m 



NEW E N GLAND FAR M E R , 



SEPT. 9, ■e40. 



AN ENGLISHMAN'S ACCOUNT OF OUR 

 COUNTRY. 

 In tlie Hritish rarmer's Magaxiiie fur .luly, wf 

 find the follmving nolico of Mr Echiiiinil Edmiinil's 

 letter to tlie fanners of Eiiglaml, after havii-fi been 

 to the United States to look after a pauper lie h:ul 

 sent out. He has jrlven to his countrymen a curi- 

 ous account of the a;iriculture of our country, so 

 mixed np witli ignorance and pn'judice, that we 

 thinli our readers will be anui.^ed by the perusal of 

 it. — It i.s lucky Mr Edmunds escaped as he did 

 with life, after having his ears greeted " with the 

 loud horrid noise of the bull toads, which weigh 

 from three to four pounds each." VVe sincerely 

 hope he will not venture the lives of any more of 

 his paupers on this side the Atlantic ; for after 

 hearing his description of our climate and the dan- 

 g-ers to which we are e.xposed from heat, cold, 

 grasshoppers and bull loads I we shall set him down 

 guilty of manslaughter at least, by thus endanger- 

 ing their lives. No — let him keep his paupers at 

 home, and feed them on fat bacon and cabbage, 

 rather than send them here " to slave in the heat, 

 toil in the cold, and starve on pickled pork and po- 

 tatoes." J. B. 



" A Word to thk Wise " — A Letter to the Far- 

 mers of England, liy Edmund Edmunds, Uraun- 

 eton, Northamptonshire ; a Farmer, lately re- 

 turned from the United States of America. — 

 London : Hamilton & Adams. 1640. 



A very sensible, and we are inclined to think a 

 very faithful [! ! !] account of a land, of which we 

 are further inclined to think more lies have been 



told than of any other of our emigrating points 



Mr Edmunds had Keard much of America, especial- 

 ly from a pauper whom he had been the means of 

 sending out thither, and who represented it as a 

 land flowing with little short of milk and honey. 

 He resolved to see and judge for himself, and it is 

 the objrct of the letter in question to give the re- 

 sults of his invfstigation. 



"I went up to Palmyra, a pleasant village in the 

 State of New York, because there I was to meet 

 my son, a young man about twenty vears of age, 

 for whom in England I had no more chance of tak- 

 ing a farm than I had for myself; and there too 

 was the man whom I had prevailed on the parish 

 to send out, and who, knowing the interest I had 

 taken in his welfare, had written to me such letters 

 of his great prosperity. lint how did I Hnd liim ? 

 Did I find him the genllemaii fanner his letters had 

 led me to suppose he was ? No. I found him as 

 poor as when he was the village cobbler of Biann- 

 ston, and I may say apparently less comfortable in 

 every point of view. The land which he had boast- 

 ed of as his estate was not his own ; and he was 

 looking forward to tlie approaching harvest with 

 dread of the heat and labor with which it was to 

 be gathered." 



We should like much to have the result of the 

 son's experience, the young man of 20, above allud- 

 ed to, and to know how far it corresponded with 

 that of his father. Meanwhile, we shall give such 

 extracts from the letter of the latter as we think 

 may interest the general reader. 



"The .\niericans always reckon by dollars and 

 cents, each cent being the hundredth part of a dol- 

 lar; but as I am not writing for Americans but 

 Englishmen, I shall give the value of every thing 

 in English money. 



" .^s respects the land, 1 was not at all deceived. 

 It is light and easy to till. An acre a day may be 

 ploughed with t»'o horses abreast driven with rein.-j. 

 The land being fertile the crops for a while grow 

 very luxurituitly, exciting hopes which are not un- 

 frequentiy disappointed ; for supposing a crop of 

 wheat should escape the blight, or, as the Ameri- 

 cans call it, the rust, which in two or three days 

 will so utterly destroy a whole field that there shall 

 not he a grain of corn in it; supposing it should 

 escape, what from the excessive heat all the low 

 lands are particularly subject to, yet from the heat 

 alone, when it does no particular injury, the vegc- 

 tation is so quick, and the grain ripens so long be- 

 fore it has had time to perfect its growth, that the 

 kernel is very snr.ll and light, and altogether very 

 inferior to what it would be in a better climate. 

 Wheat, in a good season, will not yield more than 

 from about 1.5 to 20 bushels an acre, and being 

 small and dry it lies close, and weighs from 60 to 

 C4 lb. per bushel. In the States further west, it 

 averages about 2.') bushels per acre ; but the price 

 is lower, in consequence of its having to travel so 

 many hundred miies to market, in order to its be- 

 ing exported, or to supply the Eastern States. If 

 a crop of wheat in Ohio is larger than in the .State 

 of New York, it is of less value; so that the far- 

 mer's gain is about equal in each Slate. 



