36 



licli, seventy feet long, containing fifty-two hills with two eyes planted in 

 each liill, wliicli yielded nine hundred i)Ounds. From this you can see 

 that if potato-raising- was made a specialty in this Territory, with a 

 reasonable market, or even cheap freighting facilities, it would be very 

 remunerative. 



STOCK I^' DEER LODGE COUNTY, MON^TAXA. 



Beer Lodfje Coioity, Montana. — This is eminently a grazing and stock- 

 raising county, in proof of which 1 will give a few facts. First. The 

 beeves now in the shops of this town are too fat to be good beef, being 

 almost as much tallow as meat. Second. These beeves were driven in otf 

 the range, (or prairie,) and butchered, and never were fed in their lives. 

 Third. Two-year olds weigh net from 000 to 700 pounds; three-year 

 olds weigh net from 850 to 1,000 pounds; four-year olds weigh from 

 1,000 to 1,200 i^ounds net, and beef of all sizes does not lose more than 

 o8i per cent, in dressing. 



SORGHUM IN ARIZONA. 



Fah-Ute County, Arizona. — Our cane crop is now pretty generally har- 

 vested, yielding an average of 175 gallons of molasses to the acre; the 

 best yield being 225 gallons to the acre, grown by R. I. Cutler and E. 

 Twitchel. B. Roberts produced from 14 rods of cane 45 gallons of 

 molasses. 



COTTOX AS A SURPLUS CROP. 



The folly of planting all cotton, and buying all farm supplies, was ex- 

 hibited on an extensive scale before the war, and has been abundantly 

 exemplified since : 1. It is a precarious dependence ; it is carrying an 

 entire stock of very fragile eggs in one basket over exceedingly rugged 

 roads. 2. It involves heavy expenses for transportation and commis- 

 sions on Imlky supplies for men and animals of the farm. 3. It pre- 

 vents the adoption of any system of rotation and the most economic 

 means of fertilization. It is a folly that in 18GG and 18G7 plunged thou- 

 sands of struggling i^lanters into utter bankruptcy. 



The Avisdom of the opposite course is well illustrated by the following 

 extract from a letter written by a representative of a very large class, 

 who found themselves at "the surrender" without money or a business, 

 or the means of living — in this case a man with a large family of small 

 children, Calvin C. Jones, of Wetumpka, Alabama: 



I will now give you the liistory of my proceedings from the surrender to the present 

 time. At the suiTender I had ninety dolhirs in hard money. There were ten of us in 

 family, inyBelf, wife, and eiglit children. I had no provisions, but had two horses and 

 one himdred and sixty acres of poor pine land — plantation gone down. I went to work 

 for what we could eat, as it was too late in the ye.ar to try to make a crop. Tlie 1st of 

 .January, 18Gt), I went to work to make a croj). I tt)ok my hard money and bought 

 provisions with it, and i)laiited all my land, aljont fifty acres, in com and jjease. My 

 neighbors wanted to know why I did not jilant cotton; they said they could raise 

 cotton enough on one acre to buy as much as would grow on live. I told them that 

 tlie lirst thing with me was something to eat and then I would raise some cotton. 

 It proved to be a bad crop year, but I raised corn and pease enough to make my 

 meat and to do me for the year 1867. I tlien planted about half my land in cotton 

 and the balance in corn and pease. I made five bales of cotton, and com and pease 

 and meat enough to do me for the year 1808. I then sold my poor land for $600, 

 in three jjaymeuts, and bought a plantation ou the Coosa River, ten miles above We- 



