Zunaed ebooks

The leaders of the sect at Nauvoo had
set up a bank without capital and passed thousands of its worthless
notes upon the unsuspecting farmers and traders; and it was this and
other crimes that exasperated the inhabitants of that region to the
point of driving away the whole community of Mormons.
Once, while ascending the upper Mississippi in the autumn, when its
waters were low, I was compelled to travel by land past the region of
the rapids. My road lay through the "Half-Breed Tract," a fine section
of Iowa, which the unsettled state of its land titles had appropriated
as a sanctuary for coiners, horse thieves, and other outlaws. I had left
my steamer at Keokuk, at the foot of the Lower Fall, to hire a carriage,
and to contend for some fragments of a dirty meal with the swarming
flies, the only scavengers of the locality. From this place to where the
deep water of the river returns, my eye wearied to see everywhere
sordid, vagabond, and idle settlers, and a country marred, without being
improved, by their careless hands.


Pages:
208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232