124 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



The settlement of our inland towns was almost analogous 

 to that. It is but a short time since I visited a great bowlder 

 in the town of Grafton, under the lee of wliich the first white 

 man passed the winter ; and it was under these circumstances, 

 — and I mention the fact, simply because the history of the 

 first settlement of that town is precisely the same as the his- 

 tory of scores of other towns, not only in Massachusetts, but 

 in New Hampshire, and, I suppose, in other States, — the first 

 white man went up from Marlborough to Grafton through the 

 woods. There were gunners and venturesome scouts in those 

 days, as there have been since, and they went off long dis- 

 tances through the forests ; and wherever they found a large 

 open swamp or marsh (what we call " meadows " m this part 

 of the State), with a luxuriant growth of swale-grasses, they 

 marked that spot. This man had gone up in the summer, and 

 had found what he called "Broad Meadow;" and he was 

 so well pleased with the luxuriant grasses, that he went up 

 and cut and stacked them ; and in the fall he drove his cows 

 up there, and kept them on the hay which had been cut in 

 the summer. He drove them up to prevent them from starv- 

 ing, and to secure for himself the means of carrying his cows 

 through the winter. This is a single isolated case ; but there 

 are hundreds of others, where, if the facts were known, 

 you would find that the existence of large swale-meadows 

 accounts for the fact of the first settlement, and for the fact 

 that one locality was settled before another whose natural 

 advantages you would suppose were greater. These bog- 

 meadows, or swale-lands, were considered, in the early days 

 of the colonies, the most valuable part of the farm itself. 



The early settlers sowed no grass-seed, I say, for some 

 years. They had not been accustomed to it. The first Eu- 

 ropean dwellers upon these shores had to endure untold hard- 

 ships, privations, and danger. They found a climate which 

 they had never known before, a soil which the foot of white 

 man had never trod, and natural productions with which they 

 were not acquainted. The people in England, from which 

 they emigrated, had not been accustomed, at that time, to grow 

 and cut grasses for hay to any thing like the extent that they 

 have come to practise it since then. Red clover was not in- 

 troduced into England as a cultivated plant until some years 

 after the Pilgrims had left there ; and white or Dutch clover, 



