The History of Peru

by Henry S. Beebe

But whatever may be thought of the advantages offered by the towns of Peru and La Salle—for their destiny is one—for settlement and the investment of capital, there can be no doubt about the inducements presented to farmers and others by the surrounding country. The climate is genial and salubrious, the atmosphere invigorating and free from miasma, and the scenery delightful—alternating from green and billowy swells of prairie, varied by cultivation and improvement, to wild and romantic dells and ravines. Looking eastward up the valley of the Illinois from the observatory on the Chamber's House, no lovelier scene can be presented. The fair and beautiful city of La Salle, joined to her westerly neighbor by continuous streets and structures; the graceful spire of her cathedral rising clear and sharp against the sky; the wooded outline of the Little Vermillion, indicating its sinuous course northward until lost in the blue haze of the distance; the cultivated fields, yellow with waving wheat and oats, or dark with luxuriant corn; the quiet farm houses nestling in their bowers of foliage—homes of those whose "lines have fallen in pleasant places"—the verdant and undulating stretch of prairie bounding the vision as the waters do upon the ocean; the delicate tracery of the Central Rail Road bridge, spanning the broad chasm of the Illinois from bluff to bluff, nearly a mile in length; the silvery thread of the river, now hid by majestic elms and cotton woods, now divided by islands, and now gleaming in sun light, in the far distance; the jagged sand stone ramparts of the southern shore, in some places rearing their perpendicular sides more than an hundred feet above the waters that lave their base; the rounded and cone like tower of Buffalo Rock, rising abrupt and isolated from the valley below—all present a panorama of exceeding beauty and loveliness. Unlike some other landscapes, fair and pleasing to the eye, no deadly or unwholesome exhalations arise from the dank and luxuriant vegetation. The breezes which fan this scene come laden with health and exhilaration, pure as the icy breath of the Arctic Sea. No portion of the United States is more favorable to health than the counties of La Salle, Bureau and Putnam. No means are at hand to enable a positive statement concerning the mortality of these counties to be made, but observation from almost their earliest settlement, and a residence in many other different localities, justify the assertion that it will fall short of most portions of New York, Pennsylvania or New England. It is true that in the early settlement, bilious fevers, of a mild form, rarely resulting in death, prevailed to some extent, as they have in the early settlement of all parts of the country. These have almost entirely disappeared, and have not been succeeded by the more acute forms of disease, as has been the case in other localities. The climate is particularly favorable to recovery from all complaints of a pulmonary character. Consumption—the scourge of New England—hardly exists here.—No doubt but that in a few generations, it will be eradicated from families where it is hereditary. No nepenthe can reconstruct the consumed, vital, human organ; but it is believed that where no considerable inroads have been made, a residence here, with proper precautions, will do much towards staying, if it does not completely baffle the destroyer. It is also true that the country did not escape the ravages of the cholera. What country did? A few elevated, mountainous regions may have enjoyed immunity from that slow, never wearied, implacable traveller, who comes as the wind comes and "bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sounds thereof, and canst not tell whither it cometh, and where it goeth."

Water, pure, clear and cold, is everywhere found trickling through the subformation of gravel, at a depth of from twenty to forty feet. It is generally slightly impregnated with lime, but otherwise holds but little mineral in solution.—Many of the early cases of fever and ague were no doubt to be attributed to the necessity which compelled the settlers to content themselves with the surface water, putrid with decaying vegetable matter, to be found at a short distance below the surface in sloughs and other depressions. Running streams are not infrequent, though not so common, as in hilly and mountainous regions.

The soil. What shall be said of it? The Delta of the Nile, in its original opulence, was not more fertile. It consists of a rich, black, vegetable mould, from one to six feet in depth, resting upon a sub-soil of stiff clay. Its surface has as yet been only scratched. When this shall be expended, the wealth below can be brought to light by the sub-soil plow, an instrument as unfamiliar here as the Koo-i-noor. An intelligent farmer in La Salle County—an old resident—has been experimenting upon a piece of land of a few acres, by planting and harvesting a succession of corn crops, without fertilizers, for a series of years.—As yet he has found no diminution of yield. All the cereals, fruits and esculent roots, adapted to the climate, produce in perfection and abundance.—Winter blight and rust are incident to wheat culture every where, here as well as in other sections; but insects—the grasshopper, army worm, midge and weavel—have never yet made their appearance. The corn crop never fails. In two seasons out of the last twenty, a slight diminution of yield occurred—in one year by protracted rains preserving the esculency of the plant until the season of frost, and in another by drought.—With these exceptions, it has grown and ripened in all its perfection. Of course, crops are "short" with some people always. The Hibernian said that he believed that "if the steamboat never sailed somebody would be left;" so if the frost never comes, somebody's corn will be caught. So, too, the disposition among farmers to complain of short crops is chronic, here as elsewhere. If the statistics, gathered by means of agricultural fairs or otherwise, do not exhibit so large yields per acre, as in places where land is dearer, it must be recollected that cultivation is as yet conducted only in a very rude manner. No application to the soil of materials whereof it is deficient, for the production of certain crops, was ever dreamed of. None of the high cultivation, adopted where that practice is a necessity, is ever resorted to.

No portions of the three counties named are more than ten miles distant from some rail road station, or river, or canal landing, at all of which a cash market is found for every kind of farm produce, and a supply of all kinds of "store goods" is for sale. Leading to these are roads whereon the low places have been turnpiked, and the sloughs and streams bridged, and which, if not so solid and smooth, in wet weather, as those over the flinty or gravelly soil of some portions of the eastern States, are infinitely superior to those corduroy affairs, running through the timbered regions of Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. In dry weather, no McAdam, no pavement, no Imperial causeway is so smooth, so even, so easy, so noiseless as the slightly elastic prairie road bed. Talk of two-forty on the Avenue! A natural prairie road is the paradise of Jehus.

