164 



$l)c JTarmer's Jttcmtljljj foisttor. 



10 the azure sky — the bland atmosphere— the 

 temperate climate — the fertile soil of Italy, and 

 there behold her people — as a nation — ignorant, 

 trifling, licentious, depraved and beggarly poor, 

 numbering more of the lazaroni, than perhaps 

 any other nation on earth. Look to the Ocean 

 Jsles, and especially those that border our own 

 southern coast ; warmed by a tropical sun and 

 fanned by a perpetual summer's breeze, their fat 

 and fertile soils yield almost without tillage or 

 toil in the greatest luxuriance and profusion, 

 everything necessary to the support and comfort 

 of man ; and yet as a whole, how miserable, de- 

 graded, licentious, ignorant and debased." On 

 the other band he refers to New England and 

 the northern States, " where from necessity the 

 people are all obliged to live in the constant 

 practice of all these virtues, and where on earth 

 will you find a better people than they— it is 

 their climate— their frugal habits, their constant 

 and persevering industry that contributes largely 

 to make them so." — Cultivator. 



©l)c tlisitor. 



CONCORD, N. H., NOVEMBER 30, 1848. 



Summer Travelling Sketches. 



Col. Hiram Noyes, residing in that part of Lis- 

 bon, in Grafton county, New Hampshire, called 

 Sugar Hill, has this year sold at thirty cents the 

 bushel, on contract, three thousand bushels of 

 potatoes. He planted twenty-three acres, and 

 used, we believe, no manure other than plaster. 

 His produce, from one hundred and fifty to two 

 hundred bushels to the acre, was from potatoes 

 planted in hills generally at the distance of three 

 and a half to four feet each way. It has become 

 so great an object for the large manufacturing 

 establishments to secure the making of starch 

 from the potato that their agents go far into the 

 country and engage to pay a price agreed upon 

 before hand for the supply of the starch mills- 

 The uncertainly of the crop has raised the con- 

 tract price in the north parts of New Hampshire 

 and Vermont from twelve and a half cents and 

 seventeen cents up to thirty cents the bushel. 

 Potatoes now are plenty in Lisbon and the vicin- 

 ity, having there generally escaped the rot of this 

 season, and the common price is no more than 

 twenty cents the bushel. With a railroad run- 

 ning from Lisbon to Boston, potatoes would he 

 worth at this time twice their retail price to be 

 brought down the valley of the Merrimack 

 where below this town they are retailing all the 

 way from fifty cents to a dollar the bushel. The 

 railroad addition, one-half to the present price, 

 and one-fourth to Col. Noyes' contract price, 

 would have increased the value of the surplus 

 produce of a Grafton county farmer's single 

 crop of potatoes, in the one case three hundred, 

 and in the other six hundred dollars. Every 

 bushel of the potatoes upon that limestone land, 

 raised without manure, free from infection of 

 rot, woidd be worth forty cents in the field to be 

 transported to the seaboard for shipping. How 

 much would an enterprising farmer like Colonel 

 Noyes gain by the construction of railways 

 which shall enable him to send his potatoes one 

 hundred and fifty miles to a cash market in the 

 space of twenty hours ? 



The alluvial lands along the Connecticut river 

 are fertile and productive beyond the intervales 

 of any other river within our observation. Low 



down in Connecticut and Massachusetts tobacco 

 is being introduced as the crop which, principal- 

 ly for the manufacture of cigars, gives the culti- 

 vator a clear profit of fifty to a hundred dollars 

 an acre; further up the river, in Hadley, North- 

 ampton and other river towns, the broom-corn 

 is raised as a very easy and profitable crop. All 

 the way near the river Indian corn is a crop up- 

 on the Connecticut which hardly ever fails: oats 

 and peas follow these crops in easy abundance. 

 But the bottom lands upon the river are by no 

 means the better lands in the valley of the Con- 

 necticut. From the highest point of the Green 

 mountain range on the west to the White moun- 

 tain range on the east, embracing a part of Ver- 

 mont and New Hampshire, there is no better 

 land in the whole country than is to be found in 

 all the upper part of this valley. 



