70 



£l)e .farmer's iUoxatl)lti Visitor. 



our prepared ground (with the single exception 

 of one steep side-hill) has been subsoiled. Our 

 method of ploughing at first is to turn over the 

 sward to the depth of eight inches; and 

 below this the subsoil plough drawn by a heavier 

 team stirring the ground at least eight inches 

 further. All our land prepared in this way was 

 ploughed in September and October last, and 

 has found great benefit from the deep freezing 

 through the ground stirred. With this simple 

 operation the soil of light or heavy lands upon 

 which water does not stand, becomes of the con- 

 sistence and life of the meal in a trough under 

 the action of yeast. Our manure of compost, 

 made principally of black muck tempered with 

 fresh slaked lime, with unleached and liached 

 ashes, and with salt to the amount of about a 

 bushel for every five full loads, is spread first 

 over the ground in the spring: the harrow fol- 

 lows, lightening up the ground most beautifully. 

 We were able to give the full dose of this com- 

 post to only about fifteen acres of the field ot 

 twenty-five acres upon the pine plain. The re- 

 maining ten acres has had the benefit of about 

 two hundred bushels of strong ashes. Previous 

 to a second harrowing, all our planted land has 

 been dosed with about three hundred pounds of 

 African guano mixed with something over two 

 hundred pounds of ground plaster — strewed 

 over the around and harrowed in just before 

 planting. Upon the last field of potatoes on the 

 intervale of three acres, the plaster being ex- 

 hausted, we used the guano without the plaster. 



The last of our planting closed upon the inter- 

 vale where we used all the manures (about one 

 hundred loads) taken from our own yard and 

 stables, with the planting of five acres of corn 

 upon a field which was subsoiled a year ago last 

 fall. This land was chequered in squares, or 

 rather diamonds from the step of one man carry- 

 ing the chain reaching further forward than the 

 other: the five acres were marked out one way, 

 dropped and covered by nine hands, (the editor 

 leading off in the dropping at the right,) between 

 the hour of twelve at meridian and half past six 

 o'clock in the afternoon of Saturday, May 19. 



For several days during the month, as the 

 weakest and least expert of our men, have we 

 covered our half acre of potato s in drills of one 

 foot and eighteen inches, with the rovvsal the dis- 

 tance of three and a half feet. The contrast be- 

 tween subsoiled and unsuhsoiled land has been 

 shown upon our ground from the circumstance 

 of ploughing with a stout team the sward ground 

 over which the manure piles rested during the 

 present spring. The subsoiled land all lies 

 smooth as an old field, and no turf or grass will 

 appear in the hoeing. The unsuhsoiled land of 

 the manure piles, with the rough turf exposed 

 as a matter ofannoyance in all directions, would 

 have exposed a green surface for hard hoeing 

 had not the strong manure killed the grass 

 roots. 



We might write a long yam of what we saw 

 in our absence of three days, the 8th, 9ih .\nd 

 10th, of the month of May ; hut as we are called 

 to repeat the absence in the last days of the 

 month, the reader will excuse, if he be not glad 

 for the omission. 



Mr. Masson, of Paris, has lately grown a new 

 root, called the ullnco, which some think will 

 become a substitute for the potato. It originally 

 came from Pern, and the flower resembes that of 

 the potato. The part above ground furnishes a 

 very agreeable vegetable, something like the 

 bean in flavor. 



The New Hampshire Mountains better than 



< 'n I i torn in Gold Miues! 



We are sorry that in their progress down from 

 the mountains the mass of the flowing lumber 

 logs of Mr. Norcross should have been the occa- 

 sion of causing it to be said that bis method of 

 sweeping the river might carry away the bridges. 

 The frail bridges erected at Concord with slight 

 wooden piers rotting away under open exposure 

 to the weather in a very few years, are never ex- 

 pected to stand any high freshet: a breaking up 

 of stiff ice in a winter freshet is almost always 

 sure to carry them off. Rivelled, firm-laying 

 granite piers are almost sure to siand any power 

 that may be brought against them. With the 

 high freshet in May came down the river the 

 rotten materials of Sewall's falls bridge, the up- 

 permost in Concord. 



Far up in the mountains near the Franconia 

 notch, Mr. Norcross has prepared in the forest 

 during the last winter lumber logs numbering 

 about six millions of feet. Early in the opening 

 spring these were brought down from the higher 

 branches and secured mainly at the Woodstock 

 boom, from whence, like droves of cattle, they 

 have been forced along by falls and all other ob- 

 structions, until the last of the lot passed the in- 

 tervale bank opposite the village of Concord on 

 Friday, May 25. 



