SOLON ROBINSON, 1849 247 



A Flight Through Connecticut. 



[New York /I we Wean Agriculturist, 8:321-22; Oct., 1849] 



[July 10, 1849] 



Immediately after leaving the noise and confusion 

 of that great "Babel," known as New York, and even 

 before I was fairly out of the purlieus, I saw large tracts 

 of land, that, notwithstanding its iron-bound, rocky na- 

 ture, if cultivated, even with a tithe of the care that John 

 Chinaman bestows upon his soil, it might be made to 

 yield a good support to thousands of the poor creatures 

 that are dragging out a miserable existence in the filthy 

 courts and alleys of the city ; while here, within an hour's 

 walk, lie thousands of acres of productive soil, where the 

 healthy atmosphere is such as God gives to the moun- 

 taineer, instead of that made for human lungs by the 

 inhuman folly of man in the dark, damp, city cellars, 

 where the spirit of cholera finds the seeds already sown 

 that will produce him an abundant crop. 



Much of the land above referred to is covered with 

 bushes, or miserable little half-starved patches of culti- 

 vation, or with shanties that are a degree, at least, be- 

 low the western log cabin. And this is within the sound 

 of the City-Hall bell. And this is "the age of agricultural 

 improvement, is it? The country where we give thou- 

 sands of dollars annually in premiums for the exhibition 

 of the fattest bulls and boars, and daily proclaim to the 

 world what a great improving agricultural country 

 this is! 



But let us proceed. What do we see along the line of 

 railroad towards New Haven? Why the same old stone 

 walls and rickety rail fences, bush pastures, bog mead- 

 ows, alder swamps, stony fields, and scanty, because un- 

 manured, crops, that were to be seen in the same places 

 fifty years ago. Have these people ever heard of the 

 fact that they might purchase an article called "guano," 

 which has a similar effect upon land that is attributed to 

 manure? 



