AND WHEKE TO FEND ONE. 123 



It remains for me to apply it to the subject in 

 hand. I have intimated that a man desirous of ob 

 taining upland and meadow, ready for the plough 

 and the scythe, would be incredulous if told that he 

 could do better by purchasing a swamp. Unless he 

 comprehended the foregoing law, or had seen it 

 illustrated, or had had it clearly explained to him, 

 it is natural that he should be confounded at the 

 proposition. It would seem to him like asking for 

 bread and receiving a stone. But his object is not 

 only to get a farm, but to get the best one, and at 

 the lowest price. 



Now, we know that the best land is always to be 

 found in the swamp. There grows the heaviest 

 timber, there vegetation shoots up with the rankest 

 luxuriance, there the dark mould, which we call soil, 

 is uniformly the deepest. It has been accumulating 

 there for ages. Rains have washed down upon it 

 the rich soil of the surrounding hills, for centuries 

 before the white man had trodden them. The for 

 ests that covered them have showered upon it their 

 annual wealth of leaves ; and winds have blown to 

 it, from other woods, additional stores of foliage. 

 Decay of the living and the dead has been going on 

 without interruption. The original depression has 

 become filled, many feet in depth, with a deposit so 

 rich that the owner sometimes spreads it over his 

 grounds, half suspecting it to be manure. It is, in 

 fact, a mass of fertilizing matter of uncounted value. 

 No intelligent man can doubt it. 



But the owner is ignorant or neglectful. He con 

 siders it only as a swamp. In his family it has had 



