£!)c iTarmer'a £xIotttI)ln bisitor. 



87 



liis childish sports, and shadowed liis innocent 

 Humbert when weary of liis play, all — all. pass 

 mil of liis hands, like a plaything of yesterday, 

 unwept and nnregrelted, for the fancied advan- 

 tage of a fresh spot in a strange and a newer 

 rami. 



" I must, however, in justice, make some exrep- 

 ' nous to this general propensity in American 

 character. There are some among the descend- 

 ants of tin? early New England Puritans, and the 

 ancient Dutch settlers of this State, who have, 

 ■avUIi a pious regard to the memories of their an- 

 cestors, and a *\ is'e attachment to the spots of 

 - their hirth, retained, and, through the influences 

 of a correct education and well-settled principle, 

 . bid lair to retain, the paternal acies which tliey 



hue inherited — homes of plenty, contentment, 

 and genuine hospitality; where retired virtues, 



Itfke those practised hy their fathers, have long 

 hallowed them with a local habitation and a 

 name. Such stand out as strong land-marks in 

 the fitful changes of place and name throughout 

 <awr country, and redeem, to some extent, the 

 caustic, remark of the late John Randolph of 



' Roanoke, who once declared on the floor ol 

 Congress, that he scarce knew an American hut 



'-would sell his very dos: for money I" 



* 



&f)c bisitor. 



CONCOKD, N. If., JUNE 30, 1849. 



Farming operations in June, with a touch at 

 an llliuois farmer. 



The editor of the Visitor has been a very busy 

 •man during the month of June up to the time of 

 this writing ; and he now expects that he may 

 Carry the month out by a further excursion fur- 

 ther into the mountains than his travel to Kear- 

 sarge. His potato and corn fields have come to 

 hoeing: in addition to this be has brought a new 

 team into the clearing ol a new and extended 

 field upon the plains for future operations if he 

 should live. 



~ Just in the busy time of this busiest month of 

 the year, we have been called on hy an old 

 friend w ho has heeu absent from the State four- 

 - teen years, and whose face, as fresh as that of 

 yesterday, is yet very familiar. Friend John 

 Rage was a member of the Legislature from 

 Gilmanlon about twenty years ago. He had a 

 fine farm in that town a little eastward of the 

 Iron works village ; and we said of him afier 

 passing that farm for the first time ten years ago 

 in the Visitor, that we did not think he had 

 greatly bettered bis condition by removing to the 

 then wilds of Illinois. Friend Page wrote hack 

 advising his friends that were doing well here to 

 stay here: he would not himself have left but to 

 repair inevitable pecuniary losses. But he has 

 done well in Illinois Slate, where his intelligent 

 good sense has made him a conspicuous mem- 

 ber of the Legislature there at a later period of 

 tile. He went there with a family of seven sons 

 nud two daughters, all of whom, with the excel- 

 } lent mother that bore them, yet live: two of 

 these sons, volunteers in the army of Mexico, 

 have returned to their home with the living, 

 having escaped many perils. One of these, with 

 I the elder son, married before he left, accompa- 

 nies friend Page on his fir.-t visit to his native 

 town after a lapse of fourteen years. 



Friend Page, when he removed to Woodford 

 county in 1835, about fifteen miles eastward of 

 Peoria, found no English settlers then near him. 

 All about the country has since become well 

 settled and cultivated. His own cultivated farm 

 .consists of about two hundred acres: on this he 

 and his son raised the last year 3000 bushels of 

 corn, and about 5000 bushels of all grains. He 

 brought us samples of two kinds of Illinois 



corn; both were twin ears : unlike our own 

 corn, they were beautiful of their kind. A short- 

 er ear he called the Buckingham corn — it was 

 eiidit inches in length, very heavy and stout. 

 The other was called the Palmer corn, and was 

 ten inches long. It is remarkable in nature bow 

 every growing thing is adapted to its locution 

 and circumstances. These ears of corn were 

 wedged so deep and tight into the cob, as to 

 make it impossible for the birds to pick them 

 out: this friend Page thought to be because the 

 fields of the Western prairies were more expo- 

 sed to the depredations of birds than the fields 

 were in New England. The Illinois corn is a 

 different thing from our corn — more compact 

 upon the ear— the kernel of another shape, and 

 the color unlike our yellow corn. Late in June 

 we have planted twenty kernels from each of 

 the Illinois ears, to see what might come of it. 

 At least it may be useful in soiling our cows 

 when the pasture fails from drought. 



Friend Page, with another amateur farmer 

 horn Bedford rode over to our own sterile pine 

 plain fields. He gave us due credit for our per- 

 severance, but he was hardly willing to admit 

 the prospect to he as encouraging here as upon 

 the rich Illinois lands that had never yet failed. 

 On the whole, he said, from the profits and pro- 

 spects of a nearer market, the farmer of New 

 England might make as much money from his 

 labor as the Illinois farmer. 



Of the prospect of a crop in our own fields 

 upon the plain, we will say on this twenty-fifth 

 of June, under a parching drought that has 

 reached much of the stronger upland, that our 

 potatoes, of a most excellent deep green, are as 

 yet all we could have expected or wished. We 

 have twenty-five acres large in one field. 



