result was that a proposition to subscribe $30,000 was submitted to the people. The election was held and carried, and the $30,000 was to be subscribed on condition that the money so voted should be expended within the limits of Daviess county. As the road was located through the tier of counties below, it was never called for. The election cost the people one hundred dollars. The railroad fever again broke out as early as 1863, even before the close of the war. This time it assumed proportions that gave hope that before it abated the iron horse might come snorting over the prairies and woodland of the county in triumph. The Chillicothe & Des Moines City, which changed to Chicago & Southwestern, and still later to the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, was the first road to take practical shape and to promise gratifying results. The history of this road forms a very interesting chapter in the progress of Daviess county, and a full account of its progress and final success will be found full of interest to future generations and to many even of this day. It requires energy and perseverance to accomplish any good work, and fortunately for Daviess county she was blessed with a good many of that kind of people. The Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific road enters the county at the northeast and passes out at the southwest corner, giving direct connection with Chicago and the seaboard on the east; Kansas and the great southwest on the other side. The St. Louis, Kansas City & Northern Railroad, enters the county at the southeast corner and runs northwest to Omaha. These trunk lines are owned and operated by rival corporations and crossing each other at right angles, at Gallatin, the county capital and center, give active competition for the carrying traffic of the county, an advautage which is available to every producer and shipper in Daviess county, and one which few districts in the State can boast. In fact the county is placed by this railway system in close sympathy with a cordon of commercial cities, among which are Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, St. Joseph, Hannibal, Lincoln, Omaha, Quincy, and a score of lesser market towns, all of which are brought, for commercial purposes, to the door of every stock and grain-producer in the county. The St. Louis, Kansas City and Northern gives direct communication with St. Louis on the southeast, and is the main line from San Francisco via Omaha. It is now called the St. Louis, Wabash & Pacific, and, like the first named road, runs diagonally across the county, giving splendid railroad facilities to the people, advantages not to be despised by the immigrant when looking up a home. These two roads, which traverse the county from southeast to northwest and from northeast to southwest are two grand trunk lines between St. Louis and San Francisco, and Chicago, New Mexico and the South Pacific coast. Thus it is found that Daviess county is really blessed with three great lines of railroad, and there never was opened to the expectant immigrant a more inviting field for the exercise of his powers than Daviess county. It is the conviction of men well informed, that rich coal measures underly nearly the whole surface of the county. This hidden wealth invites immediate development. With coal, stone, vast forests of fine commercial timber and plenty of waste water-power, no part of the west offers a better opening for cheap and favored homes. The wealth of the people attest the great resources of the county, and if not seen in costly residences, it can be found in full granaries and lowing herds. They have stamped their enterprise and thrift upon every feature of the county, and everybody expresses a wish for more immigration. More people, capital, brain, muscle and heart, are wanted to buy these rich lands, build homes, rear herds, develop water-power, engage in commerce and manufacturing, and bring into human service the latent wealth of field, forest and stream. LANDS AND VALUES. There are plenty of cheap lands in Daviess county, and the reader of these pages a quarter of a century hence will be surprised that in the year 1881 open prairie lands, of excellent quality, were selling at five to ten dollars per acre, and good improved lands at ten to twenty-five dollars per acre, and that timbered lands were in the market at about the same value as the unimproved prairie. Over one hundred thousand acres of land are for sale in this county, and at such prices that a poor man can soon make a home and a competency. When it is understood that these lands are as fertile and productive as the best; that they are in the midst of beautiful improved farms, school-houses, mills, churches, railway market towns and fine society, and that they must appreciate in value 200 per cent with the next decade; that they lie in a county that has no debt save that made for railway building, provision for the final payment of which is made in the valuation and assessment of railway property itself, the immigrant will see that these lands are vastly cheaper than those now selling 300 miles further west upon the untried plains. SEEING IS BELIEVING. To see this county and measure its resources of climate, its physical features, soil, timber, prairie, grasses, stone, and its water-power, will give any sensible traveler full faith in its present prosperity and future greatness. There is no doubt about the future of Daviess county. Its vast grain fields, increasing herds, pretty towns, matchless landscapes, and boundless agricultural resources, not less than its clear skies, bright, falling waters, life-giving, health-inspiring air, and intelligent people, are the admiration of all who come and look for themselves. A great destiny is in store for this county and people, and the time is not distant when there will be fifty thousand souls solving the problem of life within its ample and inviting borders. A county whose great destiny is hard to conceive, yet plain enough to understand that it will be one of unbounded wealth with an energetic and progressive people. CLIMATE. "There is, perhaps, no one subject so little understood as that of the climate of this country. It is entirely unlike the Atlantic and Mississippi Valley States. Judged by the climates of the States in the same latitude and at the same altitude, four-fifths of this larger division of our country would be uninhabitable from snows and frosts. "On the Atlantic coast, on the White and Alleghany mountains, the perpetual snow line is or would be, seven thousand feet above the sea. In the same latitude on the Rocky Monntains the snow line is from twelve to fourteen thousand feet above. "The terminal line of vegetation on the White Mountains is five thousand feet; on the Alleghany Mountains it is five thousand five hundred feet; on the Black Hills, at Sherman, eight thousand and two hundred, and still higher points, as high as nine thousand feet, are covered with a luxuriant growth of grass. "Strawberries are picked on the Snowy Range to the height of eleven thousand feet, and evergreen trees grow to the tops of the highest mountains, which are over fifteen thousand feet high. The great table lands and the elevated plains and valleys of the mountains such as North, Middle and South Parks, and the Laramie plains, are one and two thousand feet above the tops of the Atlantic coast range mountains, and in the same latitude, are as mild as the Atlantic sea level. "There must be some powerful influence to make such wonderful differences on the same continent. 66 England, in a latitude of sixty-two degrees, has a warmer climate than Long Island in forty degrees, Nova Scotia, forty-five degrees, is nearly frigid in temperature, while in France, in forty-nine degrees north latitude-four degrees farther north-is vine clad. While the inhabitant of Nova Scotia reclines in the shade of his vine and shivers over his fire, the Frenchman fig tree. eternal waters of the Gulf Not only is the climate on "The climate of Europe is tempered by the Stream, which has been heated in the tropics. the immediate coast directly influenced and changed by the Gulf Stream, but the winds warmed by it give the vine, the ivy and the geranium to the Seine, the Rhine and the Elbe, and even invade the realms of the winter king on the sides of the lofty Alps, the Ural, the Appenines, and the Pyr enees. "Thus it is here. The western coast of our continent is washed by a tropical stream greater and warmer than the Gulf Stream, and which makes |