®l)e iTarmcr'B iHontl)!]) Visitor. 



137 



lenacious without hardness, and soft without lia- 

 bility to moving itulurntion, such ns we do not 

 witness upon tlio Rleniniack, and hinds ffeneially 

 below the backbone lidgo on the east of Con- 

 necticut river. The grnwth in the lighter soil 

 of the sugar tree, the yellow birch and beech u|.on 

 the higher grounds, intermixed with the hem- 

 lock, spruce .and larch, in the most tenacious 

 clayey laud, indicates the permanent character 

 of the soil. In the grass ground.-', especially the 

 berdsgrass, remains longer to produce succes- 

 sive annual crops : the pastures better give 

 through the season the rich feed which makes 

 the dairy product uniform through the summer : 

 the honeysuckle clover is more natural to this 

 land. It may here be remarked, that the char- 

 acter of the lands upon the liatnoile corresponds 

 well in this description with all the lands we 

 have yet seen north of a line which may be drawn 

 through Montpelier, in Vermont, and Lancaster, 

 in New-Hampshire, down to the west line of the 

 Stare of Maine. 



Wo have twice been at Johnson within the 

 year, to visit that brother who has chajiged the 

 occupation of primer and editor of a political 

 newspaper, (the Vermont Patriot, established 

 with our assistance as long back as 1820,) for that 

 of farmer, doing work exclusively with his own 

 bard hands, aided by an. elder son now fifteen 

 years of age. This brother has many true and 

 better tastes of the farmer, aided by a polished 

 lady, herself the daughter of a New-Hainp.sliire 

 farmer, who, in the ruder new settlements of V^er- 

 mont, encourages her sons in the use of the 

 farmers' implements, and her daughters the ac- 

 complishment of turning the wheel and the dis- 

 taff, — imi>lements that have not in that State be- 

 come so obsolete and absolute strangers as in the 

 more polished society that is growing up around 

 our cotton factory villages. The meeting of a 

 fine liuiiily of five mannerly, healthy faced neph- 

 ews and nieces, as apt in their daily school les- 

 Bons and necessary manual labor in a family 

 without servants, as they were affectionate and 

 obedient towards either pai-ent ; — such a visit to 

 the family of humble means, whose few wants 

 require a less expenditure than the wastage of 

 some who live on speculations from the fruits of 

 the labors of others than them less sharp-wit- 

 ted ; — such a meeting might be worth alone a 

 journey of a hundred and fifty miles. As a 

 trophy on leaving, we brought away, intending 

 it for our own personal wear, the remnant web 

 from which striped woolen frocks had been maile 

 for the male labo'.-ors U|)on the (arm, spun by the 

 eldest daughter from wool raised on the farin, 

 the whole production and manufactin-e being in 

 the family. 



J,ast year intending to >zo further rnuiul about, 

 we tinned short about from tiiis Vermont trip at 

 Johnson, all the way in our own vehicle, helpless 

 almost from a then hopeless disease. This year, 

 in a little better plight for health, we ventured 

 thus far by the stage and private accommoda- 

 tion. 



On Tuesday, July 13, from this point we at- 

 tempted again the journey we intended the year 

 before. The uncle and brother of the family 

 younger than our mother moved away from his 

 friends in Massachusetts fifty years ago, to what 

 was then considered the " far west," locating him- 

 self in the town of Fairfax, u|inii Lamoile river, 

 the town then next to one reaching lake Cham- 

 plain. With the aid of a small patrimony, he 

 there commenced the trade of a tanner: he mar- 

 ried there, and roared a family— how many, un- 



til this visit, wo had never ,nBCerlainod. The 

 habits of hard-working men in former times, 

 especially of tiio first settlers, were not usually 

 as they should be. All we know of this uncle, 

 ascertaining by inipiiries from time to time was, 

 that he was poor but honest, and that he was 

 rearing a family of sonic, promise. Twenty-three 

 years ago, on his way to the home of his nearer 

 relatives in Massachusetts, with his wili; and 

 youngest child, he found out and tarried with us 

 three days ; — twenty-eight years before that, the 

 last time we had seen him, he was a young man 

 setting out to his new country, when wo were 

 too young to realize all the resiionsibilities of the 

 grown man. 



