1856. 



NEW ENGLAND FAHMER. 



173 



Fur tfie Neic England Farmer. 



NOTES FROM THE SOUTH. 



TFddon, JV. C, Jan. 10, 1856. 



Dear Sir : — Agreeably to my promise to you, 

 to give my ideas of Southern agriculture, I am now 

 writing you from this town, or rather collection of, 

 houses in North Carolina. 



"Weldon is the junction of three lines of railroad, 

 Northern, Southern and Western, and were it in 

 Yankee land, would long ago have rivalled many of 

 our Northern cities, but it is a mere "indus" at 

 present. 



The changes from the Northern practice of agri- 

 culture may be seen the moment one leaves Phila- 

 delphia ; the grass crops become of less importance, 

 the gi'ain of more ; and instead of carts and wag- : 

 ons that may be drawn, well loaded, by two horses j 

 or mules, the wagons and carts need, at least, two ! 

 mules to draw them without minding the load. I| 

 repeatedly saw at Washington, four and even six | 

 mules drawing loads that I should send into Bos- i 

 ton, from my farm at Lexington, with at the best,: 

 two horses, and in most cases, only one. A very| 

 remarkable feature, too, is, that no one drives his 

 load as we do, sitting in the wagon or on top of 

 the load, but whether he have two or four horses, 

 rides one in the saddle, and drives the others, eith- 

 er by reins or the voice. 



The agricultural implements, too, strike a North- 

 erner with amazement. Hoes as large as four of 

 ours ; ])lows that a man can hardly lift, and often 

 not running more than* three inches in the soil. 



Seeing all these things, and having been told ev- 

 er since I can remember that the Southern people 

 do everything by halves only, I was not surprised at 

 the state of things that I found prevalent in this 

 State. I have been staying here several weeks, 

 and have therefore had a pretty good chance to see 

 things as they are. Now, remembering what I 

 have said about the poor tools, the negligent 

 habits of the people, the carelessness of the ne- 

 groes, &c., as well as the highly cultivated fields, 

 trim grass lands, nice barns and large yields of our 

 best New England farms, shall you not be surprised 

 to hear me say, that even here, in North Carolina, 

 a State rarely heard of, and generally considered 

 entirely behind the times, I have seen better farm- 

 ing, l)etter tools, better discipline and better crops, 

 than I have ever seen before in my life. 



It may seem to you something like exaggeration, 

 but it is nevertheless true, that any of our North- 

 ern farmers might visit the estates of Messrs. Hen- 

 ry and Thomas P. Burgwyn, on the Roanoke Riv- 

 er, near Halifax, to their very great advantage. 



These gentlemen farm, or more properly plant, 

 some three thousand acres of land, and show a per- 

 severance against obstacles, and a grasp of mind, 

 agriculturally, that would do them credit in any 

 portion of the world. Their lands consist of a rich 

 alluvial river bottom, some high and some low, that 

 with reasonable culture, will yield twenty-five bush- 

 els of wheat or less of corn to the acre ; land much 

 of which they bought for less than five dollars per 

 acre because it was worn out. 



The texture of the land is loamy clay, and when 

 they took their plantations they had been so long 

 cultivated in the old way, plowing three inches 

 deep, thit all the surface below that depth had be- 

 come hard as a rock. As I more ])articularly stud- 

 ied Mr. H. 11. Burgwyn's plantation, having staid 



there a week, I will confine myself to what he has 

 efi'ected. Mr. B. inherited his plantation about 

 seventeen years ago, together with some hundred 

 negroes, he, at that time, living at the North, al- 

 though of Southern birth, and at that time of de- 

 cided anti-slavery tendency. His first business af- 

 ter taking possession of his property was to inves- 

 tigate how he could best dispose of his slaves for their 

 own advantage ; and in his researches occupied sev- 

 eral years. Li the meantime he also a])plied his 

 thoughts to bettering his lands ; whilst engaged in 

 this liljeration scheme, together with his brother, 

 he imported a hundred Irishmen, so as to try wliite 

 labor, which proved an entire failure, costing them 

 about $2000. A mind thus active had not failed 

 of course to study the plantation economy, and see- 

 ing us plant deep and liberably manure at the 

 North, he tried the same thing on his lands, and 

 putting in his plows ten inches instead of tliree, 

 found the benefit ; he also suftered very much from 

 standing water which made his clay subsoil so te- 

 nacious as to be almost unworkable ; to remedy that 

 he dug ditches, and besides innumerable covered 

 and blind ditches, has one single straight ditch, 

 two miles long. Probably all of his ditches would 

 out-measure eight miles. When he first com- 

 menced there was not a single field in one crop on 

 the Roanoke that would exceed a hundred acres ; 

 he had last year, nine hundred acres in wheat ; 

 four hundred and fifty in corn, and five hundred in 

 clover ; and he has for this year, nine hundred in 

 clover and nine hundred in wheat, the corn not yet 

 planted. To manure the wheat of last year he not 

 only ap])lied several thousand dollar's worth of lime 

 and artificial manures, but also turned in clover 

 enough at present prices to come to six or eight 

 thousand dollars more. Of the nine acres of clover 

 this year, he will cut a portion, feed a portion, and 

 turn in the remainder. The first wonder is, how 

 he cuts his wheat ; he had last year six four-horse 

 reapers in the field at once ; his wheat is cut, then 

 bound and stocked, and then thrashed in the field. 



The thrashing goes almost simultaneously Avith 

 the cutting. To thrash this wheat he has a steam 

 thi'ashing machine, of twenty horse power, that 

 will thrash one thousand bushels in a day ; and I 

 saw it shelling corn at the rate of two tliousand 

 bushels a day. His working force is one hundred 

 and seventy-five negroes, fifty-five mules and horses, 

 and one hundred and fifty head of cattle, about 

 one-third of which are oxen. His plantation at 

 this season of the year, is, of course, much less in- 

 viting than at the growing season, the more partic- 

 ularly that it snowed the day after we got there, 

 and has not thawed yet. So severe cold has not 

 been known these thirty years here ; the Pioan- 

 oke being covered with ice, and the thermome- 

 ter at eight degrees above zero. In spite of the 

 wintry appearance however, it is easy to see his im- 

 provements, particularly for one, whose business is, 

 like mine, to judge of nature's beauties and capa- 

 bilities. His house stands in a grove of oak trees, 

 and has directly in front of it a field of wheat, of 

 six acres, not one great square field, but beautifully 

 broken and diversified with groups of trees : and 

 when fully grown, under the influence of the wind, 

 it must even rival the beauty of a water landscape, 

 as it rolls, swells and waves, according to the ])0W- 

 er of the blast. 



Such a plantation is a village in itself; it has its 

 carpenter's and blacksmith's shops, its wheelwright 



