178 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



Aug. 



EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE FARMER. 



The Clierokee Country — Inducements to Emigrants — Crops 



Price of Lands— Kinds of Timber — Wool Growing — 



Labor necessary at the South, as elsewhere. 



'Tunnel Mountain, Ga., July -i, 1SS9. 



If the reader will look on a map of the United 

 States, he will see that the Tennes:;c River approa- 

 ches very near the Atlantic in its son hern detour in- 

 to the states of Georgia and Alabama The railroad 

 constructing by the State of Georgia through the 

 far-famed Cherokee Country, which is to connect the 

 navigable waters of the Tennessee and the Missis- 

 sippi with the seaports of Charleston and Savannah, 

 approaches its completion. This is a noble Work; 

 and at no point from the Tennessee river to the 

 ocean, do the gradients exceed 33 feet in a mile.— 

 The writer has recently passed over the whole of this 

 line of railroad, being 445 miles from Charleston to 

 Chattanooga, in Tennessee, and on the river by that 

 name. The Tunnel at this place will be the last to be 

 completed, requiring the labor of four or five months. 

 It is 1,475 feet in length, of which 450 remain to be 

 blasted in blue Helderberg lime rock. This dips to 

 the south at an angle of some 75 degrees, at the 

 point in the mountain where the miners are now at 

 work. It is the glory of this age that man is able 

 to drive his steam-chariots and fire-horses, not mere- 

 ly over and around, but through mountains, with the 

 speed of the wind. 



This- region abounds in mineral springs, and is be- 

 coming a great resort as the summer residence of 

 planters, in all the low country from North Carolina 

 to Texas. I regard the " Cherokee Country," nine- 

 teen-twentieths of which is still in a state of nature, 

 or as the Indians left it, as presenting strong induce- 

 ments to emigrants from Europe and the northern 

 states to settle upon and improve its fertile lands. — 

 It was surveyed by the state into tracts of 160 acres; 

 and these were drawn by its citizens, in a lottery, 

 paying a few dollars, for the survey and deed of 

 each lot. They are being resold by the holders to 

 actual settlers, and at all prices, from ten to one 

 thousand dollars a lot. For the production of corn 

 and grass, the growing of cattle, mules, sheep and 

 swine, they are not surpassed in the United States. 

 With fair tillage, the uplands yield 50 bushels of 

 corn per acre. For some reason, these limestone 

 lands are not quite so well adapted to wheat culture 

 as I expected to find them. Whether the defect is 

 in the soil or its cultivatien, I am at present unable 

 to say. 



Late and extraordinary frosts have quite ruined 

 the wheat crops of this season. Farmers will have 

 to send to Tennessee for their seed. Clover does 

 remarkably well with gypsum, and indifferently 

 without it. Timothy, red-top, and blue-grass flour- 

 ish admirably on the natural soil, as do oats, peas, 

 beans, millet, potatoes and turnips. It is high 

 enough above the ocean for apples, pears, plums and 

 cherries to do well. It is above the fig climate, and 

 the home of the peach and the vine. To raise ap- 

 ples and pears for the low country, on the line of the 

 railroad, would be a profitable business. I was offer- 

 ed yesterday two lots (320 acres) within a mile of 

 the depot, 45 miles south of this, for !§U00. I went 

 over the tract. It can all be plowed; is covered with 

 oak and hickory, and wild grass, and has a lime and 

 flint soil. 



As in portions of Michigan and Wisconsin fifteen 



years ago, one can drive a carriage almost anywhere 

 through the Indian burnt forests. I visited a lime- 

 stone spring eight mile3 from Oothcaloga Depot, 

 large enough where it issues from the ground, to 

 drive three pairs of millstones. It is in this region 

 that one sees horned cattle, which are cattle — a sight 

 which in 18 months' residence at the south, had not 

 before met my eye. Oak is the principal timber, 

 with an occasional pine, black and white walnut, 

 beech and white maple, along the banks of streams. 

 Hickory, white ash, black cherry, and many other 

 kinds of forest trees are met with in riding over the 

 country. These lands are worth about Congress 

 price. Improved farms on river and creek bottoms 

 sell at from ten to twenty dollars per acre. White 

 men everywhere work in the field as they do at the 

 north. It is not a cotton growing region, but strict- 

 ly a fanning climate. 



My friend, R. Peters, Esq., from Pennsylvania, 

 has sheep that clip over seven pounds of wool per 

 fleece, and hundreds of acres of the best upland corn 

 in Georgia. I predict that this will soon become a 

 most prosperous wool-growing district. The range 

 for stock is almost unlimited; and the facilities for 

 transporting fat cattle, shep and hogs to the seaboard 

 are as good as any one need ask for. 



I do not wonder that the Indians left this their 

 home, and the tumuli where rest the bones of unnum- 

 bered generation, with extreme reluctance. I have 

 visited several mounds in Georgia, but leave the dis- 

 cussion to learned ethnologists. Unlike the African 

 race, the Indian spurned the blessings and industri- 

 ous habits of civilization; and he is fast disappear- 

 ing in all the late border states, while the hard-work- 

 ing African multiplies with extraordinary fecundity. 

 Being well and regularly fed, as well as worked, the 

 negroes of the south present a striking proof of the 

 value of temperance and industry in promoting sound 

 health, and the rapid increase of the human family. 

 They are rising both physically and mentally, while 

 those that foolishly disobey the command of God to 

 eat bread in the sweat of their faces, are going the 

 other way. 



If a person expects to escape work by coming 

 south, or going west or to California, let him disa- 

 buse his reason at once. As a people, Providence 

 has blest us with agricultural, civil and religious fa- 

 vors above all other nations; but the duty to labor is 

 as incumbent upon Americans as on any other por- 

 tion of the descendants of Adam. The cheerful dis- 

 charge of this duty is the doctrine the writer preach- 

 es, practices and believes in. Had the aborigines of 

 this continent adopted the rural and mechanical 

 industry of the Europeans when the latter came 

 among them, their posterity would this day rule the 

 land from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The emanci- 

 pated negroes of St. Domingo refuse to till the earth 

 and they are going back to barbarism, pagan dark- 

 ness and brutality. Labor is the grand humanizer of 

 our race. Without it, man nover rises but a single 

 step above the speechless beasts of the field. With 

 it each generation may excel all prededing ones to the 

 end of time. L. 



The American Farmer very justly remarks that, 

 "Farmers and planters have too long looked supine- 

 ly on, while power was being stolen from them, to 

 aggrandize other classes, less entitled than they to 

 the fostering care of Government." 



