CUBA TOBACCO. 407 



varying from $5 to $10 and $15 per acre, whicb, with two or three years of sys- 

 tematic culture, may be made worth from §30 to S40. The farm directly oppo- 

 site my own, consisting of two hundred acres and having on it a large and well 

 built two-story brick house, which alone cost the original owner $7,000, was pur- 

 chased two years since bv Mr. Sherman, (an intelligent and enterprising farmer 

 from Connecticut,) for $5,200, or $2G per acre— and he lias repeatedly refused 

 $10,000 for it, a sum which he might command at any day he cliose ! I shall 

 be very much surprised if lauds of this description and quality are much longer 

 sufl'ered by Northern enterprise and skill to go a-begging for live, ten and fifteen 

 dollars an acre. Quite a colony of immigrants— chiefly Irom the banks of the 

 Hudson and Western New- York — have alreajjy taken up their abode in this vi- 

 cinity ; and a large amount of capital has been profitably invested in the cultiva- 

 tion and improvement of the rich soils thus laken up. 



A few days since a colony of Quakers from Pennsylvania — a class of shrewd, 

 intelligent, enterprising and industrious men, to say nothing of their well known 

 religious principles, so eminently conducive to order, quietude and peace — pur- 

 chased some three or four thousand acres near Mount Vernon, in this county, and 

 I understand, intend occupying them at once. In short, I know of no investment 

 which in my humble judgment — and in this respect you can correct me, if I 

 speak unadvisedly — is capable of affording a more certain and compensating re- 

 turn, within, comparatively speaking, a brief period, as the purchase by an enter- 

 prising, industrious, practical Northern or Eastern farmer of a hundred or two 

 acres of what are generally termed the exhausted lands of this portion of 

 Virginia. 



Since I have been here I have received numerous letters of inquiry as to the 

 capacity, productiveness, resources, &:c. &c. of these lands. My limited ac- 

 quaintance with the surrounding localities and characteristic features of the soil, 

 will not as yet permit me to speak, except in general terms, upon those points 

 of greatest interest to inquirers : but I feel authorized, from what I have seen, 

 to invite the closest and most rigid examination not only as to the susceptibilities 

 of the soil, but the healthiness and salubrity of the climate, the advantages for 

 disposing of the surplus produce of the farmer, and the general excellence of 

 the society. To its genial breezes and sunshine I feel indebted, under Provi- 

 dence, for a complete restoration of health and strength, within the short space 

 of two and a half months ; and I do not know that I can more appropriately 

 testify my gratitude for this blessing than by devoting myself henceforth, as it 

 is my intention to do, to the practical culture of its noble soil. 



Truly yours, S. S. RANDALL. 



CUBA TOBACCO. — R. Adams, Esq., of Virginia, has received through General Camp- 

 bell, our Consul at Havana, a bottle of the seed of the tar-famed Havana Tobacco, which 

 he proposes to cultivate and to distribute in Vii-ginia. All such enterprises are worthy of 

 being noted, if only historically; but we have little expectation that in Virginia, except it 

 may be in some warm, light laud m the south part of it, the tobacco will retain its flavor in 

 jmy remarkable degree after the first year. 



In Maryland, the fine odor is strongly perceptible in the first crop, but in the third it is 

 lost. ^Ve c;ui see no reason why the culture of this sort of tobacco and the manufacture of 

 cigars, should not be very profitable in Florida, if the seed were imported, as they might 

 be, every year — protected as the article is by a liigh duty. 



If Madder and some other things were protected iu like maimer, they might be produced 

 with remunerating returns in our country. 



We shall hunt up, for republication, au article of Genei-al Hernandez, of Florida, on the 

 culture of Cuba tobacco. 



By a fiiend in Natchez, we were furnished with a translation of a Spanish Essay on the 



subject, but the fact is that, in all modes and manners of cultivation they lag so far in the 



•rear of us that, except perhai)s in the handling, we could make nothing out of it. 

 (839) 



