shall make it. With all the advantages of mineral wealth vastly surpassing that of Ormuzd or of Ind; with a soil of such extent and fertility, that it could supply the world with bread, with flocks and herds beyond the dream of the most opulent of the patriarchs of the East, and all the elements of material prosperity in such abundance as to defy description, if its citizens are industrious, enterprising, intelligent, moral, law-abiding, Godfearing men and women, there is in reserve for it a future which not all the dreams of the poets, or the rapt vision of the seers, can describe in too glowing colors-a future which shall make the ancient Paradise a modern reality, and cause men to flock thither, as to a new Eden.

But if industry and enterprise are lacking, if morals are debased, and intelligence wanes; if reverence for law and order is lost, and there comes a time when they do not fear God and keep His commandments; if pride, self-confidence, and fullness of bread, lead to all the vices which ruined the empires of the Old World; all this material wealth and prosperity, all these advantages of situation and production, will only make its downfall the more sudden and terrible. And its swift destruction will call forth a wail of anguish from all the nations of the earth, as much deeper and more distressing, as its position had been grander and more imposing, than that of any of the older empires. Which shall it be? a government of the people, for the people, by the people; a government firm and persistent for liberty and law, for freedom, justice, and right, between man and his fellow-man, and between man and his Creator? or a government without law, without justice, without purity, without right, and without order;-an anarchy, where men's evil passions and corrupt practices, all the arts of the demagogue, all the schemes of the hypocrite, and all the vices of the debauchee are allowed to destroy the nation, without check or restraint?

Rome and Greece, Babylon and Nineveh, Corinth and Ephesus, the most powerful empires and cities of their times, owed their ruin to this uncontrolled spirit of license and misrule, and in modern times, we have seen powerful nations brought to the verge of destruction from the same causes. us heed the warning while there is time.

Let

PART II.

IMMIGRATION.

WHO SHOULD GO, AND WHY? THE HOW, WHEN AND WHERE OF EMIGRATION TO THE FAR WEST.

CHAPTER I.

WHO SHOULD MIGRATE TO THIS WESTERN EMPIRE, AND the Reasons WHYDESIRABLENESS OF ACCURATE INFORMATION - INTENTIONAL AND UNINTENTIONAL MISREPRESENTATION-WHO SHOULD NOT COME-THE LANDGRANT RAILWAY COMPANIES, and the Emigration Societies—Age BeyOND WHICH EMIGRATION IS UNDESIRABLE -OTHER OBSTACLES-AMOUNT OF CAPITAL NECESSARY-THIS VARIES WITH THE OCCUPATION-WHAT ARE NECESSARY EXPENSES-WHY SOME EMIGRANTS ARE DISSATISFIED.

"ARE you thinking of emigrating to that 'Far West' in America, about which we hear so much lately?" asks one neighbor of another in England, in the winter of 1879-1880. “Yes,” is the reply. "I am thinking of it very seriously, but I find it hard to come to a decision. All my acquaintance are here; I feel strongly attached to the country and place in which I was born and reared, where I found my good wife, and where my little ones were born. England is very dear to me; and yet I cannot buy an acre, no, nor a rood of ground, even to be buried in; I must be a tenant all my life, and liable to be evicted at the landlord's pleasure. I had, in past years, laid up a little money, but it is fast going, in these past three years of bad crops, low prices, and poor markets, and yet I am paying five pound rent per acre for my place. Then again, my children cannot get on here, and as I belong to the Methodists, they can have no chance unless they go to the church, which I don't like

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to have them do. Now, I am told that I can take up a farm of 160 acres in that western country, under what they call the Homestead Act, for less money than I pay rent for one cre here, and excellent land too, and that in five years' time I can have as good a farm as this—yes, and better-all my own, and a steady income of £500 or £600 a year, and good schools and churches, all convenient. When I consider all these things I think I must go, though it will be a sore thing to leave dear old England. How I wish now, that I had some book, or somebody that I knew wouldn't deceive me, to tell me all about the country, just as it is, and enable me to decide what I ought to do."

