B U gi y g w-j* ' -;^ ' ^- 1 -;.- "' 



102 



&l)c Jarmcr's ittontljli) Visitor. 



ment on iliis land, the labor upon it will be re- 

 warded lour fold. Why not try the. experiment 

 upon a smaller scale, say a single acre or hall 

 acre in a year? The best of manures for the 

 lands may be found all wound them— materials 

 for composts, whose good effects will be felt not 

 alone in the first crop. So also we are some- 

 times pained in passing an old field where the 

 ridges have become naked and abandoned be- 

 cause they are supposed to be worn out. Per- 

 haps some elder man of the family or neighbor- 

 hood can remember when these ridges produced 

 as the rest of the field: they are now too dry 

 and sterile to be of value, because their good 

 soil, as deep as they have been ploughed, has 

 been washed oft" into the valleys near them, per- 

 haps carried down country through some stream 

 until it lias been lost in the ocean. Now we be- 

 lieve in all cases of these naked ridges, the point 

 of a well-sharpened ploughshare drawn by a 

 sufficient team, with the iron bar and pry brought 

 to the plough's aid where hard fixed rocks are 

 in the way, will do a work which shall make 

 them of equal value to oilier parts of the 

 field. 



Chichester, the first considerable town on 

 leaving Concord, for only a corner of Pembroke 

 intervenes upon the way, has already many 

 farms which have made their industrious owners 

 independent: the value of its growing wood 

 and timber has doubled in the last ten years 

 where the forest remains. What has been taken 

 away in the same time has probably afforded a 

 greaier profit than all that had been taken off in 

 the previous hundred years. This town is hardly 

 a fourth in size to that of Concord : its neatly 

 painted meeting-houses, occupied at least on 

 every returning Sabbath with sober and discreel 

 age which instructs, and with the youth ami 

 beauty which are the opening flowers of a new 

 generation, evidence at once its morals and 

 its intelligence. One of the best farmers of the 

 country around us has been the worthy pastor of 

 Chichester, the Rev. Josiah Carpenter, who came 

 to this State from the land of steady habits, 

 the State of Connecticut, and has officiated in 

 the sacred desk of the town-church for neatly 

 or quite fifty years. 



Passing on we next come to Epsom. The 

 M'Clarys, glorious men of the revolution, men 

 of talent and nerve equal to great occasions, 

 men of generous and noble charities, making 

 every body comfortable around them, are all 

 gone — not a male of the name remains. The 

 old meeting-house upon the hill where a'l the 

 town was wont to congregate, if it has not been 

 taken down and carried away, no longer is the 

 centre of attraction for Sabbath-day meeting. 

 Houses of worship, neat and commodious 

 enough in themselves, stand down in the valley 

 of a secondary branch of the Suneook, through 

 which the turnpike passes. This town of Ep- 

 som, like Northwood, Deerfield and Nottingham 

 in its neighborhood, has hills on a grand scale, 

 mountains if we are so pleased to name them, 

 whose sides sometimes to their very tops make 

 the most productive and most healthy pasturage 

 for cattle. The butter and cheese made of cows 

 ranging in these pastures is of better flavor than 

 the same articles made in the valleys and along 

 the rivers. The best potatoes sent to the market 

 are those raised upon these hills in land broken 

 up and planted without manure. Indian corn 

 here late planted escapes an early frost often 

 many days, where it kills every thing in the 

 ground below. Drought and mildew are 



>h grounds much less fre- 



likewise on the h 

 quent. 



Northwood, at whose centre, in a range 

 stretching wide from the Agamenticus in the 

 north to the high grounds in Essex county in 

 Massachusetts beyond the Merrimack, may be 

 descried the sea along the coast of three States, 

 stands at the eminence highest upon the range 

 between the two rivers. Near this point the 

 waters of several beautiful ponds flow either 

 way into the Merrimack on the one hand and 

 into Lamprey and Cocheco rivers on the other. 

 Her noble Saddleback rises to the south of the 

 high road as we pass along. All the way over 

 the old turnpike for several miles seems a con- 

 t'uiued village. Of the families well to live 

 in this neighborhood, were the Ilarveys, the 

 Clarks, a Furber, a French, a Piper and a 

 Virgin: remaining of the active generation suc- 

 ceeding to the revolution is Judge Harvey, who 

 we regretted to learn lives in quite too feeble a 

 state of body or mind to enjoy old associations 

 or to recognize new ones. Such a man as he 

 has been — the generous patron of public im- 

 provement — the associate with our own East- 

 man the elder in building miles of the turnpike 

 from their own means— the gentleman and 

 patriot always — cannot be soon forgotten by 

 that portion of the succeeding generation 

 which has not already passed away before 

 him. 



The excellent strength of soil of the high 

 grounds of Rockingham will continue its fer- 

 tility of production, although much of the en- 

 terprise of her fanners has been drawn away. 

