A landowner from Boston published in 1838 a little book, “Illinois and the West,” which aimed to give to others contemplating land purchases an account of those of his experiences as a western traveller which might be of value to them. He explained the simple method by which the government divided the new territories and states, and sold lots to newcomers. The whole country was surveyed by five principal meridian lines running due north and south, and intersected by lines running east and west. Parallel in both directions to these main lines ran lines six miles apart which divided the country into so-called townships exactly six miles square. These townships were mere geographical divisions and had nothing to do with the political and social system of villages and towns. Indeed, an actual town might happen to be in two or even three of these paper townships. At the government land offices, of which there were ten in Illinois, were maps on which these six-mile squares were divided in their turn into sections a mile square, and numbered with the section as a unit. The section was not, however, the unit of purchase, but might be cut according to the wish of the buyer and the character of the land into fourths, eighths, sixteenths, and even “fractions” and “excesses and deficiencies” as proved necessary. The latter divisions were only used when the regular system had to be interrupted by old and irregular claims, or streams, or parts of established townships. From the agents the emigrant could buy a sixteenth of a section, or forty acres, for fifty dollars. As the western fever sent the first settlers farther west, partially cultivated farms came into the market, and by 1835 the prices of farms ranged from two to ten dollars an acre, according to the amount of improvement of the property, and by paying the higher prices a newcomer could avoid the first clearing of the land and the erection of a log cabin or frame-house.