BACKWOODS AND PRAIKIES.

3C1

   but luck almost always follows industry. Well, you wish to know how to begin in this small way. We will tell you. United States public land is a dollar and a quarter an acre, and thouiands of acres are Bubject to entry upon all the western prairies, of a most excellent soil. You arrive the first of July, and are determined to become an owner of the land you cultivate. You find a region of country, the appearance of which suits you. First get your family temporarily into 60me vacant house, and then try to buy a small improved place, within your means, which you can often do, as all new countries are first improved by an uneasy roving class, ever ready to ' Bell out' and go to some other part of the country ' a little farther west,' or perhaps 'begin a new place' in the same neighbourhood,   nd which in turn will be again for sale. In fact this is the common way of settling in a new country. So you need not be surprised to find the whole population ready to sell their new homes, before a long residence attaches them to them. The ' selling-out fever' is a mania, but a very harmless one, you need not fear it. But if you cannot buy an old place then you must make a new one. ' What!' you exclaim, ' buy land, build a house, fence and plough a farm with 200 dollars!   Pray tell me how.'   We will.

" First, then, you cannot buy less than forty acres of public land. Let this be dry clean prairie, which will be, perhaps, from one to three miles to timber. This will cost fitty dollars, besides a little expense to the land office, which may be a hundred miles off. Now, you must have some timbered land. The price of this will vary in different sections of the country, it being in the hands of private individuals generally ; but where timber is plenty enough to make it advisable to settle, it may be bought for five dollars an acre. Five acres of good white oak timber will bo sufficient for the forty acres of prairie, and will take up twenty-five dollars more of the capital.

" Now for a house. Forty logs, eighteen feet long, ten inches diameter, slightly hewed on two sides, notched or hewed together at the corners, will form the walls. Seven smaller sticks, hewed on one Bide, will make the sleepers of the floor, and the same number for the joists of the chamber floor ; as ten logs high will allow of having a low chamber that will answer for beds. Tho rafters can be made of straight rails, and may be boarded and shingled, or, with less expense, have smaller rails nailed on for ribs and covered with split elap-boards or strakes, three feet long and six or eight inches wide : four hundred will make the roof, and they nre worth, if bought, not over two and a half dollars. The gable end may be studded and sided up with boards. A front and back door, and two twelve pane 8 by 10 glass windows are to be cut out of the logs, auJ a space for the NO. XXIII. 2 A

   

|

m

m

SB