f
adequate supplies of lumber, and of mechanics, renders good buildings
more expensive than in the new countries of New England or New York.

2. Merchant's goods, groceries, household furniture, and almost every
necessary and comfort in house-keeping, can be purchased here; and many
articles retail at about the same prices as in the Atlantic States.

3. The following table will exhibit the cost of 320 acres of land, at
Congress price, and preparing 160 acres for cultivation or prairie land:

Cost of 320 acres at $1,25 per acre, $400
Breaking up 160 acres prairie, $2 per acre, 320
Fencing it into four fields with a Kentucky
fence of eight rails high, with cross stakes, 175
Add cost of cabins, corn cribs, stable, &c. 250
-----
Making the cost of the farm, $1145

In many instances, a single crop of wheat will pay for the land, for
fencing, breaking up, cultivating, harvesting, threshing, and taking to
market.

4. All kinds of mechanical labor, especially those in the building line,
are in great demand; and workmen, even very coarse and common workmen,
get almost any price they ask. Journeymen mechanics get $2 per day. A
carpenter or brick mason wants no other capital, to do first rate
business, and soon become independent, than a set of tools, and habits
of industry, sobriety, economy and enterprise.

5. Common laborers on the farm obtain from $12 to $15 per month,
including board. Any young man, with industrious habits, can begin here
without a dollar, and in a very few years become a substantial farmer. A
good cradler in the harvest field will earn from $1,50 to $2 per day.

6. Much that we have stated in reference to Illinois, will equally apply
to Missouri, or any other Western State. Many general principles have
been laid down, and particular facts exhibited, with respect to the
general description of the State, soil, timber, kinds of land, and other
characteristics, under Illinois, and, to save repetition, are omitted
elsewhere.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Beck.

CHAPTER XII.

MISSOURI.

Length, 278; medium breadth, 235 miles: containing 64,500 square miles,
and containing 41,280,000 acres.

Bounded north by the Des Moines country, or New Purchase, attached to
Wisconsin Territory, west by the Indian Territory, south by Arkansas,
and east by the Mississippi river. Between 36 deg. and 40 deg