TIME AND CHANGE 



the ruins of their intrenchments are everywhere 

 visible. 



When I was a boy on the farm we never asked 

 ourselves questions about the stones and rocks that 

 encumbered the land — whence they came, or what 

 the agency was that brought them. The farmers 

 believed the land was created just as we saw it — 

 stones, boulders, soil, gravel-pits, hills, mountains, 

 and all — and doubtless wished in their hearts 

 that the Creator had not been so particular about 

 the rocks and stones, or had made an exception 

 in favor of their own fields. Rocks and stones were 

 good for fences and foundations, and for various 

 other uses, but they were a great hindrance to the 

 cultivation of the soil. I once heard a farmer boast 

 that he had very strong land — it had to be strong 

 to hold up such a crop of rocks and stones. When 

 the Eastern farmer moved west into the prairie 

 states, or south into the cotton-growing states, 

 he probably never asked himself why the Creator 

 had not cumbered the ground with rocks and stones 

 in those sections, as he had in New York and New 

 England. South of the line that runs irregularly 

 through middle New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, 

 Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and so on to the Rockies, 

 he will find few loose stones scattered over the soil, 

 no detached boulders sitting upon the surface, no 

 hills or mounds of gravel and sand, no clay banks 

 packed full of rounded stones, little and big, no 



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