and the rear line nearly or quite two hundred feet. Around the town was a belt of land a quarter of a mile wide reserved by the company; then came the plantations on every side. When the committee finished the allotment of town lots on the morning of January 15, it was found that nearly five hundred lots had been taken up out of a total in all classes of about three thousand six hundred. The colonists had not been slow in selecting corner lots, and the lots on Central avenue and those facing the plaza on all sides were early preëmpted. The colonists had faith that a real city would rise on the chosen site. When the demand for town lots had been satisfied, the committee began at once to give out the plantation land. The choice was necessarily restricted to about eight or ten thousand acres to the west, southwest, and northwest of the town, which was all that had been surveyed up to that time. When this condition was discovered by the colonists, the unsurveyed land to the north, south, and east began, naturally enough, to appear far more desirable in the eyes of the investors than that which had been surveyed to the westward, and some refused to make a selection at all, preferring delay to a restricted choice. The great majority, however, mindful that they were privileged to change if the land was not satisfactory, went ahead and made their selections. As a matter of fact, the surveyed tract to the westward was probably as good as any, all of the land held by the company being rich and highly productive. The first man to choose his plantation was Dr. W. P. Peirce of Hoopeston, Ill., who, it so chanced, was chairman of the committee on allotment. Dr. Peirce's contract was No. 2, and it was dated in January, 1899. But few contracts were made before April of that year. Contract No. 1 was not on the ground, and no one present knew who was the holder. The allotment was well conducted, and went on quite rapidly. It was eagerly watched by a large group of interested spectators, impatiently awaiting their turn. Some tried to extract inside information from the surveyors, who were supposed to know the relative value of every square foot of the land, but the majority either made their choice blindly, with knowledge of nothing save the proximity of the tract to the town, or trusted to the meagre information they had acquired regarding the character of the land in different localities during their tramps in the few days since their arrival.