186 



HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE. 



Part I. 



notice some of the leading peculiarities of North American agriculture, as resulting 

 from national, political and civil circumstances. 



1138. The natural circumstances of lands not under culture , chle^y affect the com- 

 mencement of farming operations. In general, the lands purchased by settlers are. 

 underwood, which must be felled or burned, and the roots grubbed up ; a laborious 

 operation, which, however, leaves the soil in so rich a state, that it will bear heavy crops 

 of grain, potatoes, and tobacco, with very little culture, and no manure for several years. 

 Sometimes they are under grass, or partially covered with brushwood, in which the 

 operation of clearing is easier. In either case, the occupier has to drain, where neces- 

 sary ; enclose with a ring fence, if he wishes to be compact, to lay out and make the 

 farm road, and to build a house and farmery. The latter he constructs of timber, 

 sometimes plastered with neatness and taste, as in England, (^Jig. 1 90. ) but generally 



190 



with logs and mud, as in Poland and Russia, 



nerally forms his fences, though thorn and other live hedges are 



planted in some of the earlier cultivated districts. 1 



1139. The usual practice of settlers with capital, may be very well exemplified in 

 the case of Birkbeck. This gentleman having purchased an estate of 1440 acres, 

 in the Illinois, and fixed on that part of it which he intended as his future 

 residence and farm. " The first act was building a cabin, about two hundred 

 yards from the spot where the house was to stand. This cabin is built of round 

 straight logs, about a foot in diameter, lying upon each other, and notched in at 

 the corners, forming a room eighteen feet long, by sixteen ; the intervals between 

 the logs ' chuncked,' that is, filled in with slips of wood ; and ' mudded,' that is, daubed \yith a plaster 

 of mud : a spacious chimney, built also of logs, stands like a bastion at one end : the roof is well covered 

 with four hundred clap boards of cleft oak, very much like the pales used in England for fencing 

 parks. A hole is cut through the side, called, very properly, the 'door, (the through)' for which there is 

 a ' shutter,' made also of cleft oak, and hung on wooden hinges. All this has been executed by contract, 

 and well executed, for twenty dollars. I have since added ten dollars to the cost, for the luxury of a 

 floor and ceiling of sawn boards, and it is now a comfortable habitation." 



114(). An example of a settler who began with capital only sufficient to pay the first instalment of eighty 

 dollars of the price of 160 acres of land is given by the same author, who had the information from the 

 settler himself. Fourteen years ago, he " unloaded his family under a tree," on his present estate ; 

 wl^ere he has now two hundred acres of excellent land, cleared and in good cultivation, capable of pro- 

 ducing from eighty to one hundred bushels of Indian corn per acre. The poor emigrant, having col- 

 lected the eighty dollars, repaired to the land-ofl[icc, and entered his quarter section, then worked his way, 

 without another * cent' in his pocket, to the solitary spot, which was to be his future abode, in a two-horse 

 waggon, containing his family and his little all, consisting of a few blankets, a skillet, his rifle, and his axe. 

 Arrived in the spring : after putting up a little log cabin, he proceeded to clear, with intense labor, a 

 plot of ground for Indian corn, which was to be their next year's support ; but for the present, being 

 without means of obtaining a supply of flour, he depended on his gun for subsistence. In pursuit of the 

 game, he was compelled, after his day's work, to wade through the evening dews, up to the waist, in long 

 grass or bushes, and returning, finds nothing to lie on but a bear's skin on the cold ground, exposed 

 to every blast through the sides, and every shower through the open roof of his wretched dwelling, 

 which he does not even attempt to close, till the approach of winter, and often not then. Under these 

 distresses of extreme toil and exposure, debarred from every comfort, many valuable lives have sunk, 

 which have been charged to the climate. The individual whose case is here included, had to carry the 

 little grain he could procure twelve miles to be ground, and remembers once seeing at the mill, a man 

 who had brought his corn sixty miles, and was compelled to wait three days for his turn. Such are the 

 difllculties which these pioneers have to encounter j but they diminish as settlements approach each 

 other, and are only heard of by their successors. 



1141. The ])olUical circumstances of the United States affect the agriculturist both as to 

 the cost of production and the value of produce. It is evident that the want of popula- 

 tion mu.st render the price of labor high, and the produce of land low. In this 

 Parkinson, Birkbeck, Cobbett, and all who have written on the agriculture of America, 

 agree. "The simple produce of the soil," Birkbeck observes, "that is to say, grain, 

 is cheap in America ; but every other article of necessity and convenience is dear in 

 comparison. Every service performed for one man by another must be purchased at a 

 high rate, much higher than in England." The cheapness of land affords the posses- 

 sion of independence and comfort at so easy a rate, that strong inducements of profit 

 are required to detain men in the condition of servitude. Hence the high price of all 



