investors who feared they had made an error in purchasing its stock. In surviving a financial crisis in 1857, the Illinois Central stock sagged heavily. Cobden had been one British backer whose confidence in the railroad and the area it served should still make us swell with pride, for he wrote to his friend Sir Joshua Walmsley in September of that year that The Illinois Central stock will go up again to its former level, I have no doubt. It is not as a railroad investment that I regard so favorably this undertaking, but its value in my eyes depends on the landed estate which is the noblest domain ever transferred in one conveyance. Nothing but an earthquake or some other convultion of nature can impair the value of 2,600,000 acres of the richest soil in the world, situated in the midst of the most industrious and intelligent population. The Wall Street bulls and bears will make no datable impression on such a property.6 Cobden was making his second visit over the line that spring of 1859, to gather facts for defending his position of two years before. Crops had been bad in 1858 but still no want of confidence is found in his diary, which continues on about his El Paso visit: (I again) met the seedy looking Englishman named Slater7 from the neighborhood of Petworth. Drove out for seven miles in a "wagon" on the prairies to observe the progress of cultivation. Conversed with a man occupying eighty acres who sowed twenty-five acres of wheat last year from which he thrashed only thirty-five bushels. His corn had also failed; sickness fell upon him, and he was unable to collect hay enough for winter fodder for his yoke of bullocks which he exchanged for a pair of poor, small horses. His neighbors, who were strangers like himself recently settled in Illinois, refused to give him credit for some seed corn and he had not the money to pay for it. He worked at a farm house shelling corn 'till he had earned enough to buy some seed. His family suffered much from insufficient food during the winter.

Yet we found him turning the furrow with a resolute hand, and in answer to my remark that he did not seem to despair, he replied in a cheerful tone, "I mustn't lose hope for that is the only thing I have to live upon." This man's case is, I believe, that of many thousands of settlers in Illinois consequent on the bad harvest of last year. A good crop this year will set him on his legs.

Talked with another man at harrow8 who was cultivating a quarter section of 160 acres . . . for the proprietor, paying him one-third of the produce for rent.

On returning to Elpasso (I) found a telegram from Chicago announcing the commencement of the war between Austria and Sardinia, and which may probably lead to a general conflagration in Europe. So little has Europe advanced in intelligence in real self government that after an interval of sixty years we have another Buonaparte playing over again the game of his Uncle, disposing of men like pawns on a chess board, and millions of human beings giving themselves up to his will as tacitly as though they were a flock of sheep.

Three crowned heads can plunge 130 million of Russian, French and Austrians into deadly strife with each other with the same absolute will as that which Xerxes or Alexander swayed their hosts. And yet we are told that we live in an age of progress.

If I were a young man I would sever myself from the old world and plant myself here in the western region of the United States, where the "balance of

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