THE FARMER'S MONTHLY VI SITOR. 



101 



Port anil York are two of the oldest settled towns 

 of the county, beinff eacli more than two hundred 

 years old. It is said that either of them within 

 their present limits, and both situated on the sea, 

 contains a greater quantity of growing wood and 

 timber than any other town of the county of York. 

 Villages depreciate: farms do not. 



It is gratifying to learn that in all the mutations 

 of business— the fall of commerce and trade and 

 manufactures in some places [and the building of 

 ihem up in others— the price of productive, well- 

 impiovcd farms in very few instances depreciates. 

 This fact should afford the highest encouragement 

 to the perseverance and industry of the farmer. 

 If his course is onward in the marcli of improve- 

 ment, there can be little danger of the country. 

 Our opportunity to see the improvements at Ken- 

 nebunk was not so good as we had wished. Our 

 time was only two hours after sunrise on the Gth 

 July ; and all the time the atmosphere was envel- 

 oped in a dense fog. The soil about the village of 

 Kennebunk especially near the Mousum river, is 

 deep and rich loam resting on a subsoil of clay 

 (perhaps marl)- this is natural to the production 

 of herdsgrass, and red top, which is there probably 

 the most'' profitable crop. The ligliter and more 

 vsllow soil is better adapted to Indian corn and 



clover. Potatoes and hay here, as in most towns 

 on the seashore and marginal rivers, are the grand 

 crop for the thrifty Sinners. These are shipped to 

 the south in great quantities and return generous 

 payment fur the farmer's labors. The opportuni- 

 ty of obtaining dressing from the sea, of which ev- 

 ery good farmer avails himself, is a privilege which 

 has raised the production of thousands of acres 

 four fold, and increased the value of the land three 

 for one. 

 An experiment of the Buckthorn Hedge. 

 The readers of the first volume of the Visitor 

 will remember that the subject of Hedge Fences 

 was introduced to them through the intervention of 

 Barnabas Palmer, Esq. of Kennebunk. At the 

 invitation of this gentleman at Alfred, we made 

 his house our home during the short stay at Ken- 

 nebunk. A farm of eighty acres of good land, 

 which has been run down in the hands of succes- 

 sive occupiers, has by him been recently purchas- 

 ed. This farm is situated short of one mile out of 

 the village, on the main road leading to Portland, 

 and fronts on that road about one hundred rods, 

 running back some two hundred rods on a trans- 

 verse road leading to Alfred. Mr. Palmer has plan- 

 ted on these two roads forming the outside of his 

 farm almost a mile of Buckthorn Hedge. It has 

 been set more than a year— has been wintered over, 

 and presents such an uniform exuberance as we 

 have never before seen in any transplanted trees. 

 This hedge is composed of the common Buckthorn, 

 a plant frequently Feen in our herbiaries. For 

 these plants Mr. Palmer paid in Salem the price of 

 seventy-five cents the hundred : he might have 

 procured other kinds, which he deemed inferior, at 

 twenty-five cents Ibe hundred. The English Haw- 

 th.irn and some other kinds are subject to the bor- 

 er—they are destroyed and disappear in a few 

 years. Some of them will grow to a perfect fence 

 in a shorter time than the Buckthorn. This re- 

 quires five years; and there will be no great sur- 

 prize that this kind of fence is not more generally 

 resorted to when this circumstance is considered ; 

 for how few are the farmers who can afford to look 

 ahead for the erection of a permanent fence five 

 years, at the same time this is growing to maturity 

 beino- oblio-ed to keep up another fence in front to 

 protect it f For the two first years Mr. Palmer has 

 ruUivated his Buckthorn hedge with as much care 

 as would be taken of a young apple or peach or- 

 chard ; he breaks the ground and hoes it as he 

 would hne corn or potatoes. His expectation is, 

 whun the hedge is grown to maturity, that without 

 much further trouble or expense it will make a 

 most perfect and valuable fence that will last lon- 

 ger than the age of iilan. The whole expense he 

 believes will not exceed sevent-five cents to the 

 rod 



twenty-two. . .- -. , . ■ i . i 



rich healthy green herbage, and the unitorm heiglit j ers in 

 at which it grows, impresses us with the belief that , track, 

 it will well succeed in the northern section of New 

 England. 



Trees by the roadside. 

 Nothing strikes the traveller as more beautiful 

 when he approaches a village or a house surround- 

 ed with farm buildings than rows of trees oh the 

 side of the highway. Mr. Palmer has anticipated 

 this adornment of a fiirm which he will double and 

 perhaps treble in value in the course of a very few 



production, by transplanting rows of trees on each 

 side of the highways fronting his premises. On 

 hia farm we had the pleasure of seeing several a- 

 cresof the Brown corn, the seed of which he pro- 

 cured from us; and although a portion of this, as 

 did his other corn, failed to spring out of the ground 

 in consequence of the excessive drought, it was not 

 unpleasant to learn from him that our corn went 

 ahead of the other kind both in size and in pros- 

 pect of early maturity. 



