144 CULTURE OF BROOl^I CORN. 



with the flour of the present season. On the uplands 

 and slopes, sand and gravel prevailed, and there buck- 

 wheat and Indian corn were cultivated. The low allu- 

 vial flats or intervales, of which many occurred in the 

 bottom of the valley, bore heavy crops of Indian corn, 

 (maize,) and of broom corn — a crop unknown to our 

 home farmers. 



The valley of the Mohawk, when compared with the 

 more western parts of the State, is distinguished agri- 

 culturally by its production of these two kinds of com ; 

 while the western counties, from the Oswego Hiver to the 

 Genesee River, and onwards even to Buffalo, form the 

 wheat region which, under the name of the Genesee 

 country, attracted so much attention as an eligible place 

 of settlement towards the close of the last century. 



Sixteen miles above Schenectady we passed the town 

 of Amsterdam, above which the Mohawk River runs for 

 a great many miles through the Utica slate. This slate, 

 an upper part of the lower Silurian rocks, is calcareous, 

 crumbles very readily under the influence of the weather, 

 and forms a rich, clayey, yet free and open soil. It is 

 when flowing over this formation that the Mohawk Val- 

 ley expands into extensive flats of great beauty, now 

 on this side of the river and now on that, where apple 

 orchards abound, and fields of Indian and broom corn 

 cover the rich alluvial soils. 



Of these two crops, the broom corn [Sorghum saccha- 

 ratum) was the most abundant for ten miles above and 

 below the Little Falls of the Mohawk. To the eye of 

 a stranger, who sees it for the first time, it resembles 

 a crop of Indian corn ; it is nearly of the same height 

 and strength of stem, but it has a narrower leaf and 

 a branching head. This head or top is the only part 

 which is collected. When the fruit first appears, this 

 long head, which bears the seed, is bent down at a 

 right angle about two, or two and a half, feet from the 