Horses, cattle, hogs—those whales of the prairies—sheep and fowls thrive and are profitable. The high price and great average yield of grain have, of late years, induced farmers, to a great degree, to neglect the dairy. The ruling price of cheese, in the towns, for several years past has been from ten to fifteen cents, and of butter from fifteen to twenty-five cents per pound. Think of that, you dairymen and dairywomen of the Western Reserve, New York and New England!—Cows, grazing through the long summer upon common prairie pasture, and requiring to be fed only through the short winter, and the product of their udders bringing those prices at your doors! Wool growing, too, for the same reason has been neglected. No country offers greater inducements to raise sheep, were it not for the gangs of worthless dogs which most farmers persist in keeping. The carcasses were formerly of but little value. Now the cost of getting them to the great eastern markets is so small, that for that purpose alone their production would be profitable. What delicious lamb, mutton and beef grace our market stalls! How hidden and buried are the kidneys beneath the white, thick, oleaginous covering! How the layers of fat and lean alternate through rib and sirloin! How the rich juices follow the carving knife as it slides, almost of its own weight, through the roasted haunch! Oh, you benighted Vegetarians! Have you no music in your souls? Do no involuntary drops ooze from the caverns of your mouths, as you contemplate the gastronomic treasure, and inhale the rich fragrance which rises like a halo? Oh, you unfortunate denizens of inland eastern towns, who are compelled to essay mastication upon the blue, stringy, tenacious substance which you call butchers meat! What wonder that the dental art flourishes in your vicinity! How would you like to luxuriate upon these grass-fed fatlings of the prairie?

The average estimate of a large number of intelligent farmers is that it costs about thirty-five dollars to raise a colt to the age of four years. For years past the price of a good work colt, at that age, has been one hundred and fifty dollars.

The choice of markets, enjoyed by agriculturists here, is of great advantage. It often happens that the eastern markets are depressed while the southern markets are buoyant, and vice versa.—The location upon the navigable waters of a tributary of the Mississippi, and upon the canal connecting with the Lakes, gives a valuable option to farmers.

One great bug bear of the prairies was formerly the scarcity of timber. The early settlers skirted with their farms and homesteads the borders of timber, and deemed the central parts of the prairie as valueless as an African desert. Experience has shown that these are the most valuable lands, and that no serious inconvenience is felt on account of remoteness from timber. Lumber from Michigan, transported by canal or rail road, is cheaper for fencing than rails, though the timber were at hand. Wire is also used to considerable extent. The abundance, cheapness, contiguity, and excellent quality of the bituminous coal, underlying portions of all three of these counties, obviate all necessity of wood for fuel.

Society is already established and settled, as in older communities. The present race of farmers is as intelligent and enterprising, as a class, as those of the eastern States. The tone of morals and integrity is as high as elsewhere. Schools are everywhere sustained and fostered, and are no where so remote as to render their advantages unavailable. Churches, of all the several Christian denominations, are in reasonable proximity. The price of land varies from five to fifty dollars per acre.

What a difference in the condition of the emigrant farmer now and twenty years ago! Then, having bade good bye to the home and scenes of his childhood, having sold a portion and packed a portion of his household goods, and having exchanged the last sad and faltering salutations with kindred and early and life long friends—each believing that never more on earth should they meet—with wife and children who tore themselves reluctantly from each cherished face and object, he set his face towards the setting sun. A long and tedious journey by land, through primeval forests; over gullied and precipitous roads and paths; across bog, and morass, and fen, and unbridged torrents, and dreary wastes of sand, and scarcely less desolate prairie; with wearied and jaded animals, and lagging and loitering gait; camping out by night and pacing through its long watches, by turns, as sentries; or by canal boat, steamboat, stage and wagon, at length terminated in a bleak and lonely prairie. Miles across an ocean of verdure or a charred and blackened waste, as the season was summer or late autumn, glistened the roof of a settlers cabin; or if this were hidden by the swells of prairie or the convexity of the earth, rose a small, faint column of smoke against the sky. Away on the furthest verge of vision stretched a blue and indistinct thread, like the first glimpse of coastline, as caught from the deck of a vessel at sea. This was the timber which skirted some distant water course. No other object relieved the eye, as it wandered around the circle. The loneliness of ocean—the wearisome expanse of sea and sky—had here its counterpart. The few articles of furniture and clothing, of prime necessity, were hastily unpacked; a rude and uncomfortable domicil was extemporized; a stable, covered with long grass, to shelter a horse and cow, was erected; and a hole was dug in the nearest slough, whence was obtained a limited supply of dirty and impure water. These were the comforts and accessories which welcomed the early emigrant. No running brooks, no trees, no shade, no merry children frolicking to school, no music of Church bells, no decorous and well dressed people, wending their way to the edifice, where the organ's diapason and the solemn chant, in memory, rose with their stately swell, no cheerful faces of neighbors and friends, no kind voices to congratulate in good fortune and console in bad, surrounded and cheered the saddened pilgrims. Soon, fatigue, exposure, privations, bad water, unwholesome diet, repining and discontent brought on the inevitable "ager." Doctors, calomel, quinine, yellow and jaundiced faces, emaciated forms, broken spirits and general misery followed.