Qlijc jTavmcr's iH:uti;lij IJiintov, 



seems to bo delaiiietl iit \V'iisliiiij;liiii rmiii llie 

 nrlivi! ilmii.'S of llie camp, liec.ui.«(; it iiiiiilit he 

 Eii|i|iosf(l timt men who were aelivn ofllreis 

 tliiity mill thn'ty-five yoms iiiighl he exeiised 

 IVoiii iniirohes and coimtoriiiaiches ami ilangefs 

 of the asMaiilt upon the " iniiniiKMil deadly 

 liieacli :" hiit it may he questioned whether the 

 Adjutant General at home has not as nearly ac- 

 tive arduous service wiili tliat ol" a lomniaifder 

 of a bri^'ade marcbing in the ijnmediate I'nce ol 

 the enemy. 



The brothers of llie land and naval service, 

 imtive.s of an adjaeenl county of Virginia, in the 

 loiii.' interval of peace, have each given their at- 

 teniion to the sulject wliich is most interesting 

 to the mass of the people of the United States, 

 the improvement of its Agriculture. Virginia, 

 ferlde and luxuriant in the early history of our 

 country's .settlement, had fell inoie than most 

 other States the effects of that dilapiilation which 

 results from continued croppinu; wiihout rdurnins; 

 an eijuivaknl to tlie soil. In the longest settled 

 counties easuvard of the Bine Ridge the land 

 bad become sterile and unproductive. From 

 the gradual decrease of crops the plantations in 

 many instances had come down to the incapacity 

 of prodiM-ing baldly a sufficiency for the suste- 

 nance necessary to carry them on from year to 

 year. Jn siicli delerior.ition, if the condition of 

 the slave laborer was |iilial)lc, that of the master 

 was still more to he ileplored. 



Com. Jones itdierited ns a patrimony several 

 bundred acres of these dilapidated lands in the 

 county of Fairfix adjacent to the city of Wash- 

 ington : his residence upon these lands is ten 

 inile.s from the capiiol upon the hank of the Po- 

 tomac. Of his success in rei'l.iiming the Virgin- 

 ia worn out soil, mention ha.s been made in for- 

 mer nnnd)ers of the Visitor. On the first of 

 January the editor bad the pleasure of meeting 

 the Coimnodore after a lapse of nearly ten years; 

 but rcgiets that the slate of the winter weather 

 has prevented as yet the pleasure of a visit to the 

 scene of bis agricultural improvements. The 

 Commodore may be regarded as the pioneer of 

 those improvements which in Fairfax have with- 

 in the last ten years probably more than doubled 

 the value of the soil. Several hundred northern 

 men in that time have couic into this county, 

 bnd already established in eastern Virginia the 

 successful precedent of renovating the worn-out 

 lauds by free while la!)or. It is hut a few days 

 since that we are presented with the fict that an 

 entire neighborhood of ihe society of Friends. 

 within the limits of Fairfax, on the Potomac riv- 

 er between Alexandria and iMotuu Vernon, have 

 |imcbased a tract of two thousand acres, to be 

 sididlvided into from fifteen to twenty farms. 

 These people leave the shores of the Delaware 

 Dear Philadelphia, w here they dispose of their 

 Btill sm.-iller farms at from sixty to a bundred 

 dollars an acre, to conmience operations upon 

 lands equally accessible to a valuable market, 

 which costs oidy perhaps a fiinrlli part of the 

 sum in a still milder and more generous climate. 

 The land purchased is adj;icent to the large plan- 

 tation farms of Gen. Washington which were In 

 a state of high cultivalioii liom fifty to seventy 

 years ago, but which, since his death have (h- 

 generated in appearance into wastes that hardly 

 deserve to be culled a wilderness. Thus ia,C0O 

 acres composing the Washington estates, might 

 make at least two hundred (arms equal to the 

 best firms in New England with all the advanta- 

 ges of a longer season for labor and a more ge- 

 nial eliiuute. Underlaying the groiiuds near the 



lianks of the Potomac on both sides above and 

 below IMonnl Vernon are said to be deep and m- 

 exliaiistlble beds of marl uliicli spread in quan- 

 tities over it, of itself is snificient to make these 

 lands productive. Our old friend Mr. Macbeti, 

 lor iTiaiiy yeais a clerk to the Secretary of the 

 Senate, has purchased n farm of these worn out 

 lands out some twenty miles from Washington, 

 to which he has removed bis family. When 

 Congiess is not in session, be exhilirales himself 

 with hard work upon his new premises, in which 

 be assures us be takes the great pleasure of an- 

 ticipating a valuable estate to be in residue for 

 bis children, such as ihw of the clerks at the seat 

 of government can expect to realize tiom their 

 salaries alone. His great object is to biiilil up a 

 substantial capital in the inqirovement of the 

 soil. Going over much ground, be already pre- 

 sents in the item of wheat a production of a sin- 

 gle season of eight hundred bushels. With 

 cattle manure besides plaster, by deep ploughing 

 be has already about four hundred acres brought 

 into the production of clover. Where clover 

 can be made to grow in all this country, corn 

 and^wheat may be raised ; and to these two, most 

 of the fruits iind vegetables peculiar to the cli- 

 mate may be made to follow. The wife of Mr. 

 Macben is the daughter of a citizen of New 

 Hampshire, well known to the former generation 

 as a merchant aiul a gentleman, the late Tappan 

 Webster of Chester, who resided at Washington 

 several years anterior to his death. With little 

 of the [M'actical advantages of the fiirmer's 

 daughters among onr own Granite hills, Mrs. 

