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Show WHERE SHALL WE SETTLE? 613 has a fairer fling at a man. Artificial groves grow rapidly, and the soil is of great fertility. And if you find there is too much non- res-ident land in your vicinity, you can help your good neighbors stick the taxes on it till the owner is willing to sell for whatever he can get. I have a friend who has paid $ 620 taxes in ten years, on a quar-ter section of Iowa land, and is now ready to sell to some man who owns a gold mine or a spouting oil- well. We have all heard of the man who ate so' much it made him poor to carry it. Similarly, some people own so much western land that it will break them up to keep it. The settlers do not intend that non- residents shall get the bene-fit of their hard pioneering and who shall blame them ? Let us go a little further south. Northern Nebraska I know but little about, but in the southern part of that State is a region which seems to me peculiarly inviting to men from the Middle Northern States. " South Platte," as this division is called, contains at least 25,000 square miles of fertile land, of which one- half or more is for sale quite cheap. The climate is perceptibly milder than that of " North Platte," and all the fruits and grains of the temperate zone a- re produced on a generous soil. Along the line of the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad land is held at high rates, but in the rest of the country it can be bought at from five to eight dollars per acre. There is no government land in this section worth naming. The climate is about like that of central Ohio, with dryer winters and more wind. This last you may retain as a general statement as to all the border States. Society is most excellent. The population is in-telligent and progressive, and nowhere does a man find himself out of reach of the church and school- house. Going westward on any line one will find the winters growing dryer, also more " airish." So the doubting emigrant may ask himself " whether ' tis nobler in a man to suffer" cold healthful winds, to have dry roads and freedom from mud ; or take refuge in the wooded regions of Indiana or Missouri, avoid the winds and suffer the other evils. We now turn to a region more affected by men from the middle lat-itudes. In many weeks travel between the Des Moines and the Ar-kansas, one- fifth or more of those I met were from Ohio, and nearly all of them had sought this region since the war. Kansas, like Nebraska, is divided into northern and southern this by the Kaw, that by the Platte. North- eastern Kansas is already an old country ; Doniphan County was pretty well settled twenty years ago. A hun-dred miles west of the Missouri land can still be had at reasonable rates, but I have never visited that section. When we come to |