Passing in August last through the entire 

 length of the town of Lisbon in Grafton county, 

 we were struck with admiration at the beauty of 

 the high grounds of that town, whose smooth 

 and luxuriant fields on several eminences bear 

 the name of the Sugar Hill. Such a fine coun- 

 try as this is not only the place for raising great 

 crops of the field in a series of many years — it 

 is the place for raising men of indomitable reso- 

 lution and stalwart arm and women of fair faces 

 and intellect reaching them into qualifications to 

 make men happy in any condition of life. Take 

 the families upon these hills, anil as a general 

 thing it will be found that twice the number of 

 sons and daughters grow up to maturity as men 

 and women well calculated to act their parts in 

 life to the families nurtured and bred in the sick- 

 ly atmosphere of the cities. The day was a 

 bright sun-shine, and was one when all hands 

 were in the field to finish out the haying and 

 reaping which had been made late by cloudy or 

 rainy weather. Leaving the Iron works valley 

 of Franconia, where we had spent the night — 

 the place which from its locality sinks the ther- 

 mometer in freezing time several degrees lower 

 than at any other point in N.H. — in less than a mile 

 we were upon the high grounds of Lisbon. The 

 first considerable farm we passed, seven mowers 

 following each other were surrounding a square 

 field sufficient to give each one his acre for the 

 forenoon's work. Soon we reach on the uphill 

 road another farm house with its ample barns 

 and sheds ; and here in a field is another gang 

 of mowers with boys of ten and twelve years in 

 full tilt throwing open the swathes. Generally 

 is it as it has been in New Hampshire, that the 

 farmer with his four to seven sons, has the work 

 done by his own offspring, himself, until after he 

 has passed into middle life, leading off in the 

 daily task. Few men in any condition of life 

 are so happy as the farmers of this class : 

 the men who really have nothing to do, and who 

 do nothing of course, find not so much leisure 

 for sound enjoyment and for the advancement of 

 benevolent, moral and intellectual, as well as 

 physical objects materially advantageous to the 

 whole community, as these farmers upon our 

 many New England hills and along our valleys. 



It is the excellent soil of such a town as Lis- 

 bon that has superinduced that industry which 

 has created a community of splendid indepen- 

 dent farmers. Some of them with less hard la- 

 bor, although entirely independent and rich 

 enough, who give themselves less to the wealth 

 which conies from work all the time, may not be 

 as abundant in money and in cattle as others. 

 The less wealthy, both by their outside and in- 

 side appearance, show that plenty of the com- 



forts of this world at no time of year deserts 

 their board. 



We have known some of these men of Lisbon 

 back to the time when the town bore the name 

 of our own, and not found necessary to change 

 it until the people there wanted a post office as 

 an unusual accommodation for many ^ears sub- 

 sequent to the first settlement of our country. 

 Arriving at the beautiful residence of a friend 

 whom we had long known, we found him pre- 

 pared to go our way on the same business we 

 had left home for — attending an agricultural 

 meeting that had been nutifled to the farmers of 

 Northern Grafton to awaken a zeal for improve- 

 ment in the occupation which in this land must 

 lie as the foundation of its prosperity and wealth. 

 Our friend, exchanging positions on the way, 

 soon let us into the history and condition of the 

 fine farms and fields spread out before us. 



Although rarely is a pine tree seen upon the 

 several prominences of Lisbon called the Sugar 

 Hill, yet Mr. P. informed us the original growth 

 upon them was the tall pine differing from the 

 white pine of the Merrimack valley in being of 

 a more yellow texture and more readily yielding 

 to the polish of the carpenter's instrument. 

 Some of this finishing pine, without a knot and 

 with no shrinkage when once seasoned, we have 

 thought to he so beautiful in its natural state as 

 rather to be marred than improved by paint. 

 Such wainscotting finish we recollect to have 

 seen in the mansion of Gen. Stark at Manches- 

 ter in a house built nearly ninety years ago by 

 him after his return from the Ranger service. 

 These tall pines of the original growth have 

 nearly all disappeared : little advantage had they 

 been to the first settlers as valuable timber. 

 Thirty and forty years ago the best of these un- 

 rivalled trees of the forest might be had for the 

 taking away. They were treated as cumberers 

 to the ground by those who were anxioU3 to 

 bring the land into cultivation. The succeeding 

 growth of trees here is not the pine, but the 

 poplar, the maple, and perhaps some other hard 

 wood growth. The change of wood in much 

 of the second growth — an entire change as we 

 often find on much of that ground which stood 

 in the primeval forest covered with magnificent 

 white pine timber trees — is among those curious 

 freaks of nature for which philosophy has failed 

 to account. Frequently this land with stumps 

 of half a dozen feet in diameter at the cut oft' 

 comes up with the diminutive poplar or white 

 birch, indicative, as some suppose (we think er- 

 roneously) of a sterile soil, unprofitable and even 

 worthless for cultivation. 



We could hardly credit the fact that the fine 

 smooth cultivated fields and pastures of Lisbon 

 had ever been covered with the tall timber pines. 

 It is generally a lime-stone soil ; and it is said 

 there is pure lime-stone in the rock as good at 

 least as that from which the Thomaston lime is 

 produced, in this town of Lisbon alone sufficient 

 to supply the better kind of lime for all the 

 building purposes of the interior and manufac- 

 turing towns upon the Merrimack valley below 

 wherever this town can be reached by railroad. 

 For more than fifty years has the ore supplying 

 the Franconia iron works been carted from a hill 

 in Lisbon to the furnaces situated upon a branch 

 of the Ammonusuck river. These works, own- 

 ed by gentlemen in Salem, Ms., have continued 

 through all the vicissitudes of trade and tariffs to 

 turn out about the usual quantity of cast-iron 

 vvaers made directly from the ore. Five hun- 

 dred tons of pig iron made here are manufac- 



