500 AGRICULTURE IN MASSACHUSETTS. 



prises four and a half millions of acres, less than a 

 million are said to remain unimproved. The traveller 

 possessed of an agricultural eye, who has crossed fifty 

 miles of the State in any direction from Boston, would be 

 surprised to learn that so large a proportion of such a soil 

 had been improved by so small a population in the short 

 space of two or three centuries. He would be able, how 

 ever, to account for so much having been nominally 

 done, when the same instructed eye had taught him how 

 very different a meaning the word improved has in the 

 mouth of a Massachusetts, from that which it conveys to 

 the ears of a Lincolnshire or Aberdeenshire farmer. 



Poor light sands and gravels form the staple soils of 

 the Connecticut valley. Where tributaries join the main 

 stream, or flats occur in which ancient lakes have stood, 

 richer materials fall to the lot of the cultivator, and crops 

 of abundant broom-corn and luxuriant maize as in the 

 valley of the Mohawk reward his labours. But rude 

 ness still prevails, and infantile husbandry almost every 

 where swamps undrained, thickets uncleared away, 

 and wet land swarming with rushes. The age of rural 

 improvement, in our home sense of the term, has 

 scarcely yet opened among these remoter tillers even of 

 New England soil. 



Where the Deerfield river joins the Connecticut, rich 

 and extensive flats occur, and very beautiful scenery. I 

 could have wished for leisure and summer weather to 

 have spent a couple of days in exploring this neighbour 

 hood, its natural beauties, and the numerous terraces of 

 varying width which rise in steps above the beds of both 

 these rivers. 



Greenfield is a small town, new, straggling, and 

 unfinished, as all these country towns are. It is the 

 county town, and the seat of the courts of the County of 

 Franklin. One of the persons of whom we were in 

 search, Mr Marsh, was in attendance as doorkeeper at 



