ll right. We saw, of course, that the company's affairs had been
badly managed, and that promised improvements had not as yet
materialized, but, on the other hand, we had learned from personal
observation that the land was good, the timber valuable, the drinking
water pure and abundant, and the climate delightful beyond description.
The most of those who returned to the States with harrowing tales either
never got as far as La Gloria at all, or else spent less than
forty-eight hours in the camp. The majority of the colonists cheerfully
stuck by the colony, and laughed at the untruthful and exaggerated
newspaper stories as they were sent down to us from the frozen North.

CHAPTER V.

THE ALLOTMENT OF THE LAND.

The chief of the immediate problems which confronted the colonists and
the officers of the company was the allotment of the land. The company
had purchased it, or secured options on it, in large tracts, some of
these tracts containing over ten thousand acres each. The colonists had
contracted for it in small holdings, varying from a town lot, 25 x 100
feet in size, to a forty-acre tract of plantation land. No more than
forty acres were sold to any one on a single contract. The contracts
which could be made were, respectively, as follows: Town lots, three
sizes, 25 x 100 feet, 50 x 100, and 50 x 150; plantation land, 2-1/2
acres, 5 acres, 10 acres, 20 acres, and 40 acres. The purchaser paid in
full or on monthly instalments, as he preferred, being allowed a
discount of ten per cent. for cash. According to the terms of the
contracts, he did not purchase the land at all, but bought stock in a
co-operative company and the land was a gift to him. However, the
co-operative company feature was always in the background in the mind of
the colonist, and he felt that he was buying the land and almost
invariably so termed the transaction. It was the land he had his eye on,
and his present anxiety was to have a good piece promptly allotted to
him.

At the company's headquarters in New York, no plan of subdivision had
been formulated further than a general promise in advertising circulars
to allot the land in the order of the numbers of the contracts. At first
glance, this seemed both fair and feasible, but once on the ground at La
Gloria, some very formidable difficulties loomed up. Of the four or five
thousand persons who had invested up to that time less than three
hundred were at La Gloria, and there was not in