THIRTRRXTH ANNUAL MRRTING. 



33 



have taken rough land, know I am in it to a certain extent, 

 to such an extent, in fact, tliat a distinguished brother from a 

 neighboring State said, "Air. Hale is either a damn fool or 

 crazy ;" and your Pomological Society last summer endorsed 

 that opinion. It leaves me in the position of the colored man 

 in court. Senator Bacon tells the stor}^, and he says his first 

 case was defending a negro for stealing chickens. The colored 

 gentleman was on the stand, and the opposing lawyer said to 

 him rather sharply, ''Are you the defendant in this case?" 

 "No, sah," said the scared negro, "I ain't the defendant, I'm 

 the fellow what stole the chickens." In this case, I am the 

 fellow what stole the chickens. 



My experiments in this line date back some seven or eight 

 years ago, when a rough piece of land was offered me and I 

 refused to take it at any price. I had been tilling land easily 

 ploughed and easily cultivated, with only a moderate amount 

 of stones ; but later, needing more land, I bought this tract 

 and cleared away the stone walls, and planted it, and found it 

 not so difficult after all. Then, in connection with my friend, 

 Coleman, I bought a share of two abandoned farms, having 

 sixteen fields, divided by stone walls and then sub-divided by 

 rocks every fifteen feet each way. We had quite a time, I tell 

 you. The land was quite well broken up with ploughs, but it 

 was a difficult matter to till it. No modern implements of 

 torture would work that soil at all, and so some improvised A 

 harrows were made out of white oak that grew outdoors, by 

 that I mean trees that grow out in a field by themselves ; if you 

 w^ant to have good white oak, get that kind. And then we used 

 Bessemer steel teeth. After that we went over the land. You 

 will recollect, I asked this Society some time ago how we should 

 till that land. There were boulders from two to five feet in 

 diameter, and anywhere from five to twenty of them in the 

 square between each tree. It did not seem at that time it was 

 possible to move those stones at a cost that would warrant the 

 outlay, in comparison with the final returns, but after another 

 year, we began one fall with, I think, eight horses and stone 

 drags, and worked from six to eight weeks with twelve or 

 fifteen men and these teams, and moved the roughest of the 

 stones ; but even then, it was hardly possible to drive on any 

 part of that orchard with a farm wagon and load. I think, 

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