CULTIVATION BY STEAM. 5 



visited Europe and scrutinized the working of various Steam Plows ; 

 and he concluded that Fowler's machinery, whereof two powerful 

 engines stand at each side of the field and draw the plows back and 

 forth by winding up and unwinding wire-ropes around their respec- 

 tive drums, was the only device adapted to this soft, heavy, easily 

 compacted soil. He bought sviccessively two sets of these machines, 

 the second much heavier and more powerful than the first ; and he 

 is now using thirty-horse engines, supplied on his resolute demand, 

 though none so powerful had ever been constructed for plowing till 

 he ordered them. When the Fowlers have done their best for him, 

 he takes the machines into his own shops and directs such modifica- 

 tions as his own experience has suggested. He is confident that we 

 shall soon require sixty-horse engines, and that by their aid dry 

 prairie may be plowed two feet deep at the rate of at least fifty 

 acres per day. 



Though the season has been persistently cool and rainy, so that 

 everything is backward, and the soil was too wet to be plowed to 

 advantage, yet we found, on our unannounced arrival, both sets of 

 plowing machinery in full operation, with none but negro field-hands 

 near them, though an overseer I'ode from field to field supervising 

 their efibrts. Boys of 12 to 14 years, who could not hold a breaking- 

 up mule- plow, were running engines as learners, at wages of seventy- 

 five cents each jjer day. The ground was cane-stubble, heavily ridged 

 or hilled to counteract excess of moisture, with the " trash " of last 

 year's crop lying between the rows and constantly clogging and chok- 

 ing the plows, often requiring the machinery to be stopped in order 

 to clear them. The subsoil — never disturbed till now — is a glu- 

 tinous clay loam, compacted by sixty years' treading of heavy mule 

 teams, so wet that it came up unbroken, as if it were glue, and 

 about as easy to pulverize as so much sole-leather. So obstinate is 

 it that Mr. Lawrence had reduced each gang of plows to two, lest 

 his engines shovild be stalled or his wire-ropes broken. These two 

 each cut a furrow sixteen inches wide and fully two feet in aver- 

 age depth : had the surface been level, they would have averaged 

 twenty-six inches. They were drawn across the field (576 feet) 

 faster than most men would like to walk. Three men were reqiiired 

 to keep them in place, and clear them of the choking " trash," which 

 jT would have burned out of their way, though I, had I been planter, 

 would have preferred to hare it buried as they buried it. Against 

 all these impediments, each set of machinery was plowing from five 



