POOR SOIL AROUND IT. 4G3 



The wages of farm-labourers in this district vary 

 from 12 to 18 dollars with board, and averages about 

 16 dollars a month. There used to be plenty of hardy 

 fellows from Vermont who are to Massachusetts what 

 the Highlanders used to be to Glasgow and Edinburgh, 

 the Dalecarlians to Stockholm, and the Westphalians to 

 Holland who were content with 10 or 12 dollars a 

 month ; but California has carried off many of these, and 

 of other workpeople as well, and has thus raised the 

 wages of those who remain. Labour is, therefore, in 

 little request among the farmers of the region around 

 Plymouth. Many think it more profitable to allow the 

 ancient forests to spring up again than to continue to 

 till it. Many even plant pitch-pine, (pinus tceda,) 

 mixed in some better places with white-pine and scrub- 

 oak, where poor grain-crops used to be reaped. The 

 trees grow rapidly at first, and are cut down, like our 

 copses, at the end of about twenty years, chiefly for 

 firewood. 



I visited the Pilgrim Hall, and looked at the relics of 

 the settlers who came over in the May Flower, though 

 the brevity of my inspection rather shocked the religious 

 feelings of the old devotee to whose care the cold room 

 was consigned. The old grave-yard of the forefathers 

 had more interest for me, and the site of the ancient 

 church, and the hill-top from which they so frequently 

 looked seaward for supplies, and the spot on which the 

 old fort stood, where they so often feared and awaited 

 the attacks of their Indian neighbours. 



The old grave-yard, where the bones of the earliest 

 Saxon settlers in New England have mouldered to dust, 

 is now covered by ambitious slabs of white marble, 

 mingling their youthful colours with the sombre hues of 

 the dark gray flag-stones, which mark the heads of the 

 oldest graves. It is still a public cemetery, in which any 

 one may claim a right to be buried; but the simple 



