But Germans were less venturesome than Yankees, or more prudent, depending on the point of view. In the old home they were accustomed to haul their farm produce many miles in going to the markets and fairs. But there the roads were passable at all seasons. In the New World, where all was in the making, the roads were often impassable and always--except in winter--so rough and troublesome as to daunt those who were not to the manner born.[6] Hence the German settler’s idea of what constituted a safe distance from the lake ports within which to open a farm differed from the Yankee’s idea. There is one striking illustration of that difference. Along the Illinois boundary from Lake Michigan westward was the strip of prairie and openings twenty-four miles wide and seventy-eight long which was divided into Racine and Kenosha counties (on the lake), Walworth, and Rock. We have already called that region the new Yankee Land and have seen the Yankee farmers spread over it with seeming disregard to distance from the lake ports, each being intent rather on finding an ideal combination of desirable kinds of land. The three divisions of the strip contained almost equal numbers of Yankees--these people evidently believing that canals, roads, plank roads, and railways would come to them when needed, while a good farm location once lost was gone forever; and being willing also, until such improvements should come, to haul their crops sixty or seventy-five miles to market. Not so the few Germans who entered this Yankee Land prior to 1850. More than four-fifths of them were in the section nearest the lake (Racine and Kenosha counties), and less than one-thirtieth in Rock County, the farthest west of the strip. The movement into the prairies and openings of the southeast had been going on for about four years before the Germans began coming to Wisconsin, and so many selections of first choice, second choice, and even third choice land had been made that newcomers were already at a disadvantage in that region, especially if a number of them desired to settle near together in a body, which was the case of Old Lutheran congregations who made up the earliest German immigrations. Moreover, most of the Yankees were business-like farmers who generally planned for fairly large farms, in order to make money by raising wheat. They were mainly men who had sold small farms in the East in order to secure larger, or sons of large farmers. Most of them had money or credit to enable them to acquire land, construct buildings and fences, buy stock, and begin farming operations. Having found good land by canvassing the whole region, they were not to be dislodged until, with the failure of wheat crops at a later time, the spirit of emigration sent numbers of them to fresh wheat lands farther west, thus making opportunity for well-to-do Germans to buy their improved farms, which they did to a great extent.