58 BUEL FARM. 



In the industrious and lower ranks of life I observed slower 

 mastication, and greater politeness and attention to each other 

 at table than what is generally met with at fashionable hotels. 

 The former frequent boarding-houses, not very plentifully 

 supplied with waiters, or female helps, and they consequently 

 assist each other in carving, and other duties of the table, 

 while they have fixed hours of relaxation from business, afford 

 ing ample time for eating, whereas commercial men, and other 

 people who are not laboriously employed, eat at table with 

 numerous attendants, and at short intervals snatched from 

 business. Therefore, the traveller in America who draws an 

 inference from W 7 hat he witnesses at the public tables of 

 hotels, unfavourable to the manners of the lower ranks of the 

 inhabitants, does them injustice. 



At Saratoga we tasted the different mineral waters, so de 

 servedly celebrated, and next morning travelled to Albany 

 by the railway. The soil over which we passed was unpro 

 ductive sand, with exception of the banks of the Mohawk, 

 in the vicinity of Schenectady. Betwixt Schenectady nd Al 

 bany, the plains of the railway exhibited sand of fifty feet 

 deep, having a thick covering of small pine-trees. 



I was fortunate in finding Mr Buel at home, so well known 

 as a farmer throughout the Union. I walked over this gen 

 tleman s grounds on my first visit to Albany, and enjoyed the 

 same privilege a third time in October. The surface is highly 

 undulating, the soil inferior sand, and extremely wet, though 

 capable of being drained. Notwithstanding these disadvan 

 tages, some good crops were seen, more especially Indian corn 

 and Swede turnip, the latter having been sown after a hay 

 crop, with bone manure, manufactured by Mr Buel himself; 

 and the state of the farm is, perhaps, one of the most striking 

 instances in America of man overcoming the sterilities of 

 nature. 



Some attempts had been made at enclosing with hedges, 

 consisting of American and British thorn, as well as locust. 

 The hedges were not of sufficient age to enable me to judge 

 of the fitness of the last-mentioned plant for farm purposes ; 

 but I certainly did not augur favourably of it, from the spe 

 cimen before me. The American thorn was preferred by 