There are many thousands not only in England, but in Ireland and Scotland, Germany, Sweden and Norway, in Austria and Russia, in Italy and France, who are asking themselves and others the question, whether it is not best to emigrate to this faroff western land, and thus escape from evils, discomforts, and oppressions of all sorts, which have become well-nigh intolerable. And there are scores of thousands more in our own country, who, from one cause or another, are revolving the same question in their own minds, and are sincerely desirous of light in regard to it.

To all such honest inquirers, we propose to give the information which they seek, and we beg leave to assure them at the start, that we have no object in view, except their benefit. We have no interest in any railroad, land grant, colony, mining, farming, stock-raising, or wool-growing company or organization west of the Mississippi river; we do not own a square foot of land west of that river, and do not expect to do so; but we know the country, its advantages and disadvantages, and we propose to state these honestly and fairly. We could obtain the indorsement of all the governors, senators, and representatives of that entire region, to the truthfulness and fairness of our book, if it were needful; but we think that every one who will read it will be satisfied for themselves that it is an honest and trustworthy book.

Having thus avouched the honesty of our purpose, and the

HORRORS OF THE OLD EMIGRATION.

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knowledge of the subject which we possess, we will proceed to answer the very important questions, Who should emigrate, and why? The emigration societies, the railroad companies, and the steamship agents, would answer the question very promptly, by saying, "Every one who has the means to reach the West should go;" and they would be greatly in the wrong, and if they were believed, would do much wrong to emigrants by such

an answer.

No! not every one who has the means to reach there should go; not even every one who has from $1,000 to $10,000 to invest, after reaching the country. The question, “Who should go?" requires a previous consideration of many other questions before it can be rightly answered. There are always many hardships attending emigration; not so many now as there were in former days, when the European emigrant took passage across the Atlantic in the steerage of a sailing packet, and was tossed on the waves, with but scant fare and horrible accommodations, for from thirty to sixty, or seventy-five days, and landing at the end of his tedious voyage, at New York, found himself the prey of the landsharks and confidence men, who swarmed around him. He was very fortunate, if he succeeded in making his way by barge and canal boat to Buffalo, and thence by other sailing vessels to distant Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois, and amid the forests, or the wide treeless plains, shaken by chills and fever, reared his rude log-hut, and set out resolutely to make a home and a fortune for his family. That is not so very long ago either. Forty or fifty years ago, the emigrant had to take all these hardships into the account, if he would make his home in the West. It is not thirty-five years, hardly more than thirty, since those who sought homes beyond the Mississippi were obliged to go with their huge wagons-"prairie schooners" they were calleddrawn by five, eight, or even twelve yoke of oxen, carrying with them their entire household goods, and travelling for many weeks, eight or ten miles a day, before reaching their new homes.

When we compare the present facilities of travel and settlement with the hard lot of these pioneers of civilization, and the

speed and safety with which our emigrants reach their desired location, and the perils and dangers from Indians, from storms and snows, from hunger and thirst, from the giving out of their cattle, or the prairie fires-perils which marked the whole trail from the Mississippi to the Pacific with the skeletons of their cattle, and, not so rarely as could have been wished, with human bones also with the present freedom from these dangers and miseries, we are almost inclined to declare that there are now no hardships for emigrants to face. This, however, would not be quite true. To the emigrant from Europe, the ten or twelve days' passage in the steerage of these magnificent ocean steamships, though a vast improvement on the old sailing vessels, is not quite an "earthly paradise," as indeed it could not well be. Most of these steamship lines, also, are in some way connected with some one or more of the emigration companies, which, in turn, have their arrangements with some of the great railway companies, and are under obligations to send their emigrants to particular sections of country, where their lands are situated. Of course, these emigration companies and railroad agents extol their particular section in the highest terms, and cannot say anything too strong in disparagement of every other region. They have no intention, probably, of misrepresenting either their own lands, or the lands in other States or Territories; but human nature must be differently constituted from what it now is, if the emigrant does not find that some things have been overstated, and that the advantages of other localities have been unduly depreciated.

There are two remedies for this difficulty: one, that the emigrant should inform himself thoroughly before making arrangements to come to this country, what will be the best location for him, taking into consideration climate, chances of employment, accessibility to good markets, prices of land, condition of society, advantages of education, etc., etc. His sources of information must be free from all temptation to misrepresentation and self. interest, and they must be from parties who are fully informed of the present condition of affairs there, for so rapid are the changes which are taking place in this Great West, that statements which.