Note 185 — Chapter VIII · A STARTLING DISCLOSURE. (continued 3)

And even now, for one or two dollars an acre, fertile land can be purchased in the vast extent of country watered by the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Arkansas, etc.—that land which Bonaparte sold to the United States in 1801 for ten million dollars. Kentucky produces in abundance all sorts of grain, especially corn, and also sweet potatoes, tobacco, cotton, flax, hemp, and indigo. In the month of February the inhabitants tap the maple tree, in order to procure a liquid which they boil until it is reduced to syrup or sugar. The wild grape-vine grows to the height of thirty or forty feet, but the grapes are small and the wine acrid; moreover, Americans do not understand the culture of the vine.