Watchman Of The South

IOWA.

The last Number of the "Spirit of the Pilgrims" contains a very interesting article on the history, state, and prospects of the Territory of Iowa. We would be glad that every intelligent member of the Presbyterian Church should read it. We give a few paragraphs:

The present territory of Iowa embraces all that part of the possessions of the United States which lies west of the Mississippi river, north of the state of Missouri, and east of the Yellow Stone river. That portion of the territory to which the Indian title has been extinguished, extends from the southern boundary—north, to the British possessions—and west, from the Mississippi river to the average distance of sixty-five miles. Formerly, Iowa and Wisconsin were included in the territory of Michigan. In 1836, Michigan was admitted into the Union, and the territory of Wisconsin formed. which included Iowa. On the 12th of June, 1838, Congress passed an act "To establish the Territorial Government of Iowa," and under that act this territory went into operation on the 4th of July, of the same year. The present extent of the country is sufficient for all purposes of a state government, yet efforts have lately been made to enlarge it. In October last, commissioners on the part of the general government, held a negotiation with the Sac and Fox tribes of Indians who dwell upon our western border, for the purpose of purchasing all their extensive and fertile tract of country; but the meeting broke up without any treaty being concluded. The unhappy Indians have a consuming thirst for ardent spirits, and it is supposed that next spring or summer, they will part with their lands to obtain the means to destroy their bodies.

The face of the country is extremely beautiful, and from its character, its appearance will be still more lovely when it is brought under general cultivation. The prairie and timber land are better intermixed than in any other prairie country in the west; and that they should bear a proper proportion to each other, is of more importance than a stranger would suppose In a large prairie of ten or twenty miles square, the settler is put to great inconvenience to obtain fuel, and even water—for the prairie is without a shrub, and water is almost entirely confined to the timber. Amongst other useful purposes to which timber is applied, not the least is its use in fencing farms; but where it is scarce, the ingenious farmer devises a substitute, which is said to be eminently successful. The mode is to mark out the space to be inclosed, and then to dig up the sod in a line around it, in pieces of from twelve to fifteen inches square—making the line of circumvallation from two to three feet in width, and building a wall with the sod taken up; by this means a substantial and durable wall is erected, surrounded on the outer edge by a ditch. equal in depth to the height of the fence. This mode of enclosing land is very common in Illinois, where the prairies are large and timber scarce; but it is practised to a very limited extent here, for the proportion of the two qualities of land just mentioned, is generally so equal as to render it unnecessary.

The soil of Iowa is as fertile as any in the west. The upper layer is from 18 to 25 inches in depth on the rolling prairies—and on the bottom lands, from 30 to 48 inches. This layer is black and rich, and bottomed upon a sort of clay, said to be hardly less fertile. The country, though rolling, is in no part mountainous; in the northern portion of this territory, known as the mineral region, there are some ranges of hills and mounds unproductive if we except these and the cliffs that overhang the Mississippi every part of the territory admits of the highest cultivation.

All the productions of the temperate zone grow luxuriantly in Iowa. The principal products are, corn, wheat, rye, oats, buckwheat and every species of garden vegetable and the yield of each of these products equals that of the same kind in any of the states east of the Mississippi

impression amongst those who are ignorant of the territory is that the climate is uncomfortable and the season too short for crops. This is an entire mistake. That portion of the territory to which the Indian title has become extinct, lies between 40 degrees 20 minutes and 43 degrees N. latitude thus it appears that the centre of Iowa lies almost in the latitude of Baltimore, and considerably below that of middle New York. It is remarked by those who have had an opportunity of judging, that a given degree of latitude in the west is not subject to as great an extreme, either of heat or cold as the same degree of latitude in the east; so that in fact it is never so cold or so warm in the greater part of Iowa, as it is in Maryland, Pennsylvania, or the southern part of New York. This may be considered eminently a temperate climate the order of the seasons admits of the cultivation of every product of a temperate clime- and no portion of the Union is better adapted to the wants of the husbandman.

But the great object of interest, is the population that is filling up this lovely country. Its increase is wholly unexampled in the history of emigration. In 1832, a portion of the present territory of Iowa was purchased from the Indians, and went by the name of the "Black Hawk purchase." Previous to 1833, not a white man occupied the western shore of the Mississippi, above the state of Missouri; in the month of June, of that year, the Indians, true to the terms of the treaty, retired from the "purchase," and from that time may be dated the commencement of emigration to Iowa. In 1835, the young community was attached to the territory of Michigan for judicial purposes, and it was not, as before remarked, until July, 1838, that Iowa was organized into a separate territory. The territory contains now more than sixty thousand inhabitants, and the press of emigration to its shores exceeds all precedent. The country presents, probably as mixed a population as ever was collected in social and political union. The observer may perceive the frank, manly Kentuckian; the honorable Virginian; the hot blooded Southerner; the emigrant from the middle states whose character has received so many elements from different portions of the Union. that one scarcely knows how or where to class him the "cute" Yankee, industrious, thrifty and prospering: the stunted Canadian; the thick set, unintelligible Dutchman; the nimble Frenchman, altogether too polite for any state of society, and especially for a new country and even the phlegmatic German-all pushing along together, in ludicrous comminglement; with divers habits, modes of thought and living—and each man striving to secure the fortune he was allured thither in the hope of obtaining; or perchance, some struggling to retrieve the losses which drove them from the native land. The mass of the population of the territory, came from Kentucky, Virginia Indiana, and Illinois. Emigrants from New England, for the most part, people the northern portion. Probably when Iowa comes to assume a fixed character, from the centre, south the character of the people as a body, will partake most largely of western traits; and from that point, north, of the qualities that distinguish the inhabitants of New England and the eastern states.