FINDING THE PLACE 15 



that will be offered you with all sorts of advertise- 

 ment and promises. Do not buy an acre of soil until 

 you have personally examined it, and even then you 

 must judge with a bias against the proposition. At 

 least two-fifths of New York State knows nothing 

 about tillage, is still in the swamp or brushwood 

 state; and there are millions of acres in the United 

 States that even experts cannot subject to purposes of 

 home-making. 



Within easy reach of New York City there arc 

 hundreds of acres unsuitable for homesteads, owing 

 to the impossibility of good drainage, or the uncon- 

 trollable presence of insects, or for other reasons. 

 The mosquito owns a good slice of New Jersey and 

 one third of the State of Florida, and a good deal 

 more all the way up and down the coast. Degenera- 

 tion has followed those who undertook to live in 

 some of the higher lands of the Alleghenies. Flat, 

 moist, and mucky land will be all right for truck gar- 

 dening, but those who are going for health as well as 

 pleasure and profit must avoid any location infected 

 with malaria and supplied with insects to convey the 

 poison. 



The first point to consider is a soil of sufficient 

 depth to respond to cultivation. It is true that you 

 must make soil for yourself, and in another chapter 

 we shall talk over that matter very thoroughly. It 

 is not true that you cannot create soil for yourself, 

 and a good deal of this you must do in the best 

 localities ; but if you begin on a barren piece of soil 



