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CHAPTER TWELVE Two Colonials young Britons, Walter and James Cowan, exactly fit William Close's notions regarding recruits for his colony. Their letters home, most of them now in the special collection of the London School of Economics library , constitute the largest and most complete record of what it was like to be a gentleman settler in Iowa. The Cowans were grain merchants of Edinburgh. Richard, the boys' father, was not only a director of the Bank of Scotland but justice of the peace for Midlothian before he retired to the south of England, hence to become a keen follower of his sons' pioneering ventures. Their mother came from a genteel family of painters and line engravers. I The four Cowan sons were educated at Winchester, the eldest receiving a commission in the army and serving in India, eventually as a major. The second son shipped out to New Zealand with the intention of settling there but died by drowning. Walter, the third son, failed to receive an army commission ; so in the spring of 1882 he traveled to Canada to see about locating there or in Iowa. His schoolmate, Gerald Garnett, was already happily residing in the Close Colony. In Toronto Walter met the captain of the Winnipeg cricket team, once a navy officer but now in farming, who warned Walter against being swindled into buying the wrong sort of land. After a brief look at Manitoba and a few weeks in the Close Colony on the Garnett farm, he returned home. The following year Walter, age twenty-four, and his brother James, nineteen (who also failed to get an army commission), emigrated to the States. \1V'alter knew too much about the pup system to consign himself and James blindly to such a procedure. Instead, they hoped to make private tutorial arrangements with a landholder, with the help of Garnett.2 On 10 April 1883 Walter wrote his mother from the Prairie Club in Le Mars: We drove out to Garnett's farm, which is 25 miles off, and I am very proud of having been able to find my way across the tractless waste, as I had only been over the ground once before. We took our bearings by the sun and struck N. West till we reached him. He was very glad to see us and made us very comfortable, Jem [James Cowan] quite enjoying his first experience of farm life. Garnett has got some very nice pupils now and with them and some other friend of his we made quite a merry party. ... J 156 Two Colonials 157 No single British farmer had pupil openings for both brothers, however. In the long run Walter figured this might be an advantage, since the experience each would gain would vary. James apprenticed himself under H. J. Price, a former master at Cheltenham, and Walter went to James Watson, who enjoyed the luck of having his old nanny serve as housekeeper. The Watson farm was only three miles from Garnett's, the Price establishment a few miles beyond that. Walter felt deeply indebted to Garnett for what he had done for them. "Our great advantage is having no Americans on either farm. We both of us have good homes, good food, and English gentlemen to associate with, and 'what could you wish for more?' Both Price and Watson have taken us as extra hands and this being so and considering the comfort we are to enjoy, I am quite willing to agree to Gerry G.'s arrangement and pay for our board." The charge would be three or four dollars per week. "I hope that ... when we have proved ourselves good hands they will knock this off, but I do not grudge paying for comfort when I know that I get my money's worth. It is a very different matter to paying a large premium in advance, and we are much more independent." In response to a query from their father as to whether California might not be a more suitable place to locate, Walter replied on 13 May 1883: My present impression is that Jem and I could not do better than go in for raising pigs in this pan of the country. Jem when at home seemed to have rather a prejudice against the porkers, but I fancy he has changed his mind rather since he has seen more of them. I cannot understand why more fellows don't go in for them on a...

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