Arabia, by the Moors. These French horses were small, but performed better, to their size, than any others.

The primitive French had no tanned leather for any purpose whatever. They made harness out of raw hide, which was strong but rough. They had the traces for their horses plaited of small strands of raw hide, so that they were round and neat. These traces were very strong, and such are used to this day in France.

In the fall of 1745, a destructive storm visited lower Louisiana, and destroyed almost all the crops. But the Illinois and Wabash settlements relieved them. Boats descended in the fall, and returned early in the spring. It is stated that four thousand sacks of flour were sent this fall to the lower Mississippi from Illinois alone. These sacks weighed 100 pounds each, and were made of deer skins.

Cotton was introduced into both Louisiana and Illinois about the year 1750. Tobacco was also cultivated at Baton Rouge, Natchez and Illinois. The French houses were generally one story high, and made of wood. Some few were built of stone. There was not a brick house in the country for one hundred or more years from the first settlement. These houses were formed of large posts or timbers; the posts being set three or four feet apart, in many of them. In others, the posts were closer together, and the intervals were filled up with mortar made of common clay and cut straw. The mortar filled up the cracks, so that the wall was even and regular. Over the whole wall, outside and inside, it was generally whitewashed with fine white lime, so that these houses presented a clean, neat appearance. The other class of houses, having the posts farther apart, the spaces were filled up with puncheons; the posts were guttered for the puncheons to fit in. These houses were used for barns, stables, etc., etc. Some dwelling houses and the stables and barns were made of longer posts set in the ground, instead of a sill, as was used in the other houses. These posts were of cedar or other durable wood. The small houses attached to the residence, were generally set with the posts in the ground. The covering of the houses, stables, etc., was generally of straw, or long grass cut in the prairie. These thatched roofs looked well and lasted longer than shingles. They were made steep and neat. All the houses, almost, had galleries all around them. The posts of the gallery were generally of cedar or mulberry.

The floors of the galleries, as well as the floors of the houses, were made of puncheons, as sawed boards were scarce. The roofs of the dwelling houses were uniform and peculiar. They were made of rafters and lath for sheeting. These roofs had no gable ends perpendicular, but were shingled on the ends as well as the sides. The end sloped considerably towards the center of the building, so that the shingles would lie on the lath. No nails were used to fasten the shingles to the lath. Holes were bored in the shingles and pegs put in them; with these pegs the shingles were hung on the lath, and the holes and pegs covered so completely that no one would know at a distance that the shingles were not nailed on. The outside course of shingles was generally nailed, and then one course bound another, until the whole roof was solid and good; never leaking one drop. The shingles were generally made of white oak, and lasted for many years. wood was often placed, that also lasted a long time.

On the comb of the roof, a cross of

The doors were plain batten work, out of walnut, mostly. The windows had, generally, some glass in them, and the sash opened and shut on hinges, as the French fashion is generally. The houses were mostly raised from the earth, a foot or two, by a stone wall. The French, in these their happy days, had clean wells, nicely

walled with rock, and a windlass fixed to them; so that water was convenient and clean.

In the first settlement of the country the inhabitants were in great distress for want of salt; but they discovered, in the present county of Gallatin salt springs, which were much used by the Indians and French of Vincennes. From the first settlement of the Wabash by the French, for nearly one hundred years after, much salt was made out of the water of these springs and conveyed to Vincennes.

Salt water, in modern times, has been discovered in many places in Illinois. On Big Muddy river, quantities were manufactured by Conrad Will, and others. Judge Biggs made salt in Madison county, on Silver Creek; and in Bond county, on Shoal Creek, salt was also manufactured.

General Edgar owned the works and manufactured salt many years at a saline in Monroe county, at the Mississippi bluff.

In Vermilion county, salt water was discovered, and salt manufactured by Mr. Vance. This gentleman bored into the rock, for salt water, to the depth of 400 or 500 feet.

In very early times, very little intoxicating liquor, if any at all, was introduced into the country. Indian traders may have had small quantities, but so small that it was scarcely noticed. In after times, a liquor from New Orleans, called "Taffia," was brought to Illinois. This was manufactured out of sugar or sugar cane, in the West India Islands, and resembled New England rum. Some considerable wine was manufactured out of the native grapes. This wine was made by the first settlers, but disappeared with the Europeans. The Creoles made little or none.

In the pioneer times of Illinois, the mechanic arts did not flourish; mason work of that day was good, but of the rest I can say nothing in praise of them. The cooperage of the country amounted to very little more than making well-buckets. The carpenters were unskillful in their profession. They framed houses and covered them with peg shingles; made batten doors, etc., in a rough fashion. No shoemakers or tanners, but all dressed deer skins and mawkawsins. Almost every inhabitant manufactured his own cart and plow, and made his harness, traces and all, out of raw hides. There was neither spinning wheels or looms in the land. At that day, the sickles or reap hooks were the only implements used to cut wheat.

