ished their work by floating to the surface the
finest part of the soil. Irrigation? You may now grow rice on one farm
and grapes on another, without travelling far between. It is true,
there must be an end to this universality of power and advantage, some
day; but nobody can see far enough ahead to feel afraid, and it is not
in the spirit of our time to think much about the good of our
grandchildren. "What has posterity done for me?" is the instinctive
question of the busy Westerner, as he sits down under vine and
fig-tree which his own hands have planted, to enjoy peace and plenty,
after suffering the inevitable hardships of pioneer life. You may tell
him he is not wise to scorn good rules; but he will reply, that he did
not come so far West, and begin life anew, for the sake of being wise,
but of making money, and that as rapidly as possible. He has forgotten
the care and economy learned among the cold and stony hills of New
England, and wants to do everything on a large scale. He likes to hear
of patent reapers, Briarean threshing-machines, and anything that will
save him most of the time and trouble of gathering in his heavy
crops,--but that is all. The growth of those crops he has nothing to
do with. That is provided for by Nature in Illinois; if it were not,
he would move "out West."

Stories of this boundless fertility are rife here. One pioneer told
us, that, when a fence is to be made and post-holes are wanted, it is
only necessary to drop beet-seed ten feet apart all around the field,
and, when the beet is ripe, you pull it up and your post-hole is
ready! To be sure, there was a twinkle in the corner of his eye as he
stated this novel and interesting fact; but, after all, the fertility
in question was not so extravagantly "poefied" by this _canard_ as
some may suppose. Our friend went on to state, that, in his district,
they had a kind of corn which produced from a single grain a dozen
stalks of twelve ears each; and not content with this, on _most_ of
the stalks you would find, somewhere near the top, a small calabash
full of shelled corn! To put the matter beyond doubt, he pulled a
handful of the corn from his pocket, which he invited us to plant, and
satisfy ourselves.

The reader has probably concluded, by this time, that beets and corn
are not the only enormous things grown in Illinois.

A friend told us, in perfectly good faith, that a tract of his, some
fourteen thousand acres, in the southern part