74 METHOD OF FARMING. 



of farmers throughout the scene of my travels the very 

 last thing they think of is a barn, or a farm-yard or garden. 

 They leave their corn out all the winter in shocks, I 

 speak of the corn we should call Indian corn, but which 

 they call corn ; there is a less description of similar 

 grain which they call Indian corn, and only bring it in 

 as they want it. The obvious consequence of this slo 

 venly state of things is, that they lose half the crop 

 through the depredations of wild animals rabbits, rats, 

 mice, birds, their own infracting pigs, in some places 

 deer, and from the weather; 



This, however, seems to occasion them no uneasiness. 

 They have squatted in this coveted but overrated inde 

 pendence ; they have bacon to exist on and corn, and 

 corn enough besides to procure them the deities of their 

 lives (many of them have no other deity) tobacco and 

 whiskey; and so long as they can smoke, chew, and 

 splice their shattered constitutions with frequent drams, 

 assailed within and without by intemperance, and ague, 

 and fever, as the consequences of climate and decayed 

 vegetation, they care not for the unhoused corn, the safety 

 of which would occasion them too much trouble, even if 

 they turned it into dollars. 



I know not anything that is more strange to an eye used 

 to the cornfields of England than the sight of lands in corn, 

 as I saw them in those distant parts of the United States 

 where I made these observations. Let my agricultural 

 friends and countrymen fancy a large field, fenced with 

 a zigzag flight of rails, placed to rest on each other at 

 sharp angles, without a nail or a post to hold them to 

 gether, and high enough to keep out deer ; and then, in 

 an inclosure for corn thus made, let them imagine at in 

 tervals huge tall dead forest-trees, standing up like the 



