OUR SOIL, OUR 'CLIMATE, OUR CROPS. 39 



Established residents on the alluvial soil of the Connecticut 

 Valley removed and settled on the mountain ridges of Hawley ; 

 men of competence, living securely in settled communities 

 here, removed, often alone, into the unbroken and malarious 

 forests of middle and south-western New York, to Ohio and 

 other States of the Great Valley, where, to make a home, re- 

 lentless war must be waged with the aborigines ; and to-day, 

 prairie land is being deserted for the naked, rainless region of 

 the plains. 



It is not because Massachusetts is not a good home for a 

 farmer, that such hard words are spoken of it, and so many of 

 its sons emigrate ; but it is in most cases because the emigrant, 

 in obedience to the law of his nature, must have change, must 

 explore new localities, must have a variation of circumstances 

 either for better or worse ; and some there are so variable, that 

 if their location was in Paradise, they would soon conclude that 

 by a little exploration they could find a clime better suited to 

 their wants and desires. Now, what are the advantages neces- 

 sary for a successful, prosperous agriculture ? First, we must 

 have a soil capable of producing food-plants in sufficient abun- 

 dance to repay the labor of cultivation. It is said our soil is 

 etsirle. Was it so originally ? Could a sterile soil have pro- 

 duced and supported the dense, grand old forests which our 

 fathers found here, extending from the sea to the Hudson ? 

 Were the alluvial bottom lands of our valleys, — of the Con- 

 necticut, the Housatonic, the Merrimack, and a score of others, — 

 the line, sweet loam of our foothills, sterile ? It is impossible. 

 Those stately forest trees, — the oak, the walnut, the maple and 

 the elm, — sent their roots into a soil rich in the elements of fer- 

 tility. Tbese valleys yielded to their first cultivators sixty-fold 

 of the cereal grains, and our hills were carpeted with a thick 

 covering of the most nutritious milk and flesh-forming grasses. 

 Until an immense manufacturing population gathered here, 

 making a great preponderance of consumers, this soil fed and 

 clothed its people, and produced a surplus for exportation. But 

 some one says, that might be true of our State when first 

 settled ; yet now our soil is sterile in consequence of improper 

 cultivation, and many an old homestead is deserted, and its 

 fields are being rapidly restored to forest. This last I grant, 

 and rejoice in consequence of the fact ; for many a rocky 



