Having said thus much of an individual who has become noted for promissory books, and who therefore deserves to be noted for non-performance, let us turn to the contemplation of that which has been accomplished by those who did {121} not promise any thing, but who have done much. Mr. Flower, ably assisted by his father and in conjunction with a few others, has formed the settlement of New Albion, (an auspicious name;) and notwithstanding the miserably unprovided state in which I found it, much had certainly been done, and more was rapidly doing towards rendering the place habitable. Among other well-judged resolutions, they had determined, that in future all the houses should be substantially built of bricks, for the manufacture of which they have, as I understood, plenty of good clay in the neighbourhood. A neat covered market, and place of worship, as before observed, had been finished and opened to the public; to which I have to add that a roomy boarding house and tavern were half up; a store (shop) pretty well supplied was opened; a wheelwright has been already mentioned: besides this trade many other artisans had come in, and the chief want was a sufficiency of the several materials of their business to work upon; but fair expectations may be entertained that, ere this account shall be published, the place will have become well supplied with most of the common comforts of life, not excepting the essential of water. It clearly appears, that at present the {122} produce of the earth can be _bought_ cheaper than it can be _grown_ here; but let us look forward to the period when this shall not be the case, and the time must surely soon arrive or the colony cannot long exist:--What then will be the prospect of a market that the settler will have for the produce, which shall be more than the consumption of the neighbourhood? It is this,--at about twelve miles distance is a place called Bon Pas, consisting of a tavern and two or three houses, situated upon a creek communicating with the Wabash river; to this creek, (the mud in which not always allowing boats to come up it,) as the nearest point from the English settlement to water carriage, all the corn and other exportable produce must be hauled by land; to be conveyed in boats down to Shawnee town on the Ohio,[42] (sixty miles,) and thence down that river and the Mississippi to New Orleans: there to be shipped either for Europe, or for the eastern ports of America. It must be obvious then, that the price which can possibly be allowed to the western grower, in order to meet the eastern farmer on equal terms in his own market, must ever make the business of the first a comparatively bad one: and as it is thus in the American markets so will it be in Europe; the freight from the eastern ports being so much less, as {123} the distance is less, and navigation safer;--but against this manifest disadvantage may be set the supposed