100 



&!)c ^farmer's iHont!)lij bisitor. 



sums up his views upon the importance of 

 draining : 



" Iu conclusion it should be observed, that 

 every attention which can be paid to the pre- 

 paration and application of manures will be inef- 

 fectual in rendering soils fertile unless due re- 

 gard be given to the removal of excess of moist- 

 ure by draining, when needful. When a soil is 

 saturated with water, the air is excluded from 

 the routs of the plants, and prevented from act- 

 ing upon the manure ; while the low tempera- 

 ture produced, by continued evaporation from 

 the surface, lias an additional powerful effect in 

 retarding theprogress of vegetation. 



" To lay manure upon wet soils, is, in truth, to 

 throw money away ; but were draining univer- 

 sally effected, the whole of the now unproduc- 

 tive soil of the country would, to a vast extent, 

 be rendered capable of receiving the benefit of 

 the numerous modes of fertilizing it. Its returns 

 are immediate, as well as compensative; and to 

 hesitate to drain the land, is to hesitate to confer 

 a benefit upon one's self, of which a strong proof 

 has been lately brought forward in a statement 

 of the profit resulting from the drainage of 407 

 acres, and the employment of the drain water 

 over 89 acres of land, on the estate of Lord 

 Hatherton, in Straffbrdshire — affording a clear 

 annual interest on the outlay of full thirty-seven 

 per cent." 



&l)c Visitor. 



CONCORDrN. IT., JULY 31, 1848. 



Reflections from a Journey at Mid-Summer. 



LOWER NEW HAMPSHIRE AND MAINE IH 1848. 



The social chit-chat with a sympathizer who 

 is interested in the same subject that interests us 

 can scarcely entertain us more, than the sileii; 

 contemplation while journeying through New 

 England, which brings along with it the growing 

 admiration of the wisdom of the great Creator 

 in the disposition which he has made of the 

 works of his hand. "How is it," asked our aged 

 friend and neighbor in a ride the other day over 

 the piny region of the Dark Plain, " that I have 

 witnessed in the lapse of the last fourscore years 

 one kind of trees succeeding another as the new 

 growth — hard wood, as the oak and the birch, 

 starting spontaneously and growing up where 

 hard pines grew before ; and so white pine in 

 other places taking the place of band wood be- 

 fore cui down ?" Our answer was, that a wise 

 Providence had so disposed the materials of 

 which this globe is composed that even without 

 man's assistance the earth produced every thing. 

 The philosophy we would introduce to solve the 

 reason why a forest growth of entire different 

 kind started up in the place of another, is that 

 which would incline us to recommend a rotation 

 or change of crops that the farmer may keep up 

 the highest perpetual fertility of the field. The 

 roots of one kind of tree or vegetable operating 

 in the soil, while they exhaust the peculiar quali- 

 ty of that soil which makes one kind of tree or 

 vegetable, prepare at the same time another 

 quality for the soil producing a different tree or 

 vegetable. Thus it is why com, or potatoes, or 

 rye, or wheat, should not he produced on the 

 same ground a succession of seasons ; not that 

 i . numd becomes worn out or exhausted, but 

 that it needs one kind of growth and action by 

 root to prepare it for another. There is some- 

 thing beyond this in the fact noticed by the aged 

 gentlejman, that trees should spring up and grow 

 where no seeds of the same tree had been plant- 

 ed of II kind different from the growth last clear- 

 ed away. So we see, going far into the forest, 

 on a cleared spot, white clover or honey-suckli 



springing out of the ground where the hand of 

 man had sowed no seed Our opinion in rela- 

 tion to trees is, that Nature herself has carried 

 on this rotation in a series of years even beyond 

 the flood ; that the seeds have remained in the 

 ground inert perhaps for thousands of years, and 

 that so soon as the upper surface becomes pre- 

 pared for the better production of the tree, the 

 seed of that kind of tree commences its action 

 and springs from the ground. 



The ready growth of favorable weather in the 

 month of June and July is truly astonishing: 

 this is the middle day (July lfi) of the month, 

 and in our quick acting cornfield, notwithstand- 

 ing the continued wet and cold days nearly half 

 of the time, we saw the corn planted six weeks 

 before tasselled out as high as the waist: this 

 was not the quick, small Canada corn, but the 

 large twelve-rowed Dutton corn from the seed 

 sent us by our friend Blodget on Canaan hill, 

 forty miles north. So also we see growing out 

 several inches in twenty-four hours grape-vines 

 planted last year; limbs of the spontaneous 

 elms springing up about our own door in a few 

 days growing us out of sight with the familiar 

 objects looked at from the windows. There is 

 indeed in these two months a tremendous crea- 

 tion of the things necessary for the comfort and 

 sustenance of the animals placed upon earth by 

 the Almighty Hand which fashioned this globe 

 only as a small particle of the mighty worlds 

 holding their evolutions in the regions of hound- 

 less space. The smallest spire of grass is a 

 standing miracle not less than the exercise of 

 that mighty Power which shall raise from the 

 dead myriads of immortals as in the twinkling 

 of an eye. How can man fathom the wisdom, 

 the power, the omnipresence, the omnipotence, 

 the majesty and the might of the Being who 

 over-rules every thing for good ! 



