Trip to the West and Texas: comprising a journey of eight thousand miles, through New-York, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, Louisiana and Texas, in the autumn and winter of 1834-5.Parker, A. A. (Amos Andrew)
History
Trip to the West and Texas: comprising a journey of eight thousand miles, through New-York, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, Louisiana and Texas, in the autumn and winter of 1834-5.
Parker, A. A. (Amos Andrew)
Frontier and pioneer life -- Mississippi River Valley; Frontier and pioneer life -- Texas; Mississippi River Valley -- Description and travel; Texas -- Description and travel; Texas -- History -- Revolution, 1835-1836
There is another reason why the northern part of the State is
preferable. Chicago of itself is, and will be, something of a market
for produce; but it is the best spot in the whole State, to carry
produce to be transported to a northern market. From this, it is
carried all the way by water to New-York city; and the distance is
no greater than from the middle and lower parts of the State to
New-Orleans, and the expense of transportation the same.
But after all, there is no such place as a perfect elysium on earth;
and to this bright picture of the new world, there must be added some
slight shades. In the first place there are many prairie wolves all
over the country, so that it is almost impossible to keep sheep. In
travelling over the country, I have started half a dozen in a day; they
did not appear to be very wild; but they seldom or never attack a man,
unless retreat is cut off, or sorely pressed by hunger. They are of a
brown color, and of the size of a large dog. The men have a good deal
of sport in running them down, and killing them.--They take a stick,
mount a fleet horse, soon come up with them, and knock them on the head.
A man on Fox river told me he made a wolf pen over a cow that got
accidentally killed, and caught twelve wolves in one week! As the
country becomes settled they will disappear. There are but few bears;
the country is too open for them. I had one or two meals of bear
meat, but it is not at all to my taste. Then, there are the prairie
rattlesnakes, about a foot long. Their bite is not considered very
dangerous. There is a weed, growing universally on the prairie, that
is a certain cure for it. They are not, however, plenty. Men told me,
that they had passed a whole year without seeing one.
Then, to prey upon the fields of the husbandman, there are the
blackbirds and squirrels. They are the same in kind with those of the
north, and their rapacity seems to have lost nothing, by living at the
west. The blackbird is not a bird of the forest; it only follows close
upon the heels of population.
The winters are as cold, perhaps, as at the north, but of shorter
duration. They commence later and end earlier. The Indians make their
poneys get their living in the winter; and cattle will live if they
can have a range in the woods; but the farmer can have as much hay as
he chooses, only for the cutting; the good husbandman will, therefore,
have enough to keep his cattle in good heart during the winter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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