192 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



records published, as well as by the oral testimony of northern resi- 

 dents. The cause of it may probably be found in the less inequality 

 in length between the days and nights, the longest days of summer 

 being nearly an hour shorter than ours, and the nights correspond- 

 ingly longer. The sun has therefore less time to accumulate 

 results of torrid heat than with us. The water, moreover, is excel- 

 lent, whether in wells or in the abundant springs that everywhere 

 burst out in valleys and hillsides, feeding the pebbly and sparkling 

 brooks that abundantly water every farm and, I had almost said, 

 garden in the hill country. 



Fuel is abundant, excellent and cheap. Indeed, the primitive 

 forest appears yet to cover at least one-half of the whole country, 

 giving it the look of a comparatively newly settled state. One 

 other marked virtue of North Georgia is the excellent roads, as 

 good there in mid- winter as here in mid-summer. Frost adds little 

 permanence to mud, and a few hours after a rain, the roads ap- 

 peared to be in general hard and smooth. 



The price of land seems ridiculously low, ranging from two dol- 

 lars to fifteen dollars per acre, according to the improvements. The 

 farm of three hundred and three acres, containing the two forty- 

 acre orchards above referred to, and in other respects one of the 

 best I saw, excellently watered and timbered, with a good surface, 

 and fair to good soil, but indifferent buildings, and located only 

 eighteen miles from the capital of the state, two and one- half 

 miles from Marietta, and within eighty rods of the railroad joining 

 the two cities, was offered to me for less than fifteen dollars per 

 acre. The title was unquestionable, and the annual taxes aggre- 

 gated three-fourths of one per cent., on a low valuation — less than 

 in the rural township of Rock county where I now reside. 



It may be asked, What of the people? A residence of a month 

 is doubtless too short to qualify one to speak with certainty or au- 

 thority of the characteristics of the people of any particular 

 locality; but I certainly found no reason for doubting the general 

 accuracy of the following conclusions, drawn from my observations 

 and inquiries: 1. The intelligent, educated, property- holding class, 

 who usually give direction to social and political sentiment in any 

 community, are sincerely desirous of rebuilding the prosperity of 

 the state, upon the sincerely accepted basis of the Union. 2. They 

 lack the energetic, practical business characteristics of northern 



