side."
"Come with us to the hills, then, where a healthier air blows," said Herbold; "you can get land from us, and——"
"To the hills?" asked the German, surprised; "how far up the Big Halchee are you going, then?"
"Well, the land is said to be fifteen miles from the Mississippi," said Becher; "that's a pretty good distance."
"Yes," replied Wolfgang, "but then, you are still fifteen miles from the hills, and in no healthier district than this is; on the contrary, you want the air from the river, which is often fresh; a number of small lakes, too, cross the country in all directions, and evaporate, for the most part, in summer, and fill the atmosphere during four months of the year with their poisonous exhalations. Just now is the most unhealthy time."
"The devil it is!" said Von Schwanthal; "the worthy doctor never said a word about that."
"If he was ever in the valley of the Mississippi, he certainly must have known it," replied the farmer; "but now we'll be off; Scipio has been cracking his whip for the last quarter of an hour."