egroes; and most numerous of all, homeseekers "hunting
country"--a nation on wheels, an empire in the commotion and pangs of
birth. Down I went with the rest, across ferries, through Dodgeville,
Mineral Point and Platteville, past a thousand vacant sites for farms
toward my own farm so far from civilization, shot out of civilization by
the forces of civilization itself.

I saw the old mining country from Mineral Point to Dubuque, where lead
had been dug for many years, and where the men lived who dug the holes
and were called Badgers, thus giving the people of Wisconsin their
nickname as distinguished from the Illinois people who came up the
rivers to work in the spring, and went back in the fall, and were
therefore named after a migratory fish and called Suckers; and at last,
I saw from its eastern bank far off to the west, the bluffy shores of
Iowa, and down by the river the keen spires and brick and wood buildings
of the biggest town I had seen since leaving Milwaukee the town
of Dubuque.

I camped that night in the northwestern corner of Illinois, in a regular
city of movers, all waiting their turns at the ferry which crossed the
Mississippi to the Land of Promise.

4

Iowa did not look much like a prairie country from where I stood. The
Iowa shore towered above the town of Dubuque, clothed with woods to the
top, and looking more like York State than anything I had seen since I
had taken the schooner at Buffalo to come up the Lakes. I lay that
night, unable to sleep. For one thing, I needed to be wakeful, lest some
of the motley crowd of movers might take a fancy to my cattle. I was
learning by experience how to take care of myself and mine; besides, I
wanted to be awake early so as to take passage by ferry-boat "before
soon" as the Hoosiers say, in the morning.

That April morning was still only a gray dawn when I drove down to the
ferry, without stopping for my breakfast. A few others of those who
looked forward to a rush for the boat had got there ahead of me, and we
waited in line. I saw that I should have to go on the second trip rather
than the first, but movers can not be impatient, and the driving of
cattle cures a person of being in a hurry; so I was in no great taking
because of this little delay. As I sat there in my wagon, a
black-bearded, scholarly-looking man stepped up and spoke to me.

"Going across?" he asked.

"As soon as the boat will take me," I said.

"Heavy loaded?" he asked. "Hav