 Macben is contented ami satisfied to exchange a 

 city fur a country life, and enjoys, in compara- 

 tive retirement, the pleasures of tlie green fields, 

 the looing of the herds, the bleating of lambs, 

 the warbling of birds, and the social twitter of 

 the flocks of domestic chickens and ducks, geese 

 and turkeys. 



Retiuiiing to the pioneer farmer in Fairfa.v, 

 we are by him made acquainted with facts in the 

 com-se of several years of his experience, inter- 

 esting and encouraging to every man who de- 

 sires to renovate the generous soil which lias 

 been worn out in the service of man. The tract 

 of land which makes Com. Jones' farm consists 

 of five hnnilred acres, but of this be confines 

 himself to the improvement and cultivaiion of 

 oiily about one hundred and fifty acres. His 

 own fiinlt and that of bis neighborhood be said 

 is the owning of too large firms. As an instance 

 of this he mentions the hiring of a neighboring 

 field ready for ploughing, his workfolks employed 

 having leisure left besides attending to their own 

 crops. The hired field of twenty acres had 

 been planted and grew a prop of corn tlie pre- 

 vious year. It was ploughed to the deplh of soil 

 usual with Virginia corn-raising; anil upon it 

 forty bushels of oats w ere sowed. The result o( 

 the whole was the production of 12.3 bushels ot 

 oats. Upon a single acre of bis own deeply cul- 

 tivated renovated soil, that year, two bushels o: 

 seed produced over 70 hiisbels of the same 

 grain: here was a production of more than ten 

 fiiroiie; with the labor only increased on tin' 

 same quantity of land by the heavier weight of 

 the gathering. 



Com. Jones commenced the cultivation of his 

 Virginia farm twenty-five to thirty years ago. In 

 tiincli of the lime he has been absent in the 

 country's service. The character of the upland 

 near the Potomac above ami below and inclnding 

 the District of Columbia is generally that of red 

 stiff clay interspersed sometimes with coarse 



sand or gravel. In its worn out state, liaviug 

 been rim down with the repeated cropping of 

 tobacco and corn, it looks more discouraging 

 than any barren lands we have ever seen in New 

 England. Wbeiiever there is ascent and descent, 

 or a lower point of valley carrjingoffthe water, 

 the laud breaks off into chasms which are con- 

 tiiinally growing wider and exlendiiig to thedes- 

 Iriiciion of all grass and vegetables, exhiniting a 

 nakedness as unpleasant as that of flowing sand 

 upon the light plains wbicli will suffer no vege- 

 tation to grow. The Commodore informs ns 

 that when be commenced operations upon bis 

 land, it had laid for several years in this truly 

 pitiable condition. Tlie shallow ploughing 

 which it had long endured of this soil whose 

 main component was red clay impervious to 

 svater below the action of the plough that had 

 moved it, had left much of the surface wasted 

 with gullies niiide in the nimiiiig oft" of waters 

 al'ler they bad rained iloun from the skies. He 

 went at once at the earliest pmiod into the deep- 

 er ploughing, and discovered that in proportion 

 as the earth was stirred to a greater deplh the 

 cavities were either filled up or prevented by in- 

 creasing the means of absorption of the waters. 



Commodore J. has now in possession and use 

 the .subsoil plough with whiidi he was furnished 

 ill the year 1821. Friend (Jideon Davis, an in- 

 genious plough maker of Georgetown in the 

 District, visited him and witnessing his deep 

 ploughing in the hard clay of ten and twelve 

 inches with the necessity of a heavy team, sug- 

 gested as an iiupifjvfiuent the use of bis own 

 invenied subsoil plough with a lighter team pre- 

 ceeding it turning over the more mellow surface. 

 Since that time Com. J. has practised the method 

 of n light common plough with one horse or 

 mule followed with the subsoil |jloiigh and two 

 horses or mules. He has continued this at inter- 

 vals upon the same ground until be has deepen- 

 ed the vegetable mould of bis fields from twelvf 

 to fifteen and twenty iiicbe.s. 



The summer of 1845 was one of the dryest 

 ever known in Virginia: whole fields of corn 

 were crisped and spoiled. The Commodore 

 thai year had a field upon the highest and driest 

 pai t of bis farm. Visitors who came there won- 

 dcred at the greenness and hixm iance of this 

 cornfield: they asked him if showers of rain 

 had not come to him w hicli avoided them. The 

 whole secret of the better remedy for avoiding 

 the effects of ibonglit was that deep ploughing 

 which undoubtedly in other respects increased 

 the earth's ferliliiy by biiiigiiig into action manv 

 latent qualities whieb oihorwise will liirever lay 

 doriiiaiir. Reflecting on bis experience, from 

 our own knowledge we are able to say that the 

 deep stirring of the soil is of great use upon ev- 

 ery kind of ground. In its crude state upon the 

 first lurniug up the aubsuil very piobably will 

 do little or no good io the first crop: the con- 

 densed siimnlants upon the surface of a mere 

 skimmed ploughing uir.y act more immediately 

 and show a more accelerated growth at first ; 

 but like the seed of scriptiiie sown upon stony 

 ground the stalk will perish under the force of a 

 burning siiii. 



As a consequence of the improvements wbicli 

 have fiillowed the example of onr cherished na- 

 val friends in the last thirty years a difl'erent fiice 

 has been put to much of the country wilhiii ten 

 miles of the national capitol, extending even far- 

 ther than this in the adjacent counties of Vir- 

 ginia and Maryland. Formerly the vegetable 

 and meat market of edibles in the Federal city 



