54 EXHAUSTING OF NEW LAND. 



other localities — this new land requires no manure to 

 make it yield good crops. On the contrary, the addition 

 of manure makes the grain or grass crops at first so rank 

 that they fall over, or lodge, and are seriously injured. 

 Thus, to a settler on new land, which he clears from the 

 wilderness, manure is not only unnecessary, but it is a 

 nuisance ; and hence he not only neglects the preparation 

 of it, but is anxious to rid himself in the easiest way of 

 any that may be made about his house or barns. 



Careless and improvident farming habits were no doubt 

 thus introduced, so that, when at last the land became 

 exhausted, the occupiers were ignorant of the means of 

 renovating it. Old habits were to be overcome, new 

 practices to be adopted, and a system of painstaking and 

 care to which they had been previously unaccustomed. 

 Hence, no doubt, the reason why I was almost everywhere 

 told that it was cheaper and more profitable to clear and 

 crop new land, than to renovate the old. 



Still, because of these future evils, we are not justified 

 in speaking contemptuously of present holders of new 

 land, who, being desirous of making the most of it with 

 the means at their command, waste none of their atten- 

 tion upon unnecessary manures. These men form that 

 body of pioneers in American agriculture, who, having 

 done their work in clearing and superficially exhausting 

 one tract of land, move off" westward to do the same with 

 another, selling off each farm in succession to men pos- 

 sessed of more knowledge than themselves ; whose skill 

 and industry must bring back the fertility which had 

 disappeared under the treatment of their predecessors, and 

 who have no temptation to fall off into negligent modes 

 of fiirming. 



According to this view, the emigration of this class of 

 wilderness-clearing and new land-exhausting farmers, is 

 a kind of necessity in the rural progress of a new country. 

 It is a thing to rejoice in rather than to regret, as I found 



