There were two important differences between the two districts. In Blue River the valley land, to use the surveyor’s phrase, was “thinly timbered with oak,” while in the valley of Mill Creek, or Eagle Creek, opposite was a dense forest dominated by the sugar maple but containing big timber of several varieties, and dense undergrowth. In a word, it was a heavily timbered area. Now the Germans near Lake Michigan had given ample proof of gallantry in attacking forest covered farms, yet when the choice was before them of taking such land in Richland County or easily cleared land of poorer quality in Grant, almost with one accord they selected the latter. We cannot be certain that the difference in the timbered character of the land was the sole motive determining the choice, though doubtless it was the most important. The railroad ran on the south side of the river and the principal trading center was on that side. Settlers in Blue River valley could therefore reach the market by a direct, unbroken haul with teams over public roads. Those in Eagle at first were obliged to use the ferry in crossing the river, and later they had to cross on a toll bridge except in midwinter, if the river was frozen to a safe depth, when they crossed on the ice. These transportation conditions might have deterred some Germans from settling north of the river, even if the lands there had been as lightly timbered as those on the south side. Taken together, the two causes virtually served to blockade that district against settlers of their type. But if the Germans declined the rôle of foresters, by refusing to settle in a partially isolated town like Eagle, the Yankees did the same. New Yorkers and New Englanders were scarcer there than Prussians or Hanoverians. The town was occupied mainly by families from Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana--with a few from Virginia and North Carolina; in short, by men who had enjoyed or endured a recent experience as frontiersmen in heavily wooded regions. So many belonged to the class described by Eggleston in _The Circuit Rider_, _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_, and _The Graysons_, that the name “Hoosier Hollow,” applied to one of the coulees, seems perfectly normal. To the Yankee, we may be sure, the heavy woods in the town of Eagle were a sufficient deterrent to settlement there. The Germans shunned it either because they disliked heavy clearing when it could be avoided and when no compensating advantages offered, as was the case near the lake shore; or because they disliked the risk and the expense of crossing the river to market; or for both of these reasons combined. Probably either reason, singly, would have sufficed.