A typical communication was sent home in 1817 by a Marylander who had moved to Louisiana: "In your states a planter with ten negroes with difficulty supports a family genteelly; here well managed they would be a fortune to him.

With you the seasons are so irregular your crops often fail; here the crops are certain, and want of the necessaries of life never for a moment causes the heart to ache--abundance spreads the table of the poor man, and contentment smiles on every countenance."[11] Other accounts told glowingly of quick fortunes made and to be made by getting lands cheaply in the early stages of settlement and selling them at greatly enhanced prices when the tide of migration arrived in force.[12] Such ebullient expressions were taken at face value by thousands of the unwary; and other thousands of the more cautious followed in the trek when personal inquiries had reinforced the tug of the west.

The larger planters generally removed only after somewhat thorough investigation and after procuring more or less acquiescence from their slaves; the smaller planters and farmers, with lighter stake in their homes and better opportunity to sell them, with lighter impedimenta for the journey, with less to lose by misadventure, and with poorer facilities for inquiry, responded more readily to the enticements.
[Footnote 10: _E.g_., the Washington, Ky., _Mirror_, Sept.

30, 1797.] [Footnote 11: _Niles' Register_, XIII, 38.] [Footnote 12: _E.g., Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), March 11, 1836.] The fever of migration produced in some of the people an unconquerable restlessness.

An extraordinary illustration of this is given in the career of Gideon Lincecum as written by himself.