68 



THE FARMER'S MONTHLY VISITOR. 



can but barely produce the necessaries of liCe, and 

 that many turn aside with disgust frum tb.e bles- 

 sings tliai surround them, to gild with brilliant 

 colorinn-3 the i'airy fields in the fancied paradise of 

 the West. To such the argument would be mat- 

 ter of surprise that we possess the most highly 1-a- 

 vored region upon the earth ; and that it requires 

 but the c'ultivation of oui intellectual and physical 

 resources to demonstrate the proposition. To an 

 inhabitant of the Western prairies visiting us for 

 the first time, it would be a subject of speculation 

 that we could live, lie would discover little but 

 what he would term a barren waste ; and wonder 

 that man should cultivate rocks when he could 

 have fields of rich alluvion : or subsist upon the 

 scanty pittance of a flinty soil, when he as well 

 might congregate with liis fellow man upon the 

 hariiors of the ocean and luxuriate upon the treas- 

 ures of commerce. He might spread the gilded 

 shadow of ease and lu.xury before us, and in the 

 delusion of the moment we might be surprised to 

 tliink that our fathers should have chosen this as a 

 heritage for themselves, or left it as a patrimony 

 for their children. Vain illusion ! Although the 

 Western alluvions are fertile beyond the dreams of 

 the visionary, yet disease and death lurk unseen in 

 their turbid waters, and are spread abroad in the 

 tainted breezes of their atmosphere. With less la- 

 bor required, man possesses far less capacity to La- 

 bor, for the nerves are unstrung to harmonize not 

 alone with a milder rlimate 'but with tlie miasm that 

 surrounds and fills it. There the moral and phys- 

 ical energies of man are changed, and the sudden 

 influ.t or rapid increase of wealth on the one hand, 

 and of misery and degradation on the other, lead to 

 their concomitant vices, idleness, cft(.nninacy, and 

 dissipation. And though virtue may e.xist, its 

 growth is checked by the rank weeds of vicious 

 propensities; its resolves are violated ; its energies 

 cramped ; and it more generally falls a victim to 

 the contending passions it can neither govern or 

 destroy. 



In a" moral point oi view labor is our greatest 

 blessing ; and for this very reason a mountain life 

 becomes the greatest conservator of morals. La- 

 bor is as essential to the purification of the heart 

 as to the cultivation of the soil ; and industry uni- 

 ted to economv, both essential to the existence of 

 a mountain life, is the palladium of virtue, the 

 guardian of health, and the foundation of happi- 

 ness. 



For many of the virtues we pofsscss we are cer- 

 tainly indebted to the scenery that surrounds us. 

 Associated ideas not only operate powerfully upon 

 our innigination, but stamp their impress upon our 

 being. An elegant writer says that in studying 

 the pages of history, he would point to the contem- 

 platioifof the virtues of mankind and not to their 

 vicesand crimes. Tiie last too, frequently serving 

 as the model and apology for the most flagrant de- 

 viations from justice and rectitude. In vaiu has it 

 been ursed the resuUiug evils are suflicient to 

 teach mankind to avoid them. "There is," says 

 he, "a profound truth in the moral as well as the 

 natural world, to which suHicicnt attention has not 

 been paid ; that the pictures of vice and disorder 

 leave dangerous impressions, and serve less to dis- 

 suade from the practice of evil, than to fauiiliarize 

 us to the view and to hard'Mi us in the c.veicisc by 

 the excuse which the e.\-ample furnishes." And 

 we may rest assured the best means of incul- 

 cating and preserving virtue, is to withhold from it 

 the images of vice. 



If we apply this maxim to the natural world, we 

 perceive at once the relative advantages of our sit- 

 uation — that our mountain barriers lead not alone 

 to the contemplation, but become the guardians of 

 virtue; and while they debar ns from the higher 

 luxuries, Ihe^- at'the same time shut out the darker 

 vices of mankind. 



So true has itever been lield that a mountaindife 

 was favorable to virtue, morality, and religion, that 

 the ancients located their Gods and Goddesses up- 

 on the summit of 01ympus,and asserted tkat when- 

 ever they chose to practise the vices of mankind, 

 (to wnich indulgence by the way they were rather 

 too much inclined) they at least descended into the 

 plains below. .\nd if mountaiu scenery is favora- 

 ble to purity of morals, it is no less so to the pre- 

 eervation of liberty. The mediocrity of fortune 

 'Consequent upon the limited sources of wealth ev- 

 ery where prevents that accumulation of treasure 

 in one or a few associated individuals which leads 

 to exclusive and illegitimate power. Thus it was 

 in Greece, in Wales, in the Scottish Highlands, 

 and thus it is in Switzerland and North America. 

