A Guide for Emigrants

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A Guide for Emigrants, containing Sketches of Illinois, Missouri, and the adjacent parts. By J. M. Peck, of Rock Spring, Illinois

The New-England magazine. / Volume 2, Issue 1

January 1832

This volume is a sort of manual for the emigrant, and contains much valuable information for the Eastern stranger who may be seeking a more congenial climate, a relief for misfortune, or a retreat for agricultural indolence, in the rich prairies of the West. The work is principally devoted to the state of Illinois, and is compiled—in a manner more satisfactory to the traveler than the scholar,—from the writings of Flint, Hall, Beck, Darby, and others, with many calculations, directions, and reflections, derived from the experience of the author himself. We should re- commend it without hesitation to any persons who may be seeking a new "location," as the phrase is, as calculated to assist their search for a farm, and containing good advice relative to the Literary Notices. cultivation of the land, and their inter- course with the people. Whatever their own modesty may induce them to suppose, and notwithstanding the settlement of Ohio, we believe that since the people of the Western States them- selves began to move, the Yankees are not the best emigrants. They are such a peculiar people, that when the colonies—for they generally migrate in colonies—have made their settlement among a people equally peculiar and equally obstinate, they find it difficult to amalgamate. People who are tired of New-England, would do well to take Mr. Peck’s book for a guide, and go the "Congress lands" of Illinois in single families. If they cannot succeed there, it may be taken for granted that they will not any where,—and there can be no objection to their joining even the wild crusade to the mouth of the Columbia. The New-Englander will probably read the annexed extract with a smile of incredulity at the enthusiasm of the writer; but a comparison of official documents, especially the Census, will convince him of the possibility of the prediction, it contains; and a single ride from Louisville to St. Louis will also remove all doubts about the probabilities of the case; and it may be true without depopulating New-England. Probably there is no portion of the globe, of equal extent, that contains as much soil fit for cultivation, and which is capable of sustaining and supplying with all the necessaries and conveniences, and most of time luxuries of life, so dense a population as this great Valley. Deducting one third of its surface for water and desert, which is a very liberal allowance, and there remains 866,667 square miles, or 554,666,880 acres of arable land. Let it become as populous as Massachusetts, which contains 610,014 inhabitants on an area of 7,800 square miles, or seventy-eight to every 640 acres, and the population of this immense region will amount to 67,600,000. The child is now born which will live to see this result. Suppose its population to become equally dense with England, including Wales, which contains 207 to the square mile, and its numbers will amount to 179,400,000. But let it become equal to the Netherlands, the most populous country on the globe, containing 230 to the square mile, and the Valley of the Mississippi teems with a population of 200 millions, a result which may be had in the same time that New England has been gathering its two millions. What reflections ought this view to present to the patriot, the philanthropist, and the Christian! In the description of the animals of the West, we find the following paragraph. The Gopher is a nondescript, and a singular little animal, about the size of a squirrel. It burrows in the ground, is seldom seen, but its works make it known. It labors during the Literary Notices. 87 night, in digging subterranean passages in the rich soil of the prairies, and throws up hillocks of fresh earth, within a few feet distance from each other, and from twelve to eighteen inches’ in height. I have seen a dozen of these hillocks, the production of one night’s labor, and apparently from a single gophar. The passages are formed in such a labyrinth, that it is a difficult matter to find the animal by digging. That the Gopher is a nondescript no one will dispute; it is indeed seldom seen, and although one would suppose from this description that the author had inspected the animal, yet we shall venture to say that he knows it only by the works of which he speaks. Mr. Flint describes it as a "a species of mole" "of cerulean color," with a pouch on each side of the jaw, to carry dirt; but he does not intimate that he has ever seen one, nor do we know that any of the many Western historians have been so fortunate as to discover the animal before describing it; and the near- eat approach we have been able to make towards certainty, after wondering over many of their mounds, is the word of a friend in Illinois, who was told by a neighbor that his father had seen a hunter, who had the skeleton of a Gopher. This is the strongest evidence we have of its existence, although its works, under the different names of Gopher and Salamander, are found all over the southern and western prairies.