their farms the ideal combination of wood, marsh, and open land whenever such a combination could be found within easy reach of the market.[1]
But Germans were less venturesome than Yankees, or more prudent, depending on the point of view. In the old home they were accustomed to haul their farm produce many miles in going to the markets and fairs. But there the roads were passable at all seasons. In the New World, where all was in the making, the roads were often impassable and always—except in winter—so rough and troublesome as to daunt those who were not to the manner born.[2] Hence the German settler's idea of what constituted a safe distance from the lake ports within which to open a farm differed from the Yankee's idea. There is one striking illustration of that difference. Along the Illinois boundary from Lake Michigan westward was the strip of prairie and openings twenty-four miles wide and seventy-eight long which was divided into Racine and Kenosha counties (on the lake), Walworth, and Rock. We have already called that region the new Yankee Land and have seen the Yankee farmers spread over it with seeming disregard to distance from the lake ports, each being intent rather on finding an ideal combination of desirable kinds of land. The three divisions of the strip contained almost equal numbers of Yankees—these people evidently believing that canals, roads, plank roads, and railways would come to them when needed, while a good farm location once lost was gone forever; and being willing also, until such improvements should come, to haul their crops sixty or seventy-five miles to market. Not so the few Germans who entered this Yankee Land prior to 1850. More than four-fifths of them were in the section nearest the lake (Racine and Kenosha
