1883.] ADDRESS OF H. M. SESSIONS. 299 



experiment can be better reported upon hereafter than to-day. 

 We had also forage crops, raised more especially to keep cows. 

 Thei'e is no chance for cows to graze, there being no grass in that 

 section of the country, the hard clay preventing grass from stand- 

 ing the summer heat. We raise the grains, millet, and sorghum. 

 We cut three crops of sorghum from the same roots of amber 

 cane for feed for cows, and large quantities of millet, and rye, and 

 clover, were raised and dried for feed. We dried crab grass, also, 

 for feed, which is the knot-grass of our gardens, coming up, and 

 heading out in mid-summer with a three-forked flower spike. It 

 is very prolific there, and, when dried, makes fair feed for cattle. 



The soil is a red clay, washes very easily in the rains, more from 

 negligence than anything else. For the past ten or twenty years, 

 the water has been allowed to run in the same places, and of 

 course large gullies are made. The ground is cut up with rifle- 

 pits extending around the city two-thirds of the way on a double 

 line, half a mile apart, and on every hill there are earth works, 

 which either remain as they were at the time of the war or have 

 been leveled by the improvements of the city, and where a well 

 was dug forty feet deep twenty years ago, it is the same as it was 

 when it was dug, never having been stoned. The walls are per- 

 fectly hard and perpendicular. They cut holes in the sides of a 

 well for persons to chmb up and down when they wish to clean 

 out the well. That was a great marvel to me, how it could be 

 that the soil could be excavated and a perpendicular wall would 

 remain for years. The clay dries in the sun, like bricks in a 

 brick-yard, that are dried in the sun before burning. The soil, if 

 worked when wet, will harden, and ten years will not eradicate 

 the evil effects of it by breaking the lumps, and when it is too 

 dry, it cannot be plowed any more than a macadamized road. 

 So we jump at our chance to plow and hoe between the rains, 

 the showers, and the drouths. It is very difficult to manage in 

 that v/ay. When I first went there, I thought that a man would 

 surely starve to death if he undertook to get a Hving by farming 

 around Atlanta. But I have altered my mind, because I have 

 raised the best crops I ever saw grow anywhere, with thorough 

 cultivation and plenty of manure, which I get in the city. They 

 hardly know what to do with it. I can buy it for fifty cents a 

 load, half a cord to the load, and can get a great deal for simply 

 drawing it away. * 



