410 THE AUTHOR'S EARLY VIEWS 



With the beginning of the year 1813, when barely nineteen years 

 of age, the easy indulgence of my guardian gave to me the posses- 

 sion and direction of my property ; which consisted of the Coggins 

 Point farm, with the necessary and yet very insufficient stock of 

 every kind. It is scarcely necessary to add that, at my very early 

 commencement, I was totally ignorant of practical agriculture; 

 and such would have been the case, according to the then and now 

 usual want of training of farmers of Virginia, even if my farming 

 labours had been postponed to a mature age. But I had always 

 been fond of reading for amusement, and the few books on agri- 

 culture (then very scarce in this country) which I had met with, 

 had been studied, merely for the pleasure they afforded, at a still 

 earlier time of my boyhood. The earliest known of these works 

 was an English book, in four volumes, the " Complete Body of 

 Husbandry/' of which I have not seen the only known copy since 

 I was fifteen years old. This work was probably a mere compila- 

 tion, and of little value or authority ; but it gave me a fondness 

 for agricultural studies, and filled my head with notions which were, 

 even if proper in England, totally unsuitable to this country. 

 " Bordley's Husbandry" next fell into my hands, and its contents 

 were as greedily devoured. This was indeed written in America, 

 and by an American cultivator; but as he drew almost all his 

 notions from English writers, his work is essentially also of foreign 

 materials. 



Thus prepared, I commenced farming, ignorant indeed, but nofc 

 in my own conceit. The agriculture of my neighbourhood, like 

 all that I had ever witnessed, was wretched in execution, and as 

 erroneous as well could be in system, whether subjected to the test 

 of sound doctrine, or the improper notions which I had formed from 

 English writers. I was right in condemning the general practice 

 of my neighbours; but decidedly mistaken in my self-satisfied 

 estimate of my own better information and plans. 



Just about the time that my business as a cultivator was com- 

 menced, Col. John Taylor's "Arator" was published; and never 

 has any book on agriculture been received with so much enthusiastic 

 applause, nor has any other had such wide-spread early effects in 

 affecting opinion, and stimulating to exertion and attempts for im- 

 provement. The ground had before no occupant, and therefore 

 this work had to contend with no rival. The larger land-owners, 

 of lower Virginia especially, had previously treated their own pro- 

 per employment, and their only source of income, with total 

 neglect; and very few country gentlemen took any personal and 

 regular direction of their farming operations. It was considered 

 enough for them to hire overseers (and that class then was greatly 

 inferior in grade and respectability to what it is now), and to leave 

 the daily superintendence to them entirely. The agricultural 



