42 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



[No. 1. 



piece of the most fertile land, and is kept in such per- 

 fect good order, that, whenever I have seen it, my first 

 feeling of admiration has almost compelled me for a 

 time to yield all my objections to such improvements; 

 and in enjoying the view of the beauty and fertility 

 thus created by enterprise and industry, to forget my 

 conviction of i(s transient value, and certain future 

 end. This piece, of eighty-five acres, was covered 

 by the thick growth of ash and gum which is common 

 on fresh water marshes of an elevation above ordinary 

 tides. It has now been diked and drained seven years. 

 If I may judge the soil by examinations of my own 

 lands of like appearance, and of the embanked salt 

 marsh of Hog Island, this contains fifty per cent, of its 

 weight (when perfectly dried for examination,) of ve- 

 getable matter, destructible by fire, and consequently 

 By putrefaction, when exposed to the air, and the al- 

 ternations of wet and dry weather. But this vegeta- 

 ble part of the soil (composed of rotten loots, &.c.) 

 which is found at all known depths, is so porous and 

 spongy, and so light when dried, that for it to form one 

 half of the weight, it must constitute nine-tenths of 

 the bulk of the soil. My knowing these facts of the 

 composition of our marsh soils, was enough to convince 

 me that, whenever drained and cultivated, they would 

 as certainly rot away, as would a large dunghill if 

 left standing for a number of years. The careful and 

 excellent management of the Shirley swamp, will 

 cause it to present the strongest confirmation of my 

 opinion. Most of the embanked marshes on James 

 River have, from neglect, been returned under the do- 

 minion of the tides so soon, that the cause I have 

 mentioned was not permitted to be seen operating 

 alone. In every such case, the final failure of the em- 

 bankment has been attributed to some extraordinary 

 high tide, or to the cutting through the banks by musk- 

 rats, or to the water penetrating under and " blowing 

 up" the flood-gates or trunks. Here, there has been 

 no neglect. Disasters have occurred indeed, and of such 

 magnitude and frequency, that there are not many per- 

 sons who would not have abandoned the improvement 

 in despair. But, whatever damage has been sustain- 

 ed, was speedily repaired — and the land has every 

 successive year yielded a crop of corn, the best of 

 which was more than fifty bushels the acre, and the 

 whole making a general average of thirty-five bushels 

 of sound corn for every year and through every dis- 

 aster and loss. The level of the land within the dike 

 appeared to my eye, (and confirmed by Mr. Carter's 

 opinion,) to be already eighteen inches lower than that 

 without, which was still subject to the tides. The 

 bank was originally six feet high. Every winter since 

 it was built, a foot of additional earth has been laid on 

 the bank, which was not enough to coimterbalance the 

 loss of the ensuing summer: for after all these addi- 

 tions (which are exclusive of the repairs of extensive 

 breaches made by high tides,) the bank is now lower 

 than at first. But what is most important in the mat- 

 ter, the clear profit from the crops has already greatly 

 overpaid the whole expense of making and preserving 

 the embankment: and therefore the usual loss attend- 

 ing such improvements will be avoided — unless the 

 proprietor should too long endeavor to defend his work 

 from its inevitable end, the water resuming possession 

 of the whole space. Though I am no advocate for the 

 embankment of our tide marshes (compared with other 

 improvements,) yet if such works are undertaken, it 

 is of the utmost nnportance that they should be well 

 executed : and all who are unable to resist this most 

 besetting temptation of tide-water proprietors, will do 

 well to practice the same liberal expense of labor, the 

 care and watchfulness, and the perseverance through 

 difficulties and disasters, that have occurred to secure 

 the success and profit of the embankment and culti- 

 vation of the Shirley swamp." — [Farmers^ Register, 

 vol. \,page 107.] 



Our opinions on this subject did not rest merely on 



the knowledge of the chemical ingredients of the soil — 

 (though that alone would have been enough) — but also 

 on experience, dearly bought in a similar attempt on 

 thirty acres o tide marsh, which at an enormous expense 

 had been drained, had brought fine crops of corn, and 

 of which the dike had been kept up until the surface 

 of the land had sunk (or rather rotted away) more than 

 two feet below its original level, and of course, the 

 land had become worthless. During the years that this 

 experiment was going on, (though under management 

 very inferior to Mr. Carter's,) and while we were yet 

 sanguine of success, and blind to the evils produced, 

 the work not only wasted labor and money, but health 

 and life. For an embanked and dried marsh, while 

 rotting and sinking to its original degree of wetness, is 

 a source of disease and death inferior only to a mill- 

 pond on a very insufficient stream. 



The marshes while left in their natural state, and 

 kept perpetually saturated with water, if not covered 

 every day by the tide, must be more or less productive 

 of malaria — but the evil is not to be compared in mag- 

 nitude, indeed is scarcely worth notice, compared to 

 the same marshes altered in their condition by the 

 (so-called) improvements of man. While always cov- 

 ered with water, there is little decomposition of the 

 vegetable matter — which proceeds rapidly, and evolves 

 the seeds of disease in proportion, so soon as the land 

 is laid dry. But it is not only by attempts to drain them 

 that marshes are rendered unhealthy by the labors of 

 man. We believe that mill-ponds are not more pesti- 

 ferous in the exhalations from their own stagnant wa- 

 ters and naked mud bottoms, than they are by dis- 

 charging their surplus floods of water over salt marsh- 

 es. It is the theory of an Italian author, presented in 

 the 4th volume of this Journal, that it is the flowing of 

 saltwater from the sea, at rare and uncertain times, over 

 the fresh-water Pontine marshes, that produces the 

 deadly malaria of thatregion. If thisopinion is correct, 

 we may by it account for the remarkable sickliness of 

 many neighborhoods on our salt waters. The effect is 

 not produced by the neighborhood of the salt marshes — 

 for in other places their borders are quite healthy: 

 nor by the mill-ponds — which, bad as they are, produce 

 no such amount of disease in most inland situations : 

 but it is the collected floods of fresh water, discharged 

 in heavy rains from the ponds, over salt marshes, and 

 the putridity caused by the meeting of fresh and salt 

 water upon vegetables accustomed only to one kind, 

 that cause the worst effects of malaria in some of the 

 lower parts of Virginia, and other southern states. We 

 venture to throw out this suggestion, in the hope that 

 it may induce attention to be paid to the subject by- 

 persons who have facilities for observation and for col- 

 lecting and comparing facts that will throw light on 

 this highly important subject — to which so little proper 

 attention has yet been given, either by physicians, 

 chemists, or the farmers whose families and fortunes 

 suffer under these heavy inflictions. If the simple facts 

 alone could be collected by the latter class, and sub- 

 mitted for comparison and consideration to the two for- 

 mer, there can be no question but the causes of this- 

 worst evil of our otherwise delightful climate might be 



