lanthropic enterprise, and then went on to boast of the beauty of situation, the fertility of the soil, the rich prairies to be mowed, etc. "All materials are at hand," he said, "and everything has been provided. There is a master builder paid by the Company. We have even a restaurant in order to spare trouble to our newly-arrived colonists." He strongly urged me to buy five hundred acres of this new Promised Land—all for the modest sum of a thousand crowns.
I took care not to interrupt him, and let him persuade himself that he had convinced me, and that I believed his statements, but when he had finished I told him that there was not a stone in the whole country, that two hundred acres of that land would not support a cow, and that no meat was to be found there unless you killed a deer. I added that as I had been all through the War of Independence I knew all about the district he had been describing, and that his boasted philanthropic speculation was a mockery and a snare. I ended by sa5ring that the last