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There were no cradles in the country to cut the small grain, and the late improvements made their appearance, to harvest the grain, fifty years afterwards. [This must refer to the reaper and header. The grain cradle was introduced about 1830.] Reaping with the sickle was a severe labor. Wheat at that day sold for a dollar per bushel.

Mowing the prairie grass was, as well as reaping wheat, a hot, hard labor—but a short distance from the farms, in the prairie or in the timber, in places, good grass was selected and mowed.

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The Americans, at that day, generally stacked their hay and wheat out, but the French had barns in which they housed their wheat and hay.

The French barns were made of large cedar posts put in the ground some two feet, and set apart four or five feet; the space between the posts was filled up with puncheons put in grooves in the posts, and the whole covered with a thatched roof. It was a great trouble in olden times to thresh and clean the wheat. The Americans used horses, at times, to tread it out. About the hardest work I ever performed was winnowing the wheat with a sheet.

Considerable quantities of corn were shipped from Illinois in flat boats to New Orleans, before the purchase of Louisiana. It was an uncertain market and a more uncertain navigation of the river. Some considerable stock, cattle and hogs were raised for the market; some were shipped to New Orleans, and considerable live stock to the lead mines in Louisiana. The commerce on the river and the Indian trade consumed some of the small surplus products of the farms.

Irish potatoes were raised in abundance in pioneer times in Illinois, and the crops scarcely ever failed.

Only small quantities of cheese or butter were manufactured-scarcely enough for home consumption.

The French scarcely ever troubled themselves with milking cows, but turned the calves out with the other cattle, and made little or no butter. They scarcely ever used a churn, a loom or a wheel. At this early day, both the French and Americans possessed large apple orchards, in proportion to the number of people in the country. The French also cultivated considerable orchards of pears, but the peach tree was almost entirely neglected. In after days, peaches, apricots and other fruit were raised in abundance.

The band mill was so called because a raw hide band, twisted, was put on the large wheel in the place of cogs; it saved the gearing of the mill. They are the lowest and cheapest order of horse mills. Pins are put in the arms of the large wheel, and around them the band is placed.

These pins may be changed into holes made for the purpose, so the band may be made tighter when necessary.

The next is the hand mill. The stones are smaller than those of the horse mill, and propelled by man or woman power. A hole is made in the upper stone and a staff of wood is put in it, and the other end of the staff is put through a hole in a plank above, so that the whole is free to act. One or two persons take hold of this staff and turn the upper stone with as much velocity as possible. An eye is made in the upper stone, through which the corn is put into the mill, with the hand in small quantities, to suit the mill, instead of a hopper. This is a hand mill. A mortar wherein corn is beat into meal, is made out of a large, round log, three or four feet long. One end is cut or burnt out so as to hold a peck of corn, more or less, according to circumstances. This mortar is set one end on the ground and the other up, to hold the corn. A sweep is prepared over the mortar, so that the spring of the pole raises the piston [pestle ?] and the hands at it force it so hard down on the corn, that after much beating, meal is manufactured.

The last and lowest order of inventions to manufacture meal is a grater. A plate of tin is pierced with many holes, so that one side is made very rough. The tin is made oval, and then nailed to a board. An ear of corn is rubbed hard on this grater whereby the meal is forced through the holes, and falls down into a vessel prepared to receive it.

Agriculture assumed [1818] a better standing and efficiency than heretofore. The horse tracks were converted into corn fields, and the rifle exchanged for the plow; hunting was abandoned, and churches, school houses and civilization took their places. The farmer commenced to raise stock for exportation. Hogs and cattle grew in the river bottoms without much care or expense, and yielded a rich reward to the husbandman. Horses were also raised for exportation, and money flowed into the country through these various channels to repay many fold the farmer. The country was new, and the range was excellent; so that stock was raised, as above

stated, without much expense or trouble. The Ohio drovers expended considerable money in the country for cattle.

Colonel William Whiteside, in the year 1796, introduced into the country a fine blooded horse, of the Janus stock. It is supposed, by the best judges of horses, that a better horse was never since stood in Illinois. Many of his colts made turf nags that won races, not only in Illinois, but in many parts of the Union.

All along the Ohio river, and up the Mississippi to Muddy river, and sometimes higher, the cane grew so thick and strong that man or beast could scarcely penetrate it. These were called brakes, and were so thick and matted together, that deer, buffalo, horses and other animals were completely housed and sheltered from the storms. Hunters say they have often heard buffaloes, in the winter, bellowing in these cane brakes, as if it were summer in the prairies.

Above the cane regions, the rushes grew on the sandy margins of the Mississippi and on sandy islands, strong and thick. They are more nutritious and better on which to winter animals than cane.