We begin with the intent of showing how 

 much increased is the delight at every new jour- 

 ney taken at this season when the sun has the 

 highest influence upon the earth. Railroads of 

 late have turned us out of the direct routes of 

 travel. Intending to go to Maine, instead of 

 taking the railway down south into Massachu- 

 setts to get there, we took longer time and went 

 over one of the old stage routes to Portsmouth. 

 The Portsmouth turnpike, built at a time when 

 its cost was as much according to the ability of 

 the farmers forty-five years ago as the excavation 

 and filling in of a railroad from Concord to 

 Portsmouth now, took what my neighbor Deac. 

 M'Farland, morose every where saving in the 

 Statesman newspaper, would call a bee-line from 

 the old Federal bridge in Concord to Ihe Pisca- 

 taqua bridge on the confines of Newington. 

 The proprietors of this old turnpike found it ex- 

 pedient afterwards to expend much of the earn- 

 ings which should have made them dividends in 

 alterations of their bee-line road — they turned 

 round some of those sharp hills where teamsters 

 were often obliged to throw off their loads or go 

 to the nearest farmer to procure additional yokes 

 of Men or horses, after having jaded and vexed 

 and strained their own animals to perform an 

 impossibility. Nearly the entire capital in that 

 old turnpike must be set down to the credit of 

 the men whose perseverance and public spirit 

 projected and executed it. Alas! bow few of 

 them (our old and valued acquaintance) live to 

 regard the thanks or the indifference of those 

 who come after them. 



Intending to make our time so as to be present 

 at Bangor, Maine, on the fourth of July, the edi- 



tor of the Visitor took the Portsmouth stage 

 which continues to run as it has for the last 

 thirty years over the bee-line turnpike road that 

 was, but long since given away by the proprie- 

 tors to be supported and repaired by the towns 

 through which it passes, three times out and 

 back during the six working days of each week, 

 carrying the mail of the United Stales, which 

 supplies every day information to the inhabitants 

 along the line. These stages, now so diminutive 

 when compared with the steam horses which 

 travel almost hourly as they did daily — these old 

 stages, with their numerous intelligent drivers 

 making all safe and sure, have in times past 

 done a great work in contributing to the present 

 means of the country's prosperity — they have 

 not only carried and spread around that intelli- 

 gence which is the life of liberty, but they have 

 forced the making of better roads and cheapened 

 the means of improvement to all the villages 

 through which they pass by bringing into their 

 immediate neighborhood and presenting suc- 

 cessful examples of industry, ingenuity and en- 

 terprise in other villages, which without their 

 assistance might never have travelled the dis- 

 tance between the two places. 



Our journey in this stage for the first twenty 

 miles gave for the mind, in that state of health 

 which has followed us in weakness the last five 

 years, perhaps too great activity. The almost 

 stranger lady of late in our village, more inti- 

 mate thirty years ago, with another interesting 

 face of the delicate sex, enlivened by the wife of 

 a clergyman returning to an intermediate town 

 from a visit to her friends, introduced topics 

 which the memory of the youthful scenes of 

 "auld lang syne " revived : keeping alive these 

 reminiscences, we were hardly able to mark 

 whether the farms had improved or deteriorated 

 on the way. Certain it is that the old Park 

 Plain has been sadly denuded since tempting 

 raised prices of fuel for the railroad have nearly 

 doubled the cost of dry hard pine wood. The 

 Middle Intervale of Concoid, since our recollec- 

 tion of thirty years, below where the road over 

 the Free bridge passes, has just about doubled 

 its size of cultivated acres, taking of course the 

 same quantity of land from the westerly side. 

 Perceptibly every year in this part of the town 

 the land and water alter and change: along a 

 whole broadside of our most valued cultivated 

 field on the east the hank is caved off* to the 

 distance of a rod in width every year; and near- 

 ly the same inroad has continued for years_on 

 the west where our premises come down to 

 the Merrimack. Thus losing on two sides, it 

 seems rather hard in a third spot where the 

 river is making, the former owner of land above 

 should come in and claim that a3 adjoining to 

 what was before his, relying for his claim, like a 

 stout man in a crowded steamer who forces his 

 way to the dinner table by those who modestly 

 stand hack, on his greater agility in taking away 

 first the grass growing upon the new-made land. 

 Of the grasping propensities of those men who 

 delight to convert to their use what does not be- 

 long to them we have an inward dread, if not 

 contempt, which better reconciles us, not to be- 

 come with Cains Cassius " aweary of the 

 world," but content to leave it in the hope of a 

 better where the " wicked cease from troubling 

 and the weary are at rest." The Middle Inter- 

 vale is extending its margin rapidly by the in- 

 roads of the river upon its western side: at the 

 lower end it makes in a whole broadside, striking 

 from the Sandy point un ihe west over to the 



