Chap. IX.] Food and Raiment. 181 



316, Besides the great quantity of work performed 

 by the American labourer, his skill, the versatility of 

 his ialent, is a great thing. Every man can use an aare, 

 a saw, and a hammer. Scarcely one who cannot do 

 any job at rough carpentering, and mend a plough or 

 a wagon. Very few indeed, who cannot kill and 

 dress pigs and sheep, and many of them oxen and 

 calves. Every farmer is a neat butcher; a butcher for 

 market ; and, of course, " the boys " must learn. 

 This is a great convenience. It makes you so inde- 

 pendent as to a main part of the means of housekeep- 

 ing. All are ploughmen. In short, a good labourer 

 here, can do any thing that is to be done upon a farm. 



317. The operations necessary in miniature cultiva- 

 tion they are very awkward at. The gardens are 

 ploughed in general. An American labourer uses a 

 spade in a very awkward manner. They poke the 

 earth about as if they had no eyes ; and toil and muck 

 themselves half to death to dig as much ground in a 

 day as a Surrey man would dig in about an hour of 

 hard work. Banking, hedging, they know nothing 

 about. They have no idea of the use of a bill-hnok, 

 which is so adroitly used in the coppices of Hampshire 

 and Sussex, An axe is their tool, and with that tool, 

 at cutting doum trees or cutting them up, they will do 

 ten times as much i)i a day as any other men that I 

 ever saw. Set one of these men on upon a wood of 

 timber trees, and his slaughter will astonish you. A 

 neighbour of mine tells a story of an Irishman, who 

 promised he could do any thing, and whom, therefore, 

 to begin with, the employer sent into the wood to cut 

 down a load of wood to burn. He staid a long while 

 away with the team, and the farmer went to him fearing 

 some accident had happened. " What are you about 

 all this time!" said the farmer. The man was hack- 

 liig away at a hickory tree, but had not got it half 

 down ; and that was all he had done. An American, 

 black or white, would have had half a dozen trees cut 

 down, cut up into lengths, put upon the carriage, and 

 brought home, in the time, 



318, So that our men, who come from England, 

 must not expect, that, in these common labours of the 