 Some of the new generation have gone to the 

 far West; but whole families, in the easier pro- 

 spect of obtaining ready money in the first 

 building up of manufacturing villages, have been 

 templed, as we believe, away from home, into 

 l lie close cilies and villages of Lowell, Manches- 

 ter, Lawrence and Nashua. There is no part of 

 the United States where labor may be more pro- 

 fitably applied than in this portion of the Granite 

 State which seems to have stood nearly still in 

 the progress of the last twenty years. In those 

 spots where there have been revivals, maybe 

 presented an earnest of what all may do : look 

 at the profitable orchards of old Chester for an 

 example. Farmers there may be found who 

 raise more upon a single acre than hard work 

 produces upon any ten acres of some worn-out 

 firms that have been groaning under the process 

 of deterioration for two or three of the past 

 generations. The "good limes are coming" 

 when equal protection to the farmer and manu- 

 facturer as the government policy shall make la- 

 bor worth as much in cash upon the farm as in 

 the workshop ; but to do this the process of 

 renovating lauds must be begun in earnest — one 

 acre must be made to produce what four acres 

 has yielded: the farmer must strike deep and 

 learn the best methods of gathering and apply- 

 ing the materials which exist all around him to 

 make the land fruitiful. In this part of New 

 England it will be difficult to find any surplus 

 of the farmer's produce which will not all the 

 time bring its whole value in cash. 



The range of high lands in Rockingham, 

 standing out more isolated than the mountain 

 region westerly of the Merrimack, affords a mag- 

 nificent view eastward to the ocean and westerly 

 to the mountains of Vermont over the Connecti- 

 cut. Beautiful farms lie along these extended 

 hill sides, some of which are opened to their 

 very tops. No inconsiderable portions of the 



mountains in Deerfield, Nottingham and North- 

 wood remain yet to be cleared: the highest 

 points of these, as in the region of New Hamp- 

 shire further north, furnish the most enduring 

 and most valuable pasturage. Excellent pastures 

 are already owned by the farmers near the sea- 

 board : more of these could not make a better 

 investment than to buy the forest lands upon 

 and among the New Hampshire mountains, 

 whose wood and timber are always to become 

 valuable wherever they are approached by rail- 

 roads. 



From the heights of Northwood the eye 

 reaches as its first object the ridge near the sea 

 which makes the town of Newington going 

 over to Portsmouth from the Piscataqua bridge, 

 at the distance of some twenty-five miles. 

 Coming down to Lee and Durham, we find a 

 soil rich in ihe production of grasses even 

 where the plough or manure has not been used 

 for years. We had marked this peculiarity seve- 

 ral years since in the Visitor as running through 

 from Berwick, Somersworth, Dover, Madbury 

 Durham and New Market all along at the dis- 

 tance of from five to fifteen miles from the sea: 

 we bad at first supposed that the aptitude of 

 the earth here to grow hay resulted from the 

 salt atmosphere coming from the sea ; but in the 

 supposition we were mistaken. The superin- 

 cumbent soil of this region is one of great rich- 

 ness: as marl itself it would need only to be 

 spread over the lightest sandy fields to make 

 them exceedingly productive, aided now and 

 then perhaps by small qualities of the common 

 stimulant manures made about the stables and 

 barns where animals are kept. Any one passing 

 the village of Durham may mark the black 

 chocolate soil of which the road is made, and 

 see in its washings the effect of that simple soil 

 upon the adjacent fields. The laud here is so 

 easy of tillage that every man who has only a 

 small quantity is without excuse for not having 

 a good and a profitable farm. 



An annoyance extremely unpleasant through 

 the eye to the mind is the while-weed, pervading 

 almost universally the grass grounds all along 

 the coast from the whole little width of the New 

 Hampshire mouth at the sea down through 

 York, Cumberland, Lincoln, Waldo and Hancock 

 counties in Maine. Gradually does Ibis white- 

 weed usurp the place of timothy and *he belter 

 grasses: it is said to be tolerable hay, if mowed 

 early. Annually does it spread and diffuse itself, 

 growing thicker at each return of the season: 

 the better the land the more complete the usur- 

 pation of this unwelcome interloper. It is said 

 that careful hoeing, after stimulating manures, 

 will rid the ground of the pest; but new and 

 deeper ploughing brings the dormant seeds 

 below the action of the atmosphere into the life 

 of a new crop. Spread over the Merrimack in- 

 tervales we have the fin or witch grass as a mat- 

 ter of serious annoyance in our cultivated fields, 

 making the labor of cleansing the corn and po- 

 tato crops double, and in some instances four 

 fold. This fin grass so much pervades the 

 ground that frequently the potato will be perfo- 

 rated with its roots growing directly through it. 

 With shallow ploughing three years ago,we found 

 it all but impossible- to find the potatoes and 

 corn at the time of first hoeing. The deeper 

 share of the subsoil plough during the two last 

 seasons has saved us more than the cost of 

 ploughing in our potato fields. The laud 

 ploughed in September or October with the 

 roots of the fin grass completely cut oft" near the 