To reach Fairfax, our course was down the 

 Lamoile river some twenty-five miles. On the 

 way, we first encountered the town of Cam- 

 bridge, making the point of our first call the 

 store which was the place of business of a farm- 

 er-candidate for Governor in Vermont, who has 

 grown into great wealth for that country by that 

 indomitable perseverance and industry which 

 Cow human obstacles can frustrate. We had 

 never seen Nathan Sniilie, the groat fiirmer of 

 Cambridge; but a two hours iutercoui-se and 

 conversation satisfied us that to.be a great man 

 was not always to be a highly educated man_ 

 Seldom have we seen so many of the points 

 which years of intimacy and observation had dis- 

 closed in the character of Andrew Jackson, as 

 we thought appeared in the Vermont Cambridge 

 farmer, as active at the age of sixty as the young 

 man of thirty should be, and as useful in admin- 

 istering the means of comfort to those about him, 

 as he is active. Of Mr. Smilie's particular suc- 

 cess, and his process for gathering wealth, we 

 made not the inquiry. Quite satisfied we were 

 in the character of the man, listening to his con- 

 versation as a far-seeing, sagacious statesman and 

 practical farmer, as familiar with public men and 

 public affairs as he was with the requisite skill 

 lor producing and turning to advantage the pro- 

 ducts of the best crops. The little store where 

 Mr. S. many years has done an extensive busi- 

 ness, stands near his own beautiful cottage resi- 

 dence of cheap constrnelion, with ample barns 

 and outhouses over the way, near a turn of the 

 road entering at the upper end of the Cambridge 

 intervales. To the splendid farm of his own 

 personal residence, succeeded below on the river 

 a series of fine intervale farms running back up- 

 on the rich highlands, which we while on the 

 way had not the means of measuring or count- 

 ing : these fiirni-i, we dare be bound from our 

 knowledge of the character of Nathan Smiliei 

 came not to h':s possession by any oppression or 

 injustice of their present owner. 



With the price of produce there, at this time 

 much lower than with us upon the Merrimack, 

 the intervales of Cambridge upon the Lamoile 

 bear the high price of a hundred dollars the acre. 

 They probably are as much richer than our Mer- 

 rimack intervales as the uplands there are belter 

 than ours. 



They have always been in the habit of doing 

 things in Veruior.t upon a larger scale than we 

 of New-IIauqishire. The two greatest tiirms of 

 New-England are there : Consul Jarvis, upon the 

 Connecticut at Wethersfield, has a giant firm 

 with his twenty barns, contained in a single tract 

 of splendid intervale and upland : Gov. Meecli, 

 upon lake Champlain, has a still larger fiirm, and 

 more numerous cattle, sheep and horses, in a sin- 

 gle body at Shelbnrne. We offer the conjecture 



that N-ithau Suiilie has more of better farming 

 cultivated lands in (;ambridge than either. 



This part of Vermont is settled mostly by emi- 

 grants from Massachusetts and New-Hampshire : 

 Johnson numbers among its most enterprising 

 farmers several families from New-Hoslon, the 

 .sonsoffiien to us pe|-sonally known, and living 

 within our recollection. Judge Smilie was a 

 Massachusells man : so we believe is Judge 

 Warner, owning intervales in extent of miles in 

 the same town, conducting at the same time ex- 

 tensive tanneries, and ranging along the road a 

 continuous village of well finished expensive 

 brick buildings, either as residences or places of 

 business. 



iSelow Cambridge, approaching the village of 

 Fairfax, where are falls in the stream and mill 

 privileges, the intervale narrows ofl" into land 

 less fertile, but the uplands of that town, rich in 

 grass and in corn and grain fields, partake of the 

 intervale excellence. There is generally a slaty 

 or a limerock surface : northeasterly towards the 

 town of Fletcher-, both in Franklin county, enor- 

 mous white pine stumps, in a lighter soil, pre- 

 sented, what is not common in that jiart of Ver- 

 mont, rye fields as a substitute of wheat and 

 oats. 



Arrived at the village of Fairfax, we found the 

 relative we were seeking still further on. He 

 had exchanged the tavern and tannery at the 

 village, which svere once his own, for a residenco 

 of years in a humbler tenement which did not 

 belong to him, dependent on the wages of labor 

 for his daily bread : others of his age, and be- 

 ginning with less means, (among them his neigh- 

 bor Judge in an adjoining town,) had grown into 

 afHuence. He was a poor man at an age beyond 

 sixty years. By direction to his place of every 

 one we met, of whom inquiry was made, the 

 honest man was known. At the northerly part 

 of the town, almost as near St. Albans as Fairfiix 

 centre, the face well known as the youtb not 

 yet twenty-one, now numbering seventy-one 

 years, came on the instant to be .-i subject of mu- 

 tual recogntion : we found him here the poor 

 man still, but rich in owning the farm of thirty 

 acres, mainly cleared up with his own hands, 

 and in owning the house sufJicient for the com- 

 fortable residence of himself and wife. The 

 farmer who had learned his trade among those 

 so distinguished at Meiiotomy, had not forgotten 

 how to raise the best crops : he had cows and 

 sheep, with oxen and a horse to do his work. 

 The hay and grain filling a forty feet barn, with 

 the aid only of a boy af twelve years, had all 

 been cut and secured in its place by the man at 

 the age of seventy years, small in stature, but 

 great in spirit. Fortune smiled in the little sum 

 furnished by a portion of the property left hy the 

 deceased mother, dying at the age of ninety- 

 four, to assist in making the man of thi-eeseore 

 and ten independent in his latter years : the in- 

 tei-cession and influence of wife and children 

 assisting in that reform of entire abstinence from 

 those inilulgeuces which too often procure the 

 poor man's poverty, and sometimes make the 

 wages of his labor subservient to the greater an- 

 guish of those around him. John Adams, the 

 patriarch noticed in the Visitor, was the only 

 brother of his mother for w hom John Russell was 

 named, and after the dcalh of the father, mnic 

 than sixty years ago, became his guardian ; the 

 ward deriving his christian name from his pa- 

 triarch uncle. 



The meeting was a most welcome one : we 

 found ourselves under the humble roof belter 



