148 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



brothers. Upon William, more robust in frame and more valid in constitution, 

 devolved the direction of their own agricultural labors, and of necessity much of 

 the direction of the business of the land oflice ; while to the lot of James fell the 

 traveling necessary to the successful prosecution of their own business, and for 

 keeping up their connections with the landholders whose concerns were commit- 

 ted to them. To judge of the extent of the labor involved in the first of the 

 branches committed to James, it may be stated that the first plan which pre- 

 sented itself for rendering available the exuberant fertility of their meadows, was 

 the purchase, fattening and sale of cattle. This was the only form in which a 

 surplus agricultural product could be made to yield a remunerative price in the 

 distant and secluded valley in which the Wadsworths had placed themselves. 

 The cattle which formed the subject of this trade were purchased young and 

 iean in the Eastern States, driven to Geneseo, and when fit for market were either 

 again driven to the remote markets of New- York and Philadelphia, or to Hor- 

 nellsville, on the Tioga branch of the Susquchannah, whence they were trans- 

 ported in the rude embarkations called arks to Baltimore. 



The West, although then limited by the Niagara River, liad not begun to ex- 

 ercise that fascination wbicli it now docs. Men residing on comfortable farms, 

 and delicate females, were not willing to abandon the homes of their youth to 

 try the perils and labors of the wilderness. Purchasers for lands and tenants of 

 farms were, in consequence, to be sought for at the places of their birth, instead 

 ■of swarming at each returning spring from the native hive. It therefore be- 

 came one of the tasks assumed by James Wadsworth to travel on horseback 

 through the regions most abounding in population, and endeavor to make sale of 

 ihe wild lands of his agency, or by the tender of liberal terms acquire tenants to 

 occupy lands already brought into cultivation. 



The parties most desirous to remove were those in the least affluent circum- 

 stances. Persons, who by the continual division of lands among successive gen- 

 erations, had reached that stage in which the amount of soil held by them was 

 inadequate for their support, and who in a population wholly agricultural could 

 lind no room for occupation as laborers. With these the great difficulty to be 

 overcome was to find purchasers for their worn-out and impoverished possessions. 

 To meet this case, lands in the Eastern States were taken in payment for those 

 of the Genesee Valley, or for the outfit necessary to remove families to occupy 

 farms as tenants. The lands thus acquired were in their turn to be sold, or 

 made productive of rent. In the records of operations of this description, it ap- 

 pears that there were instances in which six acres of the virgin soil of the West 

 were given in exchange for a single acre of little better than rock in New- 

 England ; and it is now certain that, after an interval of fifty years, tiie relative 

 value of the two portions is reversed. Thus, while the objects of the specula- 

 tors in the Genesee Valley were completely answered on the one hand, on the 

 otiier the parties wlio purchased from them liave multiplied their original capi- 

 tal thirty-six fold. 



The success which attended the early operations of the Wadsworths in draw- 

 ing settlers to their own lands, and those of which they were the agents, at- 

 iracted the attention of other parlies holding properly of the same description. 

 It was obvious that it was to the personal address and business talent of James 

 that this success was in a great degree to le attributed. He was in consequence, 

 in the year 1796, requested to undertake a mission to England for the purpose of 

 interesting the capitalists of that country in the lands of the Western District of 



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