LETTER, APRIL 20, 1884, KNOXVILLE, ARK.
Dear brother, I got back from Madison county yesterday. It is the roughest place I ever got into. There are nothing but mountains and they are just covered with rocks until you can't hardly see the ground. They have to pile the large rocks in piles before they can plow at all. Then it is just the tops of the mountains that will do to cultivate at all. The sides are so steep that they could not be plowed at all. If there were no rocks on them and no one has tried to cultivate them that I know of, but the tops ae now mostly cleared off and the mountains look right baldheaded, and lots of them look like they could never be got at except with a balloon. Of course there are some little creek bottoms, but they are all taken up 20 years ago, I guess, and now sell at about $20 or $25 per acre. The springs I heard of up there are just in the roughest parts of the mountains and then they are down in the hollow. While the houses are all on top of the mountains and the springs are therefore of but very little use and they all dig wells. Taking all things into consideration I did not think there was any possible chance of getting any land up there that I would take if a man was to clear it and give it to me, so I came back here and now I don�t know what to do if you do, I wish you would tell me. I don�t know of anything else to write about now. From your brother, W. H. BrownTranscribed and submitted by Betsy Smith