Wells. 

 We took at eight o'clock the stage at Kenne- 

 bunk, and between that time and six o'clock in the 

 evening in stage to Newburyport and in rail road 

 cars from thence to Boston, travelled the distance 

 of ninety miles. Our progress was much too rajiid 

 to trive us the benefit of a particular agricultural 

 sur°vey. It was pleasing to see the change which 

 had taken place in the town of Wells since passing 

 it in the summer of 1816. The plains of that town 

 over which the great eastern mail road runs were 

 barren and dreary. Much of tliem has changed 

 in aspect. We saw as fine fields of corn as we 

 have any where seen on some of what was form- 

 erly dry and barren grounds : the potatoes and 

 arass were also luxuriant. The inhabitants of 

 Wells, most of whom formerly depended entirely 

 on fishing, and many of whom are fishermen as 

 well as farmers, liave found a mine of wealth in 

 the bosom of the ocean— they cover their land 

 with seaweed and decayed muscle shells; and this 

 accounts for the present rich deep green of their 

 fields. 



York, and other seaboard towns. I 



The town of York, situated westerly from Wells 

 and nine miles easterly of Portsmouth— much of 

 whose face like that of Kittery, New Castle, and 

 Rye, has been forbidding from its frequent ledges, 

 its grey and grisly aspect, its savins flattened by 

 the^sea wind and 'its barberry bushes which spring 

 up, as has been supposed, to blight the grain-- 

 agreeably surprised us for the fertility many of its 

 enclosures exhibited. Side by side of the most 

 sterile pastures tlie luxuriant herdsgrass waved 

 with a crop of two to three tons to the acre, and 

 the corn and grain crops were as good as we had 

 ever seen. The mail stage took a course nearer to 

 the sea than the main travelled road and passed 

 throu'Th the ancient seat of government for the 

 wholiT province of Maine, the village of York. 

 Between that town and Kittery on the main road 

 is an elegant grove in a pasture on either side of 

 the w-ay^consisting entirely of beech. We have 

 no recollection of before seeing this beautiful tree 

 a native of so ne.ar a point as within two or three 

 miles of the sea. The towns in Maine adjacent 

 to the Piscataqua river, Kittery, York and Elliot, 

 exhibit naught less of the improving system, than 

 the towns of Newington, Portsmouth, Rye, Green- 

 land, the three Hamptons, and Seabrook, on the 

 New Hampshire side, extending to the line of 

 Massachusetts. 



The Drought. 

 The effects of the extreme dry season to the dis- 

 tance of many miles north of Boston in early July 

 of the present year are worthy to be noted. At Al- 

 fred, in the linht grounds about the village, the 

 .rrou'nd was parched and dry equal to any thing we 

 had seen. At Kennebunk, ten miles south of Al- 

 fred, and from that place to Poitsmouth, the her- 

 bage was not withered by drought. Again leaving 

 PoT-tsmouth through Rye, the Hamptons and Sea- 

 brook to the north bank of the Merrimack river, 

 the trround was parched almost as bad as at Alfred. 

 From Newburyport, through Newbury, Rowley, 

 Ipswich, Wenham, Beverly, Salem, Lynn, Sau- 

 gus and Chelsea to East Boston, there was an al- 

 teration from severe drought to moisture sufficient 

 to keep up a fair green upon the fields. But out of 

 Boston on the plains of Cambridge and West Cam- 

 bridne, the drought again was severely felt. The 

 dift'erence between the several places is to be par- 

 tially accounted for in the showers of ram which 

 have frequently succeeded each other in different 



from the ground this season. The excavat.oji of 

 the new rail road, which when completed may car- 

 ry tlie passengers sixty miles from Portsmodth to 

 Boston in three hours, was approaching its con>- 

 pletioii. It passes the Hampton and Seabrook mar- 

 shes considerably nearer to the sea than that great 

 undertaking of forty years since the "Hampton 

 Causeway," which was long an oppressive mo- 

 nopoly of taxation to every traveller passing over 

 the great avenue east and west, near the seacoast. 

