p22  Chapter III

"The prairie country, based on rocks belonging to the Devonian and carboniferous systems, extending up the valley of the Red Cedar, Iowa, and Des Moines, as high as latitude 42°31′, presents a body of arable land which, taken as a whole, for richness and organic elements, for amount of saline matter, and due admixture of earthy silicates, affords a combination that belongs only to the most fertile upland plains. Throughout this district the general levelness of the surface, interrupted only by gentle swells and moderate undulations, offers facilities for the introduction of all those aids which machinery is daily adding to diminish the labor of cultivation, and render easy and expeditious the collection of an abundant harvest."

"The carboniferous rocks of Iowa occupy a region of country which, taken as a whole, is one of the most fertile in the United States. No country can present to the farmer greater facilities for subduing, in a short time, wild land. Its native prairies are fields, almost ready made to his hands. Its rich, black soil, scarcely less productive than that of the Cedar Valley, returns him reward for his labor a hundredfold. The only drawback to its productiveness is that, on some of the higher grounds, the soil, partaking  p24 of the mixed character common to drift-soils, is occasionally gravelly, and that, here and there, when the upper members of the coal-measures prevail, it becomes somewhat too siliceous.

"The future farms of Iowa, large, level, and unbroken by stump or other obstruction, will afford an excellent field for the introduction of mowing-machines, and other improved implements calculated to save the labor of the husbandman, and which, in new countries, reclaimed from the forest, can scarcely be employed until the first generation shall have passed away.

"After passing latitude 42° 30′, and approaching the southern confines of the Couteau des Prairies, a desolate, barren, knobby country commences, where the higher grounds are covered with gravel and erratic masses, supporting a scanty vegetation, while the valleys are either wet and marshy, or filled with numerous pools, ponds, and lakes, the borders of which are inhabited by flocks of sandhill cranes, which fill the air with their doleful cries, and where the eye may often wander in every direction towards the horizon without discovering even a faint outline of distant timber.

"This description of country prevails for about three-quarters of a degree of latitude, and between three and four degrees of longitude; embracing the watershed, where the northern branches of the Red Cedar and Iowa, and the eastern branches of the Des Moines, take their rise."

"The drift-soils west of the Mississippi, except near the northern boundary of Iowa, are much superior to the drift- p25 soils of the interior of the Chippewa Land District, in Wisconsin; the materials that compose them being not only more comminuted, but more generally mixed with argillaceous, saline, and calcareous ingredients, and less encumbered by erratic blocks."