LAND IN AMERICA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 5, 25 February 1871, Page 15

LAND IN AMERICA.

In America the government price of land is about 125 cents, or about; 5s an acre; and even this may not be paid at once if the settler purchase.directly from the Government. He must begin by making certain improvements on the selected land—clearing and cultivating some small portion, building a hut, and probably sinking a well. When this has been done —when be’ has thus given a pledge of his intenlioh by depositing on the land the value of a/cer-

amount, of labor, he cannot be re* v He cannot be removed for a ' term of years, and then if he pays the • price of land it becomes his.own with an indefeasible title* Many such settlements are made oh the purchase, of warrants for. land —the amount being 160 acres, or the quarter of a section. -The localities of such lands were not specified, but the privilege granted was that of occupying any quartersection not hitherto tenated. It will of course be understood that lands - favorably situated would be tenanted Those Contiguous. to railways were of course so occupied, seeing that the lines were not made till the lands were in the hands of the companies. It may therefore be understood of what nature would be the traffic in those warrants. The owner of a single war-

- rant might find it of no value to him. To go back utterly into the woods away ,i from river or road, and there to com* ' mence with 160 acres of forest, or even

.'of prairie, would be a hopeless task even to an American settler. Some mode of transport for his produce must ; be found before his produce would be of value,—before, indeed, he could find the means of living. But a company buying up* a large aggregate of these warrants would possess the means of making - such allotments valuable, and of re-

selling them at greatly reduced prices. The primary settler, therefore, —who, ' however, will not usually have been the primary owner, —-goes to work upon his land amidst all the wildness of nature. He levels and burns the first trees, and raises his first crop of corn, potatoes, peas, beans, or cabbages, amidst stumps still standing four or five feet above the soil; but he does not do so till some mode of conveyance has been found for him. So much I said hoping to explain

the mode in which the mode in which

the frontier speculator paves the way for the frontier agriculturist. But the permanent farmer very generally comes on the land as the third owner. The first settler is a rough fellow, it may be a returned gold digger, and seems to be so wedded to his rough life that he leaves his land after his first wild work is done, and goes again further off to some untouched allotment. He finds that he can sell his improvements at a profitable rate, and tikes the price. He is a preparer of farms rather than a farmer. He has no love for the soil which his hand has first turned. He regards it merely "as an investment ; and when things about him are beginning to wear an aspect of comfit—when his property has become valuable, he sells it, packs up his wife and little ones, and goes again into the woods. The western American has no love for his own soil, or his own house. The matter with him is simply one of dollars. To keep a farm which he could sell at an advantage from any feeling of affect:on, —from what we should call an association of ideas, —would be to him a 3 ridiculous as the keeping of a family pig would be in an English farmer’s establishment. The pig is a part of

the farmer’s stock-in-trade, and must go

the way of all pigs. And so it is ?. with house and land in the life of tHe frontier man in the western States. A man can always procure land at something like ss. an acre. If he has Hut the money to buy he can obtain credit, and pay by instalments. The . money he pays for his land goes towards making a road to the land. If this is not enough; when a number of sections are sold, the government makes np the difference, and is soon recouped - by the increased population, who add . to- the wealth of the district and finally to the coffers of the state.