Morris Biebeck, who wrote letters from Illinois in 1819, gives us some idea of farm matters over on the Wabash at that early day. He settled in Edwards county. Horses, he says, were worth sixty to one hundred dollars; cows, ten to twenty; sows, three to five dollars.

Mechanics' wages were one dollar to one dollar and a half per day; maple sugar twenty-five cents per pound; coffee forty cents; sugar twenty-two to twenty-four cents, and tea two dollars and fifty cents.

He gives us a little horticultural information also:

The wild grapes of this country are pleasant enough to invite us to introduce better, and denote a climate well adapted to the vine. The crab is inferior in size and flavor to ours in England; yet the cultivated apple exceeds anything I have seen. In proof of the perfection which this fruit attains here, I have taken sixteen full-grown plump pippins [seeds] from one apple. Pears also succeed very well. The peach bears fruit the third year from the stone; but the trees are short-lived, and liable to blight. We have gooseberries and currants in perfection; and in general, the vegetable productions of our old country that have been introduced here are improved by the change.

Woods, an Englishman who followed Biebeck to the Wabash wilderness, wrote a book on that part of the "Illinois country," which was published in 1822, and contains a good deal of curious information on the state of agriculture at that period:

Most of the horses are of Spanish origin. They are light and clean, but not very handsome. Their coats are fine, when kept up and well cleaned, but this is seldom the case; active, but not good in the collar, being too light for heavy draught. I have bought three since my arrival, for two hundred and ten dollars.

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Oxen and cows are now more plentiful, but hitherto they have been fetched from the States of Indiana and Kentucky. They are of various sorts, but on the whole

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pretty good. Some of them are handsome, and with a little care and expense an excellent breed might be raised. The price of beef from four to six cents a pound. * * * Beasts are much lighter here than in England, as their flesh is not so firm as in a colder country; the difference perhaps one-sixth or one-seventh part, in two beasts of the same size. * •* The present price of butter is twelve and a half cents, but during the winter it was twenty-five cents, and difficult to be procured. Cheese is now sixteen cents. The sheep of this country, and indeed of the whole of America, as far as I have seen, are mean, when compared to those of England. They are of different sorts, but much mixed. If I can judge of their origin, I think the Lincolnshire and Welsh sheep are the nearest to their original breeds; but many of them have had a little Merino blood mixed with them of late years. * * Wool sells, on a small scale, for half a dollar a pound, without much regard to its fineness, which is the reason why sheep are higher than mutton; as a sheep of fifty pounds' weight will fetch from two dollars and fifty cents to three dollars, whereas, at five cents per pound, the very top price for mutton, the same sheep would only fetch two dollars and fifty cents.

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Pigs are numerous, being easily raised. They are of various sorts, but many of them are a sandy color, and some with wattles: that is, a piece of flesh about two inches long and half an inch thick, growing out on their cheeks. They are of middling size, but from very hard keep, they do not rise to much weight. * *

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The poultry are, fowls, geese and ducks; I have seen but few turkeys or Guinea fowls. Fowls are in very great abundance, and now sell for twelve and a half cents, A dozen of eggs is generally the price of one chicken.

The woods and prairies contain the following wild animals, (but there are but few of these that are most dangerous,) viz: Bears, wolves, panthers, wild cats, foxes, opossums, raccoons, ground-hogs, ground-squirrels, tree or common squirrels, deer, buffaloes, elks, beavers, otters and rabbits.

We have the following reptiles, namely: Rattle-snakes, copperheads, black, garter and water-snakes, and a great quantity of frogs in wet places, and they make a great noise in a warm evening, but in a dry season we see or hear but little of them.

The birds are, turkeys, turkey-buzzards, prairie fowls, quails, pigeons, doves, wild geese, wild ducks, wood-cocks, snipes, black-birds, mocking-birds, red-birds, yellowbirds, humming-birds, whip-poor-wills, blue-jays, paroquets, larks, wood-peckers, black martins, and a few other small birds. But birds are not so numerous as in England. Some of them have very beautiful plumage, but not many of them are birds of song. Prairie grass-a very coarse, strong grass; cattle are fond of it, but feeding or mowing it soon destroys it. Nimble-will—a kind of fiorin grass, or running couch grass; it springs up in land that is fed bare of prairie grass; cattle do not much like it.

Crab grass comes on ground that is cultivated, (a soft kind of meadow grass;) likely to succeed as a meadow grass for hay.

Yard grass comes on land that has been much trodden. It is something like cock's foot grass, except the seed. Horses and cattle are fond of it, and I think it will answer as a cultivated grass, as it bears drought. Buffalo clover resembles white clover, but does not run on the ground; the leaf as large as red clover. Cattle will eat it if cut and given them, but they are not fond of it, as I have often