10 



a public fund, which, appropriately secured, would relieve the town from an 

 immense burden in its taxation ; or its proceeds, invested for educational or 

 beneficent objects, would diffuse unmeasured blessings among the people. 



Mr. Johnson remarked to me that he recollected when the whole district 

 from Brushville to the present Hicksville, a distance of about twelve miles, 

 was an open common, but which now embraces some of the best grass 

 farms in Queens county. Occasionally the plains are penetrated from the 

 sides by farms which show long cultivation, and date their occupation, by 

 some squatter or pre-emptive rights, to a period anterior to the Revolution. 

 These are generally valuable tracts. The original extent of the common 

 lands has also been much reduced by modern encroachments of those who 

 occupy contiguous lands. Farms which formerly contained fifty and sixty 

 acres have grown by this proces^s ustil now many of them contain from one 

 to two hundred acres. 



It will be recollected that Cobbett occupied a farm on the north borders 

 of Hempstead plains. The first year, he states, he had no manure except 

 four hundred bushels he swept together, on the land, by means of a broom. 

 He applied to the land sixty bushels of this quality of manure to the acre, 

 for a crop of ruta baga, and realized that season, a harvest of six hundred 

 and forty bushels of the ruta baga to the acre. After referring to these re- 

 sults, to the caution ho received against deep plowing, and giving a des- 

 cription of the soil, he uses this forcible language : " and yet people are 

 flocking to the western countries in pursuit of rich land, while thousands 

 of acres of such land as I occupy are lying waste on Long Island, within 

 three hours' drive of the all-consuming and incessantly increasing city of 

 New York." 



The Bush Plains. — Proceeding east from the Hempstead plains, we 

 enter near Farmingdale another territory, and as strange as is the aspect of 

 the Hempstead prairie, this new scene is still more novel and impressive. This 

 is the woodland or Bush plains of the island, and more familiarly designated 

 the " Long Island barrens." The ground is chiefly occupied for a number 

 of miles by a thick growth of low shrubby bushes, then succeeds a tract cover- 

 ed by small oaks, pine, and a heavy burthen of what is here called scrub oaks, 

 but it is not the tree generally known by that name. This shrub is ladened 

 by a copious crop of acorns, which formerly, it is said, attracted the bear as 

 well as the deer to these wilds. The entire surface, through these plains, 

 is clothed in a heavy mantle of rank and coarse vegetation. The primitive 

 forests, which consisted mainly of oaks, chestnuts and pines, have long since 

 disappeared, although their former presence is indicated here and there by 

 decaying stumps. I was informed that these lands, when they escape the 

 ravages of fire, yield from the timber that now occupies them, a product of 

 fire-wood once in fifteen or twenty years. 



The strangeness and wild aspect of the scenery is beautiful and impres- 

 sive, and the mind can scarcely comprehend the fact that such utter still- 

 ness and seclusion and such an exhibition of nature, in more than its pri- 

 meval rudeness, should occur within three hours' ride of the great metropo-^ 