 Where now are the spendid empires of the plains of 

 which Babylon, Ninevah, Persepolis, Palmyra and 

 Bagdad were the capitals ? Perished and gone for- 

 ever. And while revolutions have swept over the 



political, like deluge torrents over the natural I tario, when the departing sunbeams cast their gov 

 world, the mountain's have generally been left uu- geous shad<'s of green and gold over its surface — 



scathed, and their inhabitants have become the po 

 litieal as well as mor.il renovators of the earth. 

 And if in the march of lime, war, civil or foreign, 

 should sweep with the besom of destruction over 

 this land ; level our seaports and cities to their 

 foundation, and lay wastethe rich plantations of 

 the West and South, Liberty will still erect her al- 

 tar in the mountains and' continue the existence of 

 that celestial fire which to the mountain shall burn 

 forever. And if the rnind of man is controlled by 

 its exterior relations in the contemplation of the 

 sublimity and grandeur of nature, no wonder the 

 associations of prudence become identified with 

 our existence where all around is beautiful and 

 free. 



Cut if the moral and political influence of moun- 

 tain scenery is strongly marked and impressive, its 

 physcal effects are still more so. iVlont Vernon 

 and Monticello are proof that the physical and 

 moral energies of man are or may he in some mea- 

 sure dependent upon local situation.' It is gener- 

 ally known that the pure air and the limpid water 

 iif the mountain operate to give beauty to the form 

 and energy to the constitution. We constantly 

 witness examples in ourown country. In Scotland 

 and Switzerland it has given a marked deveiope- 

 ment to the human form. But in all these coun- 

 tries modifications have arisen, owing to the con- 

 tingencies which governed them. It is in Asiatic 

 Georgia and Cii'cassia alone, and amidst the endur- 

 ing snows rf tlic Caucasus, that the utmost per- 

 fection of the iiiinian form exists. They are uni- 

 versally as a nation remarkable for the beauty of 

 their features and the elegance of their persons; and 

 that their physical energies correspond with their 

 external beauty, Russia can witness in her late con- 

 tests with them. And whether it is owing to the 

 happy temperature of their lives, to the beautiful 

 scenery around them, or an attention to the origin- 

 al laws which improve and elevate the species, or 

 to the whole of these combined, the result has beeii 

 that whereas in other nations beauty and elegance 

 are of rare occurrence, in Circassia and Georgia 

 homeliness and deformity are unknown. 



In many respects the White and Green moun- 

 tain ranges differ perhaps from all others in the 

 known world. They arc purely of primitive ori- 

 gin, while most others are thrown up through the 

 transition secondary or tertiary strata. Wc iiave 

 not ev^n the organic remains of the transition pe- 

 riod, and hence the search lor coal which is now 

 knov>'n to be in every instance vegetable matter 

 acted upon by the united agency of heat and pres- 

 sure, is equally' futile and hopeless. But primitive 

 rocks contain the most valuable ores, and in our in- 

 stance their surface is covered almost to the sum- 

 mits of our liighest mountains with a productive 

 soil and with a beautifully varied vegetation. The 

 world prodnc.es not a spot where the air is more 

 pure, the water more clear and limpid, and the 

 scenery tnore wild and beautiful, where the hu.-nan 

 foot can move with more boldness and less danger. 

 The wolf and lanimermuir of the Alps— the tiger 

 and condor of the Andet — the cougar and rattle- 

 snake of the Alleganies are not here. The asso- 

 ciations of childhood and youth become a part of 

 our being, and it is only where they are disruptur- 

 ed by irautition, that we realize their existence. 



Place a mountaineer upon the prairies, and he 

 longs for the scenery of his youth ; he returns to 

 behold with rapture beauties of landscape which 

 he had before passed with careless indirterence. 



I have passed the magnificent gorge of the Wliite 

 Hills, and viewed with enthusiasm the wild sublim- 

 ity around nie. I have entered the defile of Fran- 

 conia, and viewed witli astonishment and admira-, 

 tion the Old Man of, the Mountain and his wild do- 

 main. I have scaled the summit of Mount Wash- 

 inn-ton, and at one time beheld the thunder cloud 

 at'the base far below me, the lightning playing 

 over its surface, and a briliiant sun irradiating the 

 sky. Again 1 viewed from its summit the valley 

 of the Connecticut spread out like a map before 

 me ; the rays of light reflected by a dark cloud that 

 hung upon the Green mountains brought into dis- 

 tinct view the streams, the cottages, tiie fields, the 

 villao-es, the hill.-f and rallies, the waving forests and 

 the vast amphithfatre of mountains .supporting 

 the blue vault above and around me ; I felt that 

 the sublime and beautiful were here blended 

 upon a scale never to be surpassed, and hallowed 

 by a thousand associated ideas of fond remem- 

 brances never to be forgotten. 