In his winter's work in a sparse neighborhood 

 upon the branches of the Merrimack or Pemige- 

 wassett above its confluence with Baker's river 

 at Plymouth, Mr. N. has had the equal of thirty-six 

 teams of three yokes of oxen engaged during 

 the season of sledding, which in that region has 

 been very favorable for this business. Although 

 he has an abundant supply of splendid trees upon 

 his own lands, yet he has generously given em- 

 ployment to several men who until recently had 

 not dreamed of lumbering upon their own lots 

 to any advantage. These persons had generally 

 cleared their lands, glad to he rid of the incum- 

 brance, by burning upon the ground the beauti- 

 ful trees which nature had reared in the lapse of 

 many years. For extra services of farmers in a 

 few months Mr. N. has paid out, in a neighbor- 

 hood where such a sum will do abundance of 

 good, for lumber additional to his own, about four 

 thousand dollars. 



We had an opportunity in the month of April 

 from the attention of the lumber monarch at 

 Lowell to ascertain how much value had been 

 created out of the long-waste forest far in the 

 mountains by the enterprise of a single individ- 

 ual out of the Slate, who has become a proprie- 

 tor of large tracts of land considered impracti- 

 cable, and who has introduced a novel as well 

 as an effective mode of bringing down timber, 

 as we think, for the public benefit. By blowing 

 rocks in the channels and by constructing wing- 

 dams far up towards the sources of the stream, 

 the proprietor of the mountain lands has been 

 able to float down the largest logs; and although 

 he has done and expended much in the larger 

 river below, he has found it even more difficult 

 to bring along the logs lower down than higher 

 up. He has paid for spruce logs taken out at 

 Thornton four dollars the thousand: above that 

 three dollars the thousand. 



TIip timber which he has brought down the 

 present year is principally pine and spruce: 

 some of the logs are grand specimens of both 

 these evergreen forest trees. Hemlock trees of 

 the great original growth, fit for the purposes of 

 the largest buildings, stand in that up-country 

 region in almost countless numbers. They will 



be perpetually called along to supply the build- 

 ing in the large manufacturing towns and coun- 

 try all the way down the Merrimack. In the 

 easy transit which will be furnished by the 

 Nashua and Worcester railroads they may be 

 sent to a profit to the heart of Massachusetts, 

 and even to Rhode Island and Connecticut by 

 land. 



The cash sales of manufactured lumber from 

 logs brought down from the New Hampshire 

 mountains, in Mr. Norcross' yard at Lowell, as 

 the product of his single mill for the year end- 

 ing March 1849, footed up on his books the 

 amount of $56,921 08, the whole being 3,250,892 

 feet. The sum derived in the whole time of 

 over two years since this new product came 

 down is $130,345 27 for 7,989,800 feet. The av- 

 erage price of manufactured lumber in 1847 at 

 Lowell was about $14 per thousand — for 1848 

 about $16. 



In the manufacture of lumber from these moun- 

 tain logs at Lowell, Mr. Norcross has a steam 

 mill of fifty to seventy-five horse power: strange 

 as may seem, the saw-dust or small grains fall- 

 ing out of the logs at the lime of sawing furnish 

 nearly the whole fuel for creating the steam 

 power which gives action to the saws and other 

 machinery. The slabs of the logs are all con- 

 verted into some useful material either of lum- 

 ber or fuel, which go to increase the profits of 

 the business. The proprietor says he would a3 

 readily receive the log at his mill for the profit 

 of the slabs and bark and endings as take the 

 boards in feet equal to the feel allowed for log 

 measurement. 



In the floor of a tremendous new factory brick 

 building we believe rive hundred feet in length 

 just erected to be supplied with power from the 

 new canal recently made at Lowell at an ex- 

 pense of more than a million of dollars, we were 

 shown a specimen of the boards manufactured 

 and planed at Mr. Norcross' mill from the moun- 

 tain spruce: they were what are called clear 

 stuff and very beautiful. The great convenience 

 of Mr. Norcross' mill at Lowell is that he can at 

 any hour on short notice furnish ready prepared 

 articles fur building. 



Of the logs which have gone by us down 

 stream the present year were some immensely 

 large Norway pines from Campton: the spruce 

 from above seemed to be larger and longer than 

 we had yet before seen. 



On Saturday, May 26, by invitation, the editor 

 of the Visitor went down to Garvin's falls iii 

 Bow to see the jams carried over. He found 

 the encampment for the red-shirts some hu 

 died rods below the falls, where the men were 

 engaged with six yokes of clever oxen in draw- 

 ing off and setting afloat the large logs that had 

 been piled high and dry upon the flat, some of 

 them far out of the way, by the first floating 

 down of the ice. Here we met the lumber king 

 himself, who came in with a single railroad en- 

 gine from Manchester after the first train had 

 passed, stopping and dismounting while the lo- 

 comotive went along. Nothing remarkable in 

 appearance, we were soon surprised with the 

 energy and intelligence by which he directed 

 the adjustment of the chain with which the oxen 

 rolled the log to its destined element which v. is 

 loo heavy for the same team to draw by main 

 strength. 



The hour of meridian was approaching ; and 

 one man was cooking the out-door dinner of the 

 camp. Flour bread was baking at the fire for 

 which abundance of fuel was at hand: pots with 