" As I took out with me a bushel of good Eng- 

 lish wheal of the prini"st quality, I sometimes could 

 not restrain iny English feeling when I heard the 

 Americans proudly boasting of the produce of their 

 country, and vainly talking of it, as if the like could 

 never be seen. When they seemed to be all agreed 

 and had quite settled the point in their own mind 

 that there was no wheat like their own, out I used 

 to pull my sample of good bold English wheat, fat 

 and plump, and showed them, to their great sur- 

 prise, such wheat as I knew their country could 

 not grow. When I did this on board a steamer, 

 they came round about me like bees — all the cry 

 was, ' I wonder much,' ' I wonder much ;' ' and does 

 suih grain as this really grow in England ?' and 

 then one and another, forgetting his American in- 

 dependence, was presently asking for a few grams 

 just to set in his garden. 



"The Americans grow great quantities of Indian 

 corn, which, being natural to the soil and climate, 

 will yield from t!0 to ]()0 bushels per acre, accord- 

 ing to the land, and the good husbandry with which 

 it is tanned. It is set in rows wide enough for a 

 plough to go between, about the end of April or 

 beginning of May ; it grows from five to eight feet 

 high, and puts forth a number of broad loaves, 

 which are good fodder for cattle. It is a great ar- 

 ticle with the Ameri<;aD farmer, and, as a never 

 failing crop, it is his chief dependence, and much 

 relied on by hiin lor the keep of all his stock through 

 the severities of an American winter. 



"Tlie land would grow good Swede turnips, but 

 they are not cultivated. It would not pay to give 

 men a dollar a day, that is four shillings, and their 

 board, t.) pull them up and house them ; the far- 

 mer has no stock that would pay to eat them, and 

 they would all perish if left in the ground. 



"The meadows, generally speaking, look pretty 

 good, and will average about two tons an acre; 

 but the hay, made of red-top or timo'.hy grass, grow- 

 ing from three to four feet high, is very coarse, 

 and there is not much nuture in it. The stoiik 

 which are grazed in such meadows never become 

 fat. If they are in good order as stores, that is as 

 much as you must ever expect to see. I never 



saw any thing at all like fat beef or mutton in the 

 thousands of miles I travelled. 



" During my stay, I spared no trouble or expense 

 to gain all the information I could collect, beino' 

 very desirous to know whether America was what 

 it had been represented or not. And from my ov. n 

 observations, I made those calculations which ev- 

 ery man of my age and experience ought to make, 

 before he thinks of settling down in .a countrv 

 which appears one thing in American books and 

 private letters, and another as it is observed with 

 the eye of an English farmer capable of forming a 

 correct judgment. 



"The American horses, with their long tails, are 

 all of the nag kind, vary in price from £10 to £30, 

 and are, taking them generally, so very good, that 

 I may say they are superior to our own. They are 

 well made, good tempered, and are mostly used for 

 harness, and a span or a pair abreast in a light 

 wagon, will trot along well. The Americans take 

 great care of them, and will give them corn twice 

 a day, when there is plenty of grass, yet they are 

 never in any better condition than what we call 

 good working order. But I regard America as a 

 country in which neither man nor beast can thrive, 

 for there is but very little enjoyment for either- 

 Every living creature must feel, more or les.s, the 

 close ,SM/(ri/ heat of an American summer, and the 

 picrctns; co]A of an American winter. 



"As I should be sorry to misrepresent any thing, 

 though so much was mi-sreprosenled to me, I must 

 now state that the cows are very good and u.sefu! 

 for a dairy. They are of every breed, and worth 

 from £8 to £10 each. In their frame they are 

 what we should call beasts of six i^r seven score a 

 quarter. But the farmer, who should keep ten or 

 twelve for a dairy, is subject to a very great loss 

 in the calves. There being no market for veal at 

 6d. or 7d. per lb. as in England, the calves that are 

 not wanted for rearing, after they have been kept 

 about ten days to draw the cow's bag, are knocked 

 on the head, skinned, and thrown to the pigs, the 

 price of slock being so low, the farmer has no in- 

 ducement to rear more calves than he is likely to 

 want to keep up his own stock, and to save buying. 



" The sheep, a mixed breed of Spanish merino 

 and Saxony, are worth about six shillings a head. 

 They are very much like an ill-bred Southdown in 

 poor condition, and will cut from 2 to 3 lb. of wool 

 each. When fed on an American pasture, they 

 weigh about 10 or 12 lb. a quarter, and the meat, 

 whether beef or mutton, is worth 2 l-2d. or 3d. per 

 lb. The lambs, which when fat are worth four or 

 five shi. lings each, are yeaned at the latter end of 

 April, or the beginning of May. In consequence 

 of the winters being so very long and cold, the 

 springs are lale ; and the ground being covered 

 with snow the greater part of the winter, the far- 

 mer is obliged to fodder his ewes from the middle 

 of November till the middle of May on hay and In- 

 dian corn. Now I would ask, what is to pay for 

 keeping, we will say, fifty ewes for a year, and for 

 shepherding them as they ought to be attended to, 

 in a country where men and cattle sufl'or so much 

 from the oppressive heat ot the summer, and the 

 piercing cold of the winter? If we reckon that 

 fifty ewes have one lamb each, and they seldom 

 have more, and supposing them all reared without 

 the loss of a single sheep, for I am quite willing in 

 my calculations to give America every advantage, 

 what then? why the farmer, after twelve months' 

 keep, has got fifty ewes that will not cut more than 

 •3 lb. of wool one with another, and he has, at most, 



