The drainage of the flat now runs off through a great open ditch which I combined with my neighbors to have dredged through by a floating dredge in 1897.

The barge set in two miles above me, and after it had dug itself down so as to get water in which to float, it worked its way down to the river eight miles away.
The line of this ditch is now marked by a fringe of trees; but in 1855, nothing broke the surface of the sea of grass except a few clumps of plum trees and willows at the foot of the opposite slope, and here and there along the line of the present ditch, there were ponds of open water, patches of cattails, and the tent-like roofs of muskrat-houses.

I had learned enough of the prairies to see that this would be a miry place to cross, if a crossing had to be made; so I waited for Henderson L.to come up and tell me how to steer my course.
"This is Hell Slew," said he as he came up.

"But I guess we won't have to cross.

Le's see; le's see! Yes, here we are." He looked at his memorandum of the description of my land, looked about him, drove off a mile south and came back, finally put his horse down the hill to the base of it, and out a hundred yards in the waving grass that made early hay for the town for fifteen years, he found the corner stake driven by the government surveyors, and beckoned for me to come down.
"This is the southeast corner of your land," said he.