1835.] 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



335 



that part of Virginia was first settled by (lie pre- 

 sent rare of inhabitants, large bodies of land were 

 covered entirely by young sapling wood, and 

 there were oilier indisputable proofs that at an ear- 

 lier time lew frees, if any, had been there grow- 

 ing. But i hough these lands are enough impreg- 

 nated with lime (in some form) lo be very rich, 

 and io he favorable lo ihe growth of grass, they 

 contain no carbonate of lime*— and therefore Ihe 

 land musi have been brought lo ihe prairie state 

 slowly and with difficulty, under the long continu- 

 ed operation of annually repeated fires — and their 

 intermission lor a lew years was enough io enable 

 the soil to again ihrow up a new growl h of young 

 trees. These appearances were so well known in 

 Rockbridge, that some very intelligent persons. 

 born and reared in (hat counly, have (hence in- 

 ferred thai i he wood cover of our country was 

 every where comparatively recent — and that at 

 some former and not very remote lime, every pari 

 of this continent had been wiihoui irees: which is 

 an example of very erroneous reasoning Horn par- 

 ticular to general lads. 



Of soils rendered barren by excess of calcareous 

 matter — and Ilia fertility produced on them by ir- 

 rigation. 



The "bald prairies" of Alabama present the 

 only known cases in the United States of bodies 

 of land so highly calcareous as to be thereby les- 

 sened in productiveness. This effect will increase 

 as exhausting cultivation shall lessen the vegeta- 

 ble ingredients of the soil — and probably (under 

 a continuation of such lillage) the barren spots 

 will extend widely into whal now form their ier- 

 tile margins. The quantity of vegetable matter 

 accumulated in the highly calcareous prairie soils 

 is now so great, 1 hat a very long course of ex- 

 hausting iillage will be borne before sierility can 

 be produced. Nevertheless, however remote may 

 be that result, its occurrence is not the less sure, 

 if exhausting iillage is pursued. Similar to our 

 rich prairies probably was ihe original stare of ihe 

 now poor chalk downs of England, the almost 

 barren plains of "Lousy" Champagne in France 

 — and some of ihe siill more hopeless deserts of 

 Asia. The furnishing or retaining of a sufficien- 

 cy of vegetable matter would cure this kind of 

 barrenness, and more easily will prevent its exten- 

 sion beyond its present limits, in our own new 

 country. In other countries, water alone, used tor 

 irrigation, has had the effect of making highly 

 fertile, and keeping it so, land so calcareous that it 

 would otherwise have been altogether barren. 

 Many facts of this kind may be gathered from ihe 

 writings of travellers — but their notices are very 

 slight, and merely incidental, as none who have 

 viewed and described these lands, possessed any 

 agricultural knowledge. Some of ihese passages 

 will be quoted. In some tar remoie future iime, 

 perhaps the overflowing Avells of soul hern Alaba- 

 ma, may be used to irrigate the exces.-=i vely calca- 

 reous soils, and to retain or restore their fertility. 



Denon, in his Travels in Egypt, (Am. Ed. vol. 

 2, p. 4,) when at Siut, or Lycopolis, 21 degrees 

 south of Cairo, speaks thus of the Lybian range 

 of mountains. "I found this, as I had supposed, 

 a ruin of nature, formed of horizontal and regu- 



*Essay on Calcareous Manures, 2d Ed. p. 17, et seq. 



lar strata of calcareous stones more or less cium- 

 bling, and of different shades of whiteness, divi- 

 ded ai intervals wifh large mamillated and con- 

 centric flinis, which appear to be ihe nuclei, or as 

 it were, Ihe bones of this vast chain, and seem to 

 keep it together, and prevent its total destruction. 

 This decomposition is daily happening by the im- 

 pression of ihe sab air, which penetrates every 

 pari of the calcareous surface, decomposes it, and 

 makes it, as it Ave re, dissolve down in streams of 

 sand, which at first collected in heaps at ihe foot 

 of ihe rock, and are then carried away by the 

 winds, and encroaching gradually on ihe cultiva- 

 ted plain? and Hie villages, change them info bar- 

 renness and desolation." The Lybian chain of 

 mountains nvhich runs nearly parallel with the 

 Nile, there approaches very close io it, and 1 lie 

 narrow strip of fertile and irrigated land betAveen, 

 must necessarily have been deeply though gradu- 

 ally covered by the same calcareous sand; (indeed 

 ihe continued operation of ihe like causes is rais- 

 ing, noi only the borders, but even the bed of the 

 Nile:) yet JDenon mentions particularly Ihe high 

 stale of cultivation seen in his next day's journey 

 up the river. It is Avell known, that wherever the 

 Avalers of the Nile have been conveyed to irrigate 

 these sands, an astonishing degree of fertility has 

 been ihe immediate consequence: and that wher- 

 ever Ihe canals Ibr this purpose have been permit- 

 fed lo become dry, (ofien the efieel of political 

 causes on this wretched population,) there is as 

 sure a return (o the former state of naked and bar- 

 ren sand. There is reason also io believe (though 

 upon slighter foundation,) thai portions of the 

 great deserts of both Asia and Africa, also are ex- 

 cessively calcareous, and owe their sterility to that 

 cause, combined with ihe general absence of wa- 

 ier. The only direct testimony as to ihis charac- 

 ter of ihe soil, is in ihe following passage from 

 Madden's Travels. He was in the desert between 

 Egypi and Judea. ••Next day Ave travelled all 

 day long wiihoui seeing a single I ree, or the small- 

 est patch of verdure, or laying our eyes on any 



human being. 11 "The soil was no longer 



sandy, bul of a hard gravel, on which a carriage 

 might be rolled from Salehie to Suez. Ai night 

 we slopped at a well without water, and here I 

 examined the soil, three feet beloAV the suriaee; 

 [ibr] i wo teet deep there is a superficial stratum of 

 calcareous pebbles, and beloAV that, a solid bed of 

 limestone, which I believe to be the basis of the 

 soil of all Egypi. 11 — [p. 122, vol. 2, Am. Ed.] 



"One thing is certain that wherever there is 

 water, no matter in Avhat part of the wilderness-, 

 there vegetation is to be found. The stopping up 

 of the canals, and the want of irrigation, are the 

 great causes of desolation which lavor the exten- 

 sion of the desert. The country from San to Sal- 

 ehie, and probably to Suez, was formerly a culli- 

 valed country: ihe ruins of palaces, such as those 

 of Zoan and that of Beit Pharoon, iioav in the 

 middle of ihe desert, prove that the country 

 around then must have been cultivated, and that 

 at a very short period before our era." — p. 126. 



Lieut. Burnes, who has recently published the 

 very interesting account of his travels across cen- 

 tral Asia, afiei describing, in various detached pas- 

 sages, the barren and often naked sands of the 

 great Tartarian desert, over which he had been 

 many AA r eeks passing, and of the great scarcity of 

 Avater, e\'en in the feAv Avells, and the total Avant of 



