CROPS AND PROFITS 



square miles of wavy meadows, through which 

 a river gleams, and over bays that make good 

 fishing ground, and over a ten-mile reach of 

 shimmering sea. A little never-failing spring 

 bubbles up a few yards away; and to the 

 westward and northward, the land piles in easy 

 slope, making sunny shelter, where, — first on 

 all the hillside, — the snow vanishes in Spring. 

 The Indian people had a quick eye for such 

 advantages of position. 



In still further confirmation, I have turned 

 up an arrow-head or two in the neighborhood, 

 chipped from white quartz, and as keen and 

 sharp as on the day they were wrought. 



I am aware that what are called "tidy farm- 

 ers" would have brushed away these outlying 

 copses, no matter what roughnesses they con- 

 cealed; but I suspect their rude autumn clip- 

 pings with a bush-hook, would only have pro- 

 voked a spread of the rootlets ; and if effectual, 

 would have given them only a bit of bar- 

 renness. 



Up-country farmers are overtaken from time 

 to time, with what I may call a spasmodic tidi- 

 ness, which provokes a general onslaught with 

 bill-hooks and castaway scythes, upon hedge 

 rows and wayside bushes, and pasture thickets, 

 — without considering that these thickets may 



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