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cabin on it and sold me a forty acres, for twenty dollars, when I could pay him. This was timbered land and had lots of good trees for lumber, especially walnut. One tree on this ground was worth one hundred~llars, if I could only get it cut and marketed, I could pay for my land! iffy master‘s wife had been dead for several years and they had no children. The nearest relative being a nephew. They wanted my master‘s land and was afraid he would give it all away to us slaves, so they killed him, and would have killed us if we had stayed at home. I took my mother and ran into the adjoining, Claire County. We settled there and stayed for sometime, but I *anted to see Kansas, the State I had heard so much about.“ -

	‘II couldn‘t get nobody to go with me, so I started out afoot across the prairies for Kansas. M~ter I got some distance from home it was all prairie. I had to walk all day long following buffalo trail. At night I would go off a little ways from the trail and lay down and sleep. In the morning Pd wake up and could se~ nothing but the sun and prairie. Not a house, not a tree, no living thing, not even could I hear a bird. I had little to eat, I had a little bread in my pocket. I didn‘t even have a pocketiaiife, no weapon of any kind • I was not afraid ‚ but I wouldn ‚ t start out that way again . The ohly shade I could find in the daytime was the rosIn weed on the prairie. I would lay down so it would throw the shade in my face and rest, then get up and go again. It was in the spring of the year in June. I came to Lawrence, Kansas, where I stayed two years working on the farm. In 1874 1 wen4~ to work for a man by the month at 35 a month and I made more money than the owner did, beoause the grasshoppers ate up the