SWAMP LANDS. 15 



SWAMP LANDS. 



As a general rule, we may safely assume, that our 

 low lands are our best lands ; not the best for corn, or 

 potatoes, or rye, or oats, or barley — we have high 

 and dry lands enough for all these — but there is still 

 another harvest more valuable than either one of them. 

 For grass, these low lands are preferable to any other ; 

 and grass is our most profitable crop. We are not tell- 

 ing what should he most profitable, but what is. We 

 would not dispense with the raising of grain ; bnt, if 

 New England must buy, why buy grain in preference 

 to hay, or any production of grass ? Grass and hay 

 have long been, they now are, and they long must be, 

 the most profitable harvests. And our low lands are 

 our best lands for grass ; yet we suffer more of these 

 to lie wholly unimproved than any other species ! 

 Why is this ? We fear to meddle with them. They 

 are miry ; the plough cannot be used, for the ox is 

 not able here to assist us ; hand-hoeing is tedious ; 

 paring and burning the surface is attended with diffi- 

 culty. Draining must be attended to, and a host of 

 troubles these meadows give birth to as soon as we 

 attempt to reclaim them. Hence we look on from 

 year to year, and see our richest prairies the home of 

 the mud-tortoise, the burrow of the musk-rat and the 

 mink, the haunt of the musquito, and the terror of 

 the nightly wanderer who starts at the grum salutation 

 of the bull-frog. 



These swamps are the natural receptacle of all the 

 rich particles of earth that are washed down from the 

 surrounding highlands. They also, in many cases, are 

 made up of a vegetable growth, which forms a rich 

 manure, when properly decomposed, to be applied to 

 highlands. This vegetable growth, in some cases, ad- 

 vances rapidly ; and ponds are now becoming visibly 

 less, in consequence of the encroaching grass, and 



