48 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



enclosed, and a road cut for a way out, be should have a lease for twenty-one years at thirty 

 dollars a year rent. I soon found a tonaut, and thus far I tau report the experiment emi- 

 nently successful. It has been two years in cultivation. The tirst year was chiefly devoted 

 to clearing, or rather girdling the trees, fencing, breaking up the ground, and building his 

 house and barn; but, nevertheless, several acres were cultivated, and yielded a very lair crop 

 i»f corn. Last year, the ground being tolerably well cleared of roots and uuderbrueh, 

 the trial commenced. The summer was unusually dry; scarcely any rain fell for three 

 months ; but the soil being new, and a humid atmosphere, w^ich always prevails in the dense 

 woods, keeping the heated air cool, the crops grew vigorously ; and when the harvest came, 

 my tenant had the pleasing satisfaction of being able to report he possessed ihejinest crop of 

 corn in the district. Even on our bottom lauds there was nothing superior. 



" I have since visited another spot, although not quite so isolated, where similar results 

 were obtained. This small trial shows very conclusively that if immigration is judiciously 

 encouraged, and land-owners induced to bo more liberal in their concessions to the industrious 

 laboring classes, thousands of acres of our back forest lands may be brought into a profitable 

 state of cultivation, thus creating a new field to agricultural enterprise, increasing our popu- 

 latiou, reducing our taxatiou by distributing its burden over a greater number of contributors, 

 and materially augmeuting our nation's wealth, prosperity, and greatness. Many persons 

 will be inclined to remark: 'This is all very well in theory, but in practice will it pay?' 

 Now let us see. These lands, on an average, can be purchased for less than $4 per acre. 

 Fifty acres, then, cost $200. Add five years' interest on this before any rent is received, which 

 is $ijO, and $40 for miscellaneous expenses, making $;J00. The rent on this, at $30 a year, 

 (which is about half of what is usually asked,) produces ten per cent. Now these lauds I 

 speak of are mineral lands, and as soon as the country is intersected with railways, (which 

 we all hope it soon will be, ) then every acre in proximity to such lines will be worth from $25 

 to $100." 



CLIMATE. 



A study of the causes affecting the climatic condition of West Virginia will 

 be found interesting. In its latitude, lying as it does mainly between 37° and 

 40° north, it is neither suggestive of hyperborean blasts in winter, or a torrid 

 temperature in summer, of pent-up valleys, blockaded with drifted snow and 

 solid ice for weary mouths, or sweltering plains, parching and baking under a 

 brazen sky. It has neither the saturated and leaky canopy that overhangs old 

 England, or the rainless sky of a California summer, but a pleasant medium, 

 giving a covering of snow in winter just suflicient to protect the grass and grain, 

 a rainfall in seed-time ample for the proper preparation of the soil, and a dimin- 

 ished supply in gentle showers during the later growth and ripening of vege- 

 tation. Its mountains, unlike those of Europe, or the Rocky mountains in the 

 west, do not very materially affect the conditions of climate, except to re- 

 duce the temperature in proportion to altitude. There are local differences, to 

 be sure, the result of peculiar position, but the interior valleys of the Alleghanies 

 have nearly the same temperature as the broad slopes ou either side, and these 

 opposite slopes scarcely differ in their climatic peculiarities. Unlike the moun- 

 tains of Europe, however, the Alleghanies in this latitude have less rain than 

 the plains below. 



ALTITUDE. 



The average altitude of the highest summits is 2,500 feet in this section of 

 the Alleghany range, increasing southward. The upper valley of the Kanawha, 

 instead of being an arid desert like the Colorado and other elevated plateaus, is 

 luxuriant in verdure, differing comparatively little in humidity and temperature 

 from the Atlantic coast and the Ohio valley in the same latitudes ; indeed, the 

 elevation of the Kanawha is but 2,500 feet in southern Virginia near its source, 

 descending more than one hundred miles before it bursts its Alleghaniau barrier 

 in Monroe county. West Virginia, where it ranges between 1,800 and 1,300 

 feet, thence rapidly falling to little more than 600 feet at the foot of the falls 

 near the mouth of the Gauley, whence it flows gently, with the slight descent 

 of a few inches to the mile, to the Ohio river. The following table exhibits the 

 elevation of the Alleghanies and their slopes in this section of that great moun- 

 tain range : 



