RURAL DEPOPULATION. 287 



cient farmer dies heavily in debt, or is sold out by 

 the sheriff: his farm is rarely divided between two 

 purchasers, while it is quite often absorbed into the 

 estate of some thrifty neighbor ; and thus small 

 farmers are selling out and moving westward much 

 oftener than large ones. Such are the obvious facts : 

 now for some of the reasons : 



I. Our State, like New England, was originally all 

 but covered by a heavy growth of forest. The re- 

 moval of this timber involved very much hard work, 

 most of which has been done in this century, and 

 much of it by the present generation. When I first 

 traversed Chautauqua County, forty-three years ago, 

 from two-thirds to three-fourths of her acres must 

 have been still covered with the primeval forest a 

 tall, heavy growth of Beech, Maple, Hemlock, White 

 Pine, etc., which yielded very slowly to the efforts 

 of the average chopper. Many a pioneer gave half 

 his working hours for twenty years to the clearing 

 off of Timber, Fencing, cutting out roads, etc., and 

 had not sixty acres in arable condition at the last. 

 Outside of the villages, the population of that county 

 was probably as great in 1830 as it is to-day, though 

 the annual production of her tillage was not half what 

 it now is. Her farms are now made ; her remaining 

 wood-lands are worth about as much per acre as her 

 tillage ; there is now comparatively little timber-cut- 

 ting, or land-clearing ; and two-thirds of the pioneers, 

 or their sons who inherited their farms, have sold out, 

 or ~been sold out, and pushed further westward. 



