54 ESSEX SOCIETY. 



appearance. The depth of the soil, or vegetable matter, was 

 from three to twelve feet to hard bottom. There were two 

 ditches, three or four feet wide, one on the northern, and the 

 other on the eastern margin of the meadow, which were made 

 to answer for the division fence, and forming a juncture near 

 the dam, partially drained off the surplus water. In the sum- 

 mer of 1836, I dug two ditches three and a half feet wide, by 

 two or more deep, lengthwise of the meadow, and terminating 

 in the ditch on the north end, thus dividing it into three nearly 

 equal lots. From this time I ceased to flow it in the winter, 

 and it soon became much drier ; the quantity of hay de- 

 creased more than one-half, with no perceptible improvement 

 in the quality, and in one or two years the whole meadow set- 

 tled nearly two feet, apparently leaving about three inches of 

 the surface entirely detached from the vegetable deposit, or soil 

 below. 



In this situation it remained till the autumn of 1847, when 

 I began to reclaim. Two men, in ten days, with the common 

 grub hoe and manure fork, pealed the whole top, and threw 

 it into heaps a little larger tiian common sized hay cocks. 

 This was easily accomplished, for the men would often take up 

 a flake a yard square, at once, with little eff'ort, and leave a 

 surface as smooth as the house floor. I set fire to this topping 

 as soon as it was dry enough to burn, but the peaty soil below 

 ignited, and the fire was with difficulty extinguished. It was 

 all removed to the upland,- some on handbarrows, but mostly 

 by the ox team, after the ground had frozen hard enough to 

 bear, and was used to replenish the hog and cow yards, after 

 selling a very large quantity to my neighbors, sufficient to de- 

 fray all the expenses I had thus far incurred. The first of Au- 

 gust, 1848, I hired three robust Irishmen, for one dollar and a 

 quarter per day each, and they were to find their own board, 

 and one of my hired men upon the farm worked with them 

 half a month. In forty days, with wheelbarrows and a tier of 

 plank extending half across the meadow, from the adjacent bank 

 of gravel on one side, and then from the ridge on the other, 

 they covered the whole surface from three to four inches deep. 

 After the middle of September, I sowed three bushels of red top 

 and three pecks of herds grass, and two men in one day raked 



