The Cass County Republican. [volume] (Dowagiac, Mich.) 18??-1880, 1861-12-19
From the Engineers.
CAMP Rowland, TIProx, No., !
Dec. 4th. 1851

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US, and in its stead; winter reigns SUI
preme, it is now quite cold, with about
four inches of snow on the ground, a
change, of which we have keen reali-
cation, while pacing at night, the "sen-
tinels lovely beat" this by the way is
the disagreeable duty of soldier, a
duty, during the performance of which
two hours seem longer, than ever be-
fore, and each sentinel, resolves him
self into committee of one, upon ways
and means, to make the time pass as
agreeably as possible, and also be able
to tell when the two hours have expired,
we have tried varioass ways and means,
among the rest is one, which 1 can con-
fidently recommend to sentinels of 9TH
err camps as being highly successful. %
1t is to take out hard cracker with
you and do the pacing with your jaws
instead of your feet, this is Of course
much easier, and when the hard crack
err is gone, so will be the two hours,
this plan never varies but in one direc-
ton, you may have small piece of the
cracker left, still man with good set
of teeth can usually consume one in tw O
hours. We have not had great deal
of this kind of pacing to do as yet.
Shortly after our arrival here, we pro-
cured few hundred bricks and built
an oven, in which our cook bakes most
excellent bread, sufficient to keep our
jaws for the present, pacing in a differ.
ent and decidedly more agreeable
direction.
The cold is not so severe here, as in
Michigan, the weather during the win.
ter is SO open and changeable, that
winter wheat generally proves failure
in consequence of which there is but
very little raised, in fact hardly enough
for home consumption. Spring usually
opens month or six weeks earlier, and
Indian summer tarries until the first OF
December, and sometimes until the
first of January.
/ am told that the thermometer in
the summer usually ranges from eighty
to one hundred degrees, and is but sell
dom SO low as zero in the winter. 1t
will be readily seen that the climate OF
this country is advantageous for rails
ing corn; and better crops of that ar
! ticle, | have never seen elsewhere,
raised too, with apparently SO little eff
fort. Large cornfelds which yield on an
average from forty TO fifty bushels OF
shelled corn per acre, are SO overrun
with weeds as to be almost impossible.
AS a class, the farmers so far as / have
seen are slovenly in their dress and
appearance, as well as in their farming
operations, their door yards and houses
show the same want of care and thrift.
In passing through the country, ones
eyes are but seldom greeted with the
sight of beautiful house and grounds,
with large barns and out-buildings such
as we often see in Michigan, where the
country has been settled for twenty OF
thirty years, as it has been here. Large
farms, and careless, shiftless farming,
is the prevailing mode of operations
among the farmers of this portion OF
Missouri, nothing but the inexhaustible
fertility of the soil, saves more than
one half of them from poverty and
bankruptcy.
The peculiar institution" is not very
prominent here a great many negroes
were taken south, by their masters, at
the commencement of the war, some
have absconded, and apparently there
are but few left. Missouri will undoubt-
eddy be free State, in due course of
time. But the great and browning diff.
ference between Michigan and Nilsson
ri, is in the absence of school houses
in the latter State. Here you can travel
twenty-five miles in any given direction
and not see school house, or any
building which has the appearance of
one. Before the Pacific r. r. was
built, Boonville distant thirty miles, on
the Missouri river was the market place
for this region of country. Land, in
good times, for improved farms was
worth from $40 to $40 per acre, there
is, at the present time, an excellent OPP
portunity, to invest in the purchase of
land. Many farmers who have permit
ted their secession sympathies, to over
step the bounds of prudence, to such
an extent, that they are, and will be
in the future, "marked men" are quite
anxious to sell out, and go south one
farmer about four miles from Upton,
who is in the possession of 1000 acres of
good land for which in 1851 he was of
fered $50 per acre, in gold, by a Vir-
ginian, and which price he then refused