The Flowers of a country Village. 



We must pay the ladies and gentlemen of 

 Concord — especially that portion of the younger 

 class more numerous than the old inhabitants 

 who have enme among us and erected on many 

 new streets beautiful cottage or other fancy resi- 

 dences — credit for great industry and good taste 

 in the cultivation of flower beds, roses and tu- 

 lips, climbing plants, trailers and creepers, and 

 a whole retinue of flowering shrubs the names 

 of which are not to us so familiar as their ap- 

 pearance. It is impossible to pass our new 

 streets without the conviction that to good judg- 

 ment and an elegant fancy our fair population 

 tire of the class who with their husbands best 

 understand that motto of health coming down 

 to a prosperous old age, of " work, work, work!" 



A British lady, the wife of a celebrated author 

 who has written and published every thing al- 

 most that is practically good in English Agri- 

 culture, Arboriculture and Horticulture, and who 

 has herself written a book on one of these 

 subjects for the instruction of her sex, says — 

 " When 1 married Mr. Loudon it is scarcely pos- 

 sible to imagine any person more completely ig- 

 norant than I was to every thing relating to 

 plants and gardening ; and as may be easily im- 

 agined I found every one about me so well ac- 

 quainted with the subject, that I was heartily 

 ashamed of my ignorance. My husband of 

 course was quite as anxious to teach me as I was 

 to learn, and it is the result of his instructions 

 that I now (after ten years' experience of their 

 efficacy) wish to make public for the benefit of 

 others." We believe as a general thing in rela- 

 tion to the verdant beauty that adorns this cer- 

 tainly growing beautiful village (perhaps becom- 



ing a city hy legislation while we now write) 

 that more is due to ladies than to gentlemen as 

 lo taking the lead. Those who began to set out 

 trees some fifteen years uj;o, and who live 

 10 enjoy in a heated atmosphere the refreshing 

 effluvia that next lo soil music " charms the air," 

 can appreciate now the value of what they have 

 done. Indeed within the short space of five 

 years the trees and shrubbery have been grow- 

 ing while we have Bleeped: houses that hove 

 risen as by manic seem at once to he adorned 

 with trees shading the green which surrounds 

 them and with flower beds exhibiting all the va- 

 ried tints of color so pleasing to the eye. 



The roses have greatly multiplied as within 

 our recollection: we know not bow to give 

 names to half of them. But almost within a 

 stone's throw of our own residence on the main 

 street, out of sight to all passers hy, Mr. Brown, 

 our publisher, called, in one of the intensely hot 

 days of June just passed, our attention lo a bush 

 named the " Boursault Rose " which had grown 

 in many new branches in the space of three 

 years nearly twenty feet in height. This hush 

 was covered with more than a thousand full 

 blown roses, which are of a variable purple red, 

 making a most beautiful adornment, richly re- 

 paying the efforts of those who have nursed the 

 tree to its rapid growth. Mr. Brown's bush is a 

 most surprising tree evidencing the beauty of Na- 

 ture in her most magnificent attire; and stand- 

 ing in a place so near us lo open for the first 

 time in so great beauty, it surpri.-ed us no less than 

 have many beds of blooming flowers within our 

 borders planted and cherished by the flowers of 

 creation who have but recently alighted among us. 



A day upon Kearsarge. 

 Of all the mountains of New Hampshire, that 

 Kearsarge (for there is a Kearsarge at the foot of 

 the grcut White mountains bordering nearly on 

 the State of Maine between the towns of Con- 

 way and Chatham) lying nearly in the territorial 

 centre of the granite State, is the most regular 

 and comely in its appearance. On all sides of 

 Kearsarge the open pasturage in spots begins 

 to extend itself high up towards the mountain 

 top. The mountain peers high above other sur- 

 rounding hills of less magnitude: there is Rag- 

 ged mountain on the north between which and 

 it courses the Northern railroad, and there are 

 the Mink hills on the south of the valley of War- 

 ner river, along which the Concord and Claremont 

 railroad has its way. The excellent pasturage 

 on which range two of the finest flocks of Saxo- 

 ny sheep in the country, those of our friends 

 Sibley and Barnard, who winter their flocks 

 nearer hy us in Hopkinton, extends over the top 

 of the mountain as it reaches towards the west 

 end in Sutton. Hundreds of cattle and thou- 

 sands of sheep ore kept from spring through 

 autumn in the pasture range lying at the easterly 

 base of Kearsarge, comprising the westerly end 

 of Salisbury and nearly the whole of that part 

 of Warner which was formerly known as the 

 Gore. Generally, Kearsarge on all sides is less 

 precipitous than most of the other high hills: it 

 lies on such an extended base that on the south- 

 easterly side in the basin of the Mill brook there 

 is a travelled road for teams having no very ab- 

 rupt steepness at any point all along |he moun- 

 tain to its highest clearing. With very little ex- 

 pense other than that of fence dividing several 

 pasture lots a good carriage road might be made 

 very near if not quite up to the highest point of 

 the mountain and over that to Wilmot and An= 



