42 An American Fruit-Farm 



and woof? Then you say to yourself: "Here 

 will I live; I have found the site on which to 

 make my farm.'* Imagination translates oppor- 

 tunity into realization: this is the psychology of 

 farming. 



The Chautauqua fruit-belt in New York and 

 the Lake Erie Valley in Pennsylvania extend for 

 fifty miles parallel with the beach of the lake, 

 beginning seven miles east of the city of Erie. 

 This entire region is a narrow valley, not wider 

 than six miles between the lake and the range of 

 low hills to the southward. It is a rolling country, 

 rising from the lake level to the crest of the hills 

 some thirteen hundred feet. The hills are cut 

 across by deep gulches, which begin at the crest 

 and open northward and northwestward to the lake. 

 The streams are swift and shallow, though in ancient 

 times sufficient to cut chasms half a mile wide and 

 in places three hundred feet deep. The exposure 

 is of the earliest formations known to geology: the 

 Silurian, the Devonian, and the Carboniferous, 

 abounding in fossils both of plants and animals. 

 The enormous elevation of this mass of hills gave 

 the swift descent of waters to the lake and caused 

 the extinction of possibly a dozen species of shell- 

 fish whose remains now compose the rocky basis 

 of the hills, — a vast heap of shell buried amidst the 

 stone. For ages the waters have seeped through 

 this formation, impregnating the entire Valley 

 with a solution of lime. In the Lake Shore Valley 

 is the oldest land on the globe and the rocks tell 



