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Show 622 WESTERN WILDS. have been sustained by the Supreme Court. Again, when the miners took the country they supposed the land to be worth but little except for grazing, and many of them took up claims and sold them for a trifle to speculators, and thus the best land in California is now held in immense tracts by an aristocracy. Of course these men are in fa-vor of " Chinese cheap labor," and equally of course the poorer whites are unanimously opposed to it. Some have thought that, as our coun-try grew older, all the lands would be held in the same way ; but it is somewhat reassuring to note that there is less land monopoly in Mas-sachusetts than in Ohio, and far less in Ohio than in California. In some of the oldest States the land is most equally distributed, thanks to our wise laws of descent and distribution of estates ; and in the course of fifty or a hundred years the attrition of a free society will wear out this evil in California. It is now very difficult for one to get a small piece of land in that State ; and it would be better for intending emigrants to organize in some way, and buy out a grant, of which there are always a few for sale. There are a few places very few I am afraid where the best land is not in the hands of monopolists, and it is already noticeable that such com-munities improve faster than others. But for many years to come Cal-ifornia will continue to be a land of the beggar and the prince. In Oregon this evil is not so great, but still great enough. Land in the Willamette Valley is not much cheaper than in Ohio and Indiana, and I can not think that enough is gained to make it worth while to go so far. I do not see how a man, wife and five children average Western family can get to Oregon comfortably for ' less than five or six hundred dollars, which amount would buy eighty acres of first-class land in Kansas or Nebraska, or a hundred acres in Texas ; and, having got to Oregon, you must pay more for land than in the other States named, with a moral certainty that the country will develop more slowly. Oregon began to be settled by white men as early as 1830; before 1848 it contained 10,000 Americans; its population now is about 100,000. Kansas was thrown open to settlement only twenty-three years ago; it now contains a population of at least 600,000. It strikes me that's the sort of a country to go to, if you want your future to hurry up. But if you like a romantic border country one that is likely to stay border for a long time go to Oregon. Oregon climate? Well, some people like it. I don't. True, it is mild and moist; but I am just Yankee enough to prefer the cold, dry winter to the warm, wet, muggy, and muddy. No five months' rain for me, if you please. I'd rather freeze than smother. In California it's differ- |
