“I like dogs because they are friends through good report and evil report—through poverty and through riches.
“I like dogs because they are faithful and generous.
“I like dogs because they are full of simplicity and find pleasure in very little things.”
The population of the early settlements of Ohio bought and sold dogs, and considered them as much property as horses, cattle, or other personalty. They were not purchased by the pound; neither were hogs nor cattle. Among traders of the rural districts, every thing weighing over five hundred pounds was bought and sold upon appearance and opinion, by the piece.
Where the price caused a disagreement between buyer and seller, some mutual friend, who had obtained a good reputation as guesser, would be called as an arbiter. Fattened cattle to go east, purchased by “drovers,” were never weighed, but were taken, like horses, at a given sum per head. Fattened hogs, however, were generally weighed, by request of the purchaser. Each hog would be suspended, and weight determined by the “steelyard,” and then branded with a redhot iron on the left ham. This done, the squealing prisoner would surrender his place and attentions of the audience to the next, and so on, until the whole drove became duly registered. But farmers trading among themselves, buying and selling stock, depended entirely upon their sight and judgment as to the valuation.
CHAPTER II.
OHIO—EDUCATIONAL, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL.
Ohio is the first of the contemplated states under the Ordinance of 1787, and is the most important if not the largest state in the Union. Although geographers say there are some twenty-five states larger, yet no one has ventured to determine beyond dispute or contradiction just how large Ohio is. When the lights of education were limited to the “three R’s,” the boundary was supposed to contain about thirty-nine thousand square miles. In a short time after, the size increased to forty thousand. The area is described as the space between Lake Erie and the Ohio river; and is usually estimated to contain twenty-five million six hundred thousand acres. But some advanced information has changed these figures to forty-one thousand square miles, and has shown by the state auditor’s reports that nearly twenty-seven million acres of farm lands were returned for taxation in 1833, and the question still remains undetermined how large the state is.
The state is greatly favored in regard to water navigation, having Lake Erie on the north for two hundred and thirty miles, and the Ohio river on the eastern and southern border for four hundred and thirty-five miles, giving a natural water-way around three sides of its boundary amounting to six hundred and sixty-five miles, which is more navigable water than is possessed by any other state in the Union, except California and Michigan.