432 POOR SOILS OP MASSACHUSETTS. 



might be allowed to give way to other considerations. 

 Besides removing a foolish objection from the mouths of 

 foreigners, it would open up a branch of profitable rural 

 industry to many of the richer soils of our islands. 



The country through which the railroad runs from 

 Boston to Lowell consists of metamorphic or altered 

 rocks, and is covered with a poor, sandy, and granitic 

 drift. It offers a specimen of the general character of 

 the surface of Massachusetts, unpropitious, for the most 

 part, to the labours of the agriculturist. From the first 

 settlement of the province, indeed, the foreign popula 

 tion, employed in rural affairs, has been struggling with 

 the difficulties of nature. Finding here and there a few 

 more productive spots, they first occupied these, and 

 from them, as so many centres, have gradually en 

 croached upon the more difficult places, and have cleared 

 and tilled large breadths of land, upon which both much 

 energy was required to overcome the difficulties of na 

 ture, and much patience and perseverance to maintain 

 the soil under productive crops. Nevertheless, out of 

 the 4,500,000 acres which the State contains, 2,000,000 

 are still in forests, or naked, and reckoned unimprov 

 able. 



To this general poverty of the soil is probably, in a 

 great measure, due the tendency to traffic, to shipbuild 

 ing, and to seafaring adventure, for which the State is 

 distinguished. While the land held out few promises of 

 profit, the original abundance of timber for building 

 ships, and the numerous creeks which indent the coast, 

 gave facilities for commerce by sea which have gradually 

 collected the great mass of the population along its Atlan 

 tic borders. 



But though thus, from necessity, a trading rather than 

 an agricultural country, still the natural difficulties of 

 the soil caused early inquiries to be made in reference to 

 agricultural improvement 5 and, as far back as 1792, a 



