fiction, more accurate than - well, fiction

On Friday, I read a book called The William Henry Letters, from 1870 or thereabouts. Toward the end, William Henry writes to a friend that “I guess I should like to go to Kansas. But there are the Indians after your scalp, and fever and ague, and grasshoppers, and potato-bugs, and bean-bugs, and army-worms to eat up everything, and droughts to dry up everything, and floods to wash it away, and hurricanes to blow it down, and Uncle Jacob says if a man comes through all these alive, with a few grains of corn, the man that wants to buy ‘em is a hundred miles off!”
Srsly, that’s the whole Little House series, right there. I mean, I don't remember the potato-bugs, bean-bugs, or army-worms, and I do remember some leeches and maple syrup on snow, but aside from that, this author predicted a surprising number of events - even the fever and ague!