72 



&l)c Jarmer ? ittontljhj ittdtor. 



five men could easily have pulled tliem up, 

 gathered ihein into carts, and housed them (after 

 hauling them a distance of more than a quarter 

 of a tiiile) in one day. 



Railroad and other Cogitations. 



We understand the price of passenger freight 

 l>y the railroad from Boston to Concord on the 

 first of June is to be reduced to one dollar and a 

 half, or two cents a mile. This is less than half 

 of the average rate of what was the former price 

 by stage. When we first went over the way the 

 most rapid time by stage, a part of a day and 

 two nights, was fifteen hours, and the common 

 time about twenty. Now we go over the distance 

 of seventy-five miles, making stoppages at every 

 depot, in three hours: one day of the last month 

 the cars leaving Boston at five o'clock in the 

 evening, came in at half past seven, almost be- 

 fore the sun was fairly down. Men may do 

 business in Boston during all the usual hours of 

 business, going and returning daily by the rail- 

 road, and live in Concord in the usual hours of 

 repose with their families. Distance seems now 

 to be but a small object: the price of freight ol 

 great bulk and weight reduced to the price of 

 the passage of persons, makes the value of every 

 farm and garden along the line of road within a 

 hundred miles, as great as the farm and garden 

 on the margin of the city of Boston. The facili- 

 ties of transport gives an unexpected value to 

 almost every thing which mother earth produces. 

 The incitements to enterprise are almost too 

 strong in New England for a steady, healthy 

 state of tilings. But advanced in intellect and 

 intelligence as well as in the sources of wealth 

 beyond almost every oilier section of the world, 

 it is scarcely possible that enterprise should fail 

 the men and women of New England. Although 

 her soil is hard of cultivation and her climate 

 cold and often discouraging, yet the basis of her 

 pride and wealth will be found in her Agricul- 

 ture. Surrounded by prosperous farmers, the 

 various Manufactures of our towns and villages 

 cannot fail to flourish. 



About a mile below the cily of Albany lies, go 

 near a level to the Hudson as to be overflowed 

 by high freshets, an island of some two hundred 

 acres in extent. This island, the property of the 

 Rensselaer family, is rented out in small parcels 

 at the annual rate of eighteen dollars the acre. 

 It is cultivated for the production of market 

 vegetables, sold in the city of Albany. Manures 

 are used upon this laud sufficient for a stimulus : 

 independent of them the ground retains a fertili- 

 ty which seems to suffer little deterioration from 

 long use. 



Directly upon the bank fronting ihis island, is 

 the beautiful villa and seat of E. P. Prentice, 

 Esq., the munificent friend of Agricultural im- 

 provement in the State of New York. Mr. 

 Prentice is a native of the Granite State, a grand- 

 son of that Nathaniel Sartell Prentice who re- 

 presented the then new town of Alstead in that 

 Assembly of the State which in 1776, before the 

 general declaration by Congress, declared its in- 

 dependence of the royal authority of Great 

 Britain, and who was afterwards a judge in the 

 Cheshire courts. Mr. Prentice had made his 

 fortune of hundred thousands in the business of 

 traffic and manufacture of furs, retiring in favor 

 of a younger brother a few years since. The 

 daughter of our old friend Col. Cheney of New- 

 port, now deceased, is the wife of Mr. P.; and 

 with him in the enjoyment of an easy fortune, 



reside his own father and the mother of his wile, 

 each of them at a good old age having left New 

 Hampshire. 



The mansion and beautiful grounds, inter- 

 spersed with garden plats, fruit and various 

 other ornamental trees and shaubhery, lie many 

 feet above the river. Along the road at the foot 

 of the hill, Mr. Prentice has lately erected three 

 several villas of the cottage pattern. Fronting 

 the mansion above and the cottages on either 

 hand, below on the lower side of the road are 

 the extensive and ample stables in which Mr. P. 

 has reared the fine cattle which have gone forth 

 into distant parts of the country. His first im- 

 portations were of the Durham breed. More re- 

 cently he has turned his attention to the Ayrshire 

 as being a better breed to be intermixed with 

 the native cattle for the qualities of milking and 

 meat. Other Slates than New York will derive 

 benefits from the stock of his importation and 

 raising. Along the road is a plat of Mr. Pren- 

 tice's premises corresponding in cultivation and 

 value with the Rensselaer island from which it is 

 separated by a smaller branch of the river. At 

 the upper end of this plat is the neat and elegant 

 cottage residence of our friend Tucker, editor of 

 the Cultivator, erected especially for his use by 

 bis munificent friend, who charges him only at 

 the rate of simple interest on the cost for so 

 many and just such accommodations as he 

 chooses. A few acres of the fertile land suffices 

 for all the farming and garden purposes of the 

 successor of Buel, who has done much in the 

 last dozen years to promote the cause of Agri- 

 culture. We are glad to find that continued pa- 

 tronage has led our friend into untiring efforts in 

 this great cause. The spirit and the usefulness 

 of the Cultivator suffers no abatement in the 

 lapse of time. To that gentleman and his intel- 

 ligent associate editor, Mr. Howard, are we in- 

 depted for new attentions at every repeated 

 Albany visit. 



