HINTS 



AUDUESSt:]) TO Tiir, 



FARMERS or ESSEX COUNTY 



Whatever may be said of other countries and climes, the in- 

 habitants of Essex County have no just reason to complain of the 

 location which Providence has assigned them. Whoever traverses 

 this County will see perhaps as few marks of poverty as in any parts of 

 the country, which have been as long settled, and fewer than in many 

 parts, whose settlement has been more recent. If he does not find 

 many examples of great wealth, especially in our rural estabish- 

 ments, he may observe numerous indications of thrift, comfort, and 

 substantial independence, and the reasonable rewards of enterprise, 

 perseverance, frugality, and industry. The general aspect of the 

 County is diversified and broken, and on that account favorable to 

 health. On a comparison of the bills of mortality in those places, 

 where they have been so kept that this comparison could be properly 

 made, as in Ipswich for example with Breslaw in Europe,* a place 

 deemed the most healthy on the continent, the result was greatly in 

 favor of the longevity of this County. We should not know where 

 to look for a population more respectable for its general intelligence, 

 public order, and good morals. These are eminent blessings, and 

 should produce grateful contentment and a rational use of our ad- 

 vantages. 



We have no extraordinary fertility of soil ; no rich alluvion ; no 

 deep intervale on the borders of the streams by which the County 

 is watered. We have little sandy land, but a great deal of a thin, 

 hungry, gravelly surface, and a considerable extent, in scattered 

 parcels, of low and wet swamps abounding with peat and capable of 

 being drained and converted into productive meadow, at an expense, 



' ^lemoirs of American Academy, Vol. I., p 505. 