1 have stood on the shores of the ocean and con- 

 teinplateij, the vast and almost illimitable world of 

 waters before me, and viewed in imagination the 

 innumerable ships and vast navies that float upon 

 lior 'oosom. 1 have sailed upon the waters of On- 



trau-icendantly beautiful — far beyond the most 

 splendid drapery of tlie imagination. Finally, de- 

 scending into the awful chasm of Niagara, I have 

 approached in a frail bout the tremendous cataract 

 of the Western seas, until repelled by the rolling 

 surges of its abvss, T was admonished that nearer 

 a]iproximalion might be death. No person can de- 

 scribe the sublimity of this scene — its grandeur is 

 overwhelming — and the vast display of magnifi- 

 cence and power presented at a single glance to 

 our view show.s how.puny are the efforts of man 

 compared with the omnipotence of God. But with 

 the ocean, with the lake and with the cataract 

 were associated in my mind the ideas of loneliness, 

 of solitude — almost of desolation. I longed for 

 the early visions of lifi', fbr that play of light and 

 shade upon the mountain scenery of my native 

 land. I felt what I had not learned before, that 

 the impress of external objects had stamped their 

 seal, of loveliness upon the heart and shaped the 

 visi(uis of ideality in the brain ; and that the culti- 

 vation of the intcllectii il faculties of the mind and 

 the physical energies of the body alone were wan- 

 ting to make me the happiest of the free. 



And now permit me to ask, where shall we find 

 a soil more productive with a climate equally salu- 

 brious .' where shall we breathe an atmosphere more 

 invigorating, or drink of fountains more pure' 

 wliere shall we behold scenery, more sublime, beau- 

 tiful and good, surrounded with less evils or expo- 

 sed to fewer dangers.' Of the nioral and physical 

 evils we do sufl'er, lew are consequent upon locali- 

 ty — some are contingent — but many are created by 

 our vices and perpetuated by our ignorance. We 

 constantly violate the laws of organic life; and 

 shall we complain that the degeneracy of the spe- 

 cies and the ill health and early dissolution of the 

 individual should be the consequence .' or shall w'e 

 value less the nuinberhss blessings which surround 

 us because the harmony of the intellectual with 

 the physical world is comparatively unknown? 

 Certainly not. 



And now imagination finishes her erratic flight, 

 droops her ■wings and closes her pinions. If in a 

 solitary instance I have awakened the slumbering 

 energies of the inind from indifference to eontem- 

 plation,*tho object of my withes is obtained. Cut 

 if I have failed in exciting the love and admiration 

 of our commnnity ; if I have failed to recal the 

 wandering visions of the wayward spirit to the 

 loveliness of our own home, and the value of our 

 own clime, it is owing to t!ie imperfection of my 

 language of description, not to the want of excel* 

 lence in the theme, or the stimulus to enthusiasm 

 in p'jrtraying the beautiful scenery around us. 



1 



Troai t)io 'j\'niiegri:ie Farnifir. 

 Why and Bccanse. 



in. MATTER. 



Definition. Matter is a term used to denote 



that, which, by reason of certain properties, is man- 

 ifest to our senses. 



There arc usually reckoned five senses, viz : feel- 

 ing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and hearing. Mat- 

 ter has certain properties, by which, when in mo- 

 tion, it is manifest to some one of these senses. — 

 Thus, the motion of matter in coniact with the ex- 

 ternal surface of our bodies, produces the sensation 

 of touch or feeling. The motion of particles of 

 liii-ht, produces sijrht. The motion of odorant par- 

 tides, produces smell. The motion of sappient 

 particles, produces taste. The motion of the at- 

 mosphere, or some other conducting medimn, pro- 

 duces hearing. 



M. Properties of Matter. Matter has two classes 

 of properties, viz : Substantive, or Universal, and 

 .liljcctire or Incidental. 



The .'iubstanlire properties are, extension, figvri:, 

 inijienelrabililij, divisibilit)/, inertia and attraction. 

 So far as we know, every particle of matter in the 

 universe, pos.sesses all these properties; hence 

 they are called suhstanlicc or universal properties. 



The .'Idjeetive or Incidental properties are, liard- 

 ne.i.', Utiui'ditii, trnacitij, ductilitij, malleability, ser- 

 tiliti/,siiiabilitii, fasibil/ly, lu.itre, njtacitit,transpu- 

 rencii, iyc. No portion of matter ever has all these 

 properties at once. They are subject to constant 

 variation ; hence are called .'Id^cciirc or Incidcnlal 

 propeities. 



3. Modes of existence. Matter exists in three 

 forms, viz : Solid, Lir/uiil and Fluid. 



a A S.lid is a body, whose particles cohere to 

 each other firmly. Ex. A bit of chalk, wood, iron, 

 &c. 



/; A Liquid is a body, whoso particles slightly 

 cohere, but yield readily to impression. Ex. Wa- 

 ter, milk, oil, Ac. 