A thousand feet more elevated than the river 

 at Albany, in a basin upon the westerly slope of 

 the Berkshire mountains, lies the town of Pitts- 

 field, which has been long known for its generous 

 munificence in the cause of Education generally, 

 and especially as the seat of the first county 

 Agricultural Society in New England. Between 

 this town and the westerly line of Massachusetts 

 separating it from New York, there is but a single 

 town. The difference in vegetation, arising 

 from the difference in elevation, on the first day 

 of May was a full fortnight between Albany and 

 Pittsfield : the leaves of the trees had shot forth 

 and the apple-blows appeared at the one place, 

 while most of the trees and fields were nearly 

 naked with winter barrenness at the other. 



The Massachusetts Western railroad in its 

 passage over and through the Berkshire moun- 

 tains, encountering an elevation of about fifteen 

 hundred feet, some of the distance surmounted 

 at the rate of more than eighty feet to the mile, 

 has its route through the village and town of 

 Pittsfield, The village at the centre is one of 

 the most beautiful of New England towns: it is 

 so fast increasing since it has enjoyed railway 

 facilities, lhat spreading over a large surface, it 

 will soon become a continuous city from one 

 manufacturing cluster on the Housatonic to an- 

 other manufacturing village on the Pontoosuc: 

 the elder and larger village of the town is situa- 

 ted midway between the rivers which unite a 

 few miles below. The avenues of the town 

 adorned with trees reaching from the centre of 



the village on either hand are beautifully filled 

 in svilh the most tasteful and elegant residences, 

 most of which are built of wood, with ornamen- 

 tal shrubbery and trees shading the yards in 

 front. The manufactures of Pittsfield, already 

 considerable, are fast extending: in the manu- 

 facture of wool, with no very heavy original in- 

 vestment of capital, we were pleased to learn 

 that a single enterprising individual had been 

 realizing, year in and year out, the sure profit 

 equal to forty dollars for every working day. 



The elevation of Pittsfield, in easy level among 

 the mountains from which the pure living wa- 

 ters come down, makes it one of the most 

 healthy in the world. Our own experience in 

 breathing this mountain air for only twelve 

 hours, explained to us how the inhabitants of 

 that country live to a great age. The town is 

 the seat of one of the best Medical Institutions 

 of New England, uniting the talents of five 

 eminent men of the faculty. Lt. Gov. Childs 

 fills a chair of this Institute, as he has done the 

 past year at another institution in Ohio and in 

 the Medical School of Woodstock, Vermont. 

 The mother of Dr. Childs, in whose younger 

 family of brothers were the Timothy Childs, de- 

 ceased, late a member of Congress from Monroe 

 county, N. Y., and the gallant Col. Childs who 

 has distinguished himself in Mexico, yet lives 

 at a great age, an interested looker-on of public 

 events, with her elder son at Pittsfield. One of the 

 best institutions of the kind in the country is the 

 Young Ladies' Institute of Pittsfield, at which in 

 the higher branches of instruction some hundred 

 young ladies are generally in attendance. To 

 this charming village, the elegant manners of its 

 inhabitants not less than the salubrity of its 

 mountain air, invite the attention of parents for 

 the education of their children, leading them early 

 in the way they should go. Instruction, prepara- 

 tory to the various professions and business of 

 life, seems here to have been concentrated as 

 one of the most desirable points of the country. 

 It is a general remark of the city of New York, 

 that of the men of wealth, talent and enterprise 

 now prominent in that great mart of trade and 

 knowledge, many natives of Berkshire in western 

 Massachusetts are now conspicuous. Pittsfield, 

 in times gone by, has had her share of eminent 

 men in the counsels of the nation ; and she has 

 sent forth educated men to other Slates of the 

 Union. The present Governor Briggs of Massa- 

 chusetts is a resident of Pittsfield : her early 

 men of wealth, to which the excellence of her 

 soil has contributed, have been among the dis- 

 tinguished patrons of Agriculture in the old Bay 

 State. 



It pleased us on this occasion to meet in Pitts- 

 field a cotempurary printer and editor, the vene- 

 rable Phineas Allen, who in the year 1800, nearly 

 half a century ago, established in that village 

 that good old paper, the Pithfield Sun, which he 

 has continued from that day to the present, true 

 to the principles and cause which he first advo- 

 vated as an immovable dial to the great luminary 

 of the Heavens: as a family paper the Sun has 

 few superiors in the country. By some years 

 his junior, while the editor has been connected 

 with any political paper, no journal has better 

 suited him as a model than that of our old friend 

 Allen. Enviable, indeed, has been the career of 

 Mr. Allen in this his native town: he has reared 

 and educated respectably an interesting family, 

 of whom three sons and two daughters of seven 

 yet remain. The sons reside in this village, the 

 one its very acceptable post-master, and the 