 An immense pile of timber was gathered at New- 

 buryport for the new construction of a bridge to 

 cross the Merrimack nearest to its mouth. The 

 Eastern rail road corporation pays the proprietors 

 of the old bridge a certain sum, for which it is sti- 

 pulated that the track for their locomotive shall go 

 on a frame overhead while the ordinary toll bridge 

 is to |iass from the river bank underneath. The old 

 bridge has been torn down to leave space to build 

 the new one. The course of the rail road from tha 

 south is an excavation under ground for some dis- 

 tance under High street, a main street in Newbu- 

 ryport, where it suddenly emergis and,poised high 

 in air, passes over the Merrimack river, which sep- 

 arates the Port from Salisbury, Mass. and is nearly 

 half a mile wide. 



Wliile this bridge is constructing the travel, is 

 two or three miles up the river, where the redd 

 passes over two bridges connecting the main land 

 on either side with an island. The main bridga 

 here is constructed in a manner which we re- 

 member to have seen no where else —it is suspend- 

 ed over the river in a single arch by immense iron 

 chains : the vibration is about equal to that of a ' 

 heavy load upon a floating bridge. If the traveller 

 were not assured of safety by the previous passage 

 of others, he might suppose there was danger that 

 the bridge and all upon it would be precipitated in- 

 to the cliannel below. 



the number of plants set in that distance is 1 directions. To those who have watched their 

 The hardiness of the Buckthorn, its | course it will have been perceived that these sliow- 



successive days have followed each others 

 iving a good 



degree of wetness in some 

 places while the" cloudsliave divided and broken 

 so as to avoid the track of greatest dryness almost 

 entirely. 



New rail road and bridges over the 



Merrimack. 



The cornfields in Portsmouth and all the way in 



New Hampshire to Newburyport were very fine 



and had not o-reatly suft-ered ; but many grassfields 



that had already been mown were dried down to 



■■%. .-1- _r ^^nr-.n V. a /I nnri 



jibip Bailding^. 



At Portsmouth and Newburyport there was ao 

 activity and stir in the business of ship building 

 that we hardly expected to witness in these time* 

 of depression. The clanking of the blacksmith's 

 anvil, the sound of the hammer and the chisel 

 upon the closing up sides of the skeleton vessel, 

 the scoring of the hard sides of the knotted, nurly 

 oak timber, with the passing to and fro of the mas- 

 ter giving directions, showed either that shippers 

 were about to run mad as some others have done 

 with anticipated prosperity, or that navigation and 

 commerce is really prosperous. There are many 

 more ships than usual on the stocks at the yards of 

 Portsmouth and Newburvport. The same state- 

 ment is said to be true of IJcvcrly, Salem, and that 

 greater place than either for turning off new chips, 

 Medford, within the harbor of Boston. 



The whizzing of the rail road engine over th^ 

 new road from Newburyport to Salejn aiid froitl 

 that to Boston, prevented the delightful opportiv 

 nity of keeping the eye long enough upon the 

 luxuriant fields of Essex county to judge how far 

 in advance was the Agriculture of that ancien^ 

 county to that of the seaboard counties of Ne^y 

 Hampshire and Maine faitlier north. The eye 

 however could not fail to lead the judgment to the 

 conclusion that the greater part of the cultivated 

 ground of old Essex may be ranked in the improy^ 

 iug class. ' : 



The now rail roads as they have extended in 



New England have a most astonishing effect 0» 



the motions of men and women. Those who arb 



in business in Boston may live at Salem, Ipswich, 



Newliuryport, Andover, Lowell, or Nashua, and 



return everv day in season for their usual day's 



work. We' observed in passingfrom Newburyport 



that lar.TO numbers left and entered the cars a* 



Ipswich" Beverly, Salem, Lynn, snd other stopt 



pino- places. At Wf?hbam; a whole compt.ny at 



Marblehead ladies with their children, with no 



male atten,dants, took tlie cars on their retarft 



home, leaving the main route at Salem and taking 



the Marblehead branch ; they had been on an ex. 



for health or pleasure lo visit a nietticinal 



On the fourth of July, the day but- on? 



p'revious to our passing over it, there were said t<> 



be nine thousand passengers iii the rail road car^ 



on the Eastern road between B.jston and Newbury. 



port. An immense revenue must be derived fron» 



some of these roads, if the travelling and transport 



of ffoods shall be kept up and increase; and it i^ 



cursion : 

 spring. 



years. 



jstreb e in value in ine course ui a yciy ■=" "..-- ---y -. -.pen had Boruni? 



obtaining his pay as he goes from the annual | the bottom so >f no particle of green had sprung 



perhaps well that the Legislatures of some Stateg 

 have limited the amount of tolls to a profit that 

 shall not exceed ten per cent. It is said that a^ 

 ready the Directors of the Boston and Lowell rail 

 road have hard work to expend enough in repairs^ 

 and improvements on that road to bring its sum t^ 

 be divided on the stock down to the limit. , ' r 



