SOLON ROBINSON, 1845 475 



character and standing of the cultivators of the American 

 soil." 



And he is one of the very few Southern planters who 

 ever read or think, or improve upon the same plodding 

 system that so generally prevails amongst those that 

 never elevate their own minds above a cotton bale and a 

 curse upon the low price that that same bale now brings 

 them. 



But to return to our subject of corn planting, which 

 is now, and as I have observed for several days past, has 

 been in actual progress in the counties north of this. 

 And the weather is much like our most beautiful May, 

 warm, dry and sunny, with an occasional thunder- 

 shower — but no frost. Peach trees I saw in full bloom a 

 week ago, one hundred and fifty miles north of this 

 point, which is about latitude 32, or about ten degrees 

 south of Chicago. The winter, (in fact they have had 

 no winter,) has been a continuation of beautiful sunny 

 days. In fact since the date of my last letter, I have not 

 had but one stormy day to hinder me from traveling and 

 the ground never frozen except a few mornings. The 

 roads in this State — which by appearance and descrip- 

 tion, are worse when bad, than any thing that ever was 

 heard of in the vicinity of Chicago, even — are now very 

 fine, excepting always the continual succession of hills 

 upon hills, that have knocked all my theory of Mississippi 

 being a State of comparatively level land, into "a cocked 

 hat," and the said cocked hat into the "middle of next 

 week." Besides the alluvial lands upon rivers, I am now 

 convinced that there is no level land in the north part of 

 the State ; and this hilly land is the most inclined to wash 

 and gulley that I ever saw. And the system of cultiva- 

 tion generally pursued is of that kind which may properly 

 be denominated the "leveling system;" and differs only 

 from the system of some politicians, that of "making the 

 rich richer and the poor poorer," that in this case it 

 makes both the rich and the poor land poorer, and the 

 owner poorer than either. 



