2i8 Reclaiming the Wilderness. 



ing-point of their operations, drove down a stake ; these operations having 

 no less ambitious an aim than the founding of a city which should stand 

 in the centre of a great pomological, horticultural, and agricultural settle- 

 ment. To an ordinai'y observer, it was any thing but an inviting enterprise : 

 but its projector had faith, energy, and perseverance ; so the stake was driven 

 down, the survey went forward, and the brain-born city soon had an 

 existence — on paper. 



In the month of June, 1867, within a few feet of the spot where this first 

 stake had been planted less than six years before, about two hundred thou- 

 sand quarts of strawberries were shipped to the great markets of the North ; 

 and nearly fifty thousand more were forwarded from two neighboring depots 

 lying in opposite directions, but only two miles away, and all embraced in 

 the same township. Besides, as the growers of this fruit did not scruple 

 to eat what they asked others to buy and eat, and as there were from eight 

 thousand to ten thousand of them, it is fair to conclude that from fifty 

 thousand to seventy-five thousand more quarts were grown which found a 

 home-market ; making, as the total crop of a small part of the lately barren 

 tract, over three hundred thousand quarts of strawberries as the product 

 of a single season. 



The reader can, from these facts, no doubt readily determine whether 

 Vineland, N.J., is, or is not, a success. He will naturally conclude that this 

 rich harvest of luscious fruit was not grown in a thicket, nor on an unreclaim- 

 able desert ; nor will he suppose that other fruits would be generally neglected 

 by those who possess the energy and the skill to grow the strawberry ; nor 

 that several thousand fruit-growers should reclaim a wilderness, without 

 bringing with them, and establishing in their midst, all the usual accessories 

 of an enlightened civilization, — churches, schools, literary associations, 

 societies of art, learning, and benevolence, newspapers, and manufactories. 

 Some of the ironically-called " adjuncts of civilization " they are indeed with- 

 out ; for instance, the traffic in intoxicating liquors as a beverage : and, at 

 each annual town-meeting, the electors (mostly New-England born, of course) 

 persistently refuse, by a iinatiimous vote, to license any persons to engage 

 in this business. As a consequence, the genus loafer is almost un- 

 known, and never a product of the place. Perhaps it was selfishness rather 

 than philanthropy which prompted the founder to incorporate this anti- 



