242 [ASSBMBLV 



bring every acre of land into great demand for tillage. It will be 

 drained, diked, embanked, and converted into various kinds of plan- 

 tations. What was Holland before its dikes and canals were con- 

 structed?* 



What has made the cotton and sugar estates of lower Louisiana 

 so prolific, but the levees for restraining the overflowings of the Mis- 

 sissippi? What the rice fields of South Carolina and Georgia? 

 Human genius and indomitable industry, where there is a cheering 

 prospect of reward, will triumph over all natural physical difficulties. 

 We know the knights of Malta made fertile gardens on the barren 

 rocks of that island, celebrated for their chivalrous deeds and as the 

 site of Paul's shipwreck, by pounding up the loose and scattere<i 

 stones which covered its bleak surface, and importing soil from Sicily 

 to mix with their dust. The Mexicans had floating gardens in Lake 

 Tezcuco, where their capital city was established. The Chinese haVe 

 long resorted to the same means of rearing culinary and other plants, 

 and not an inch of soil, even though situated amidst the precipitous 

 cliffs of the mountains, is unfilled, so great is the demand for vege- 

 table products by the thronged population of the Celestial Empire. 

 The lemon and orange groves of Poitugal and Sicily, are established 

 and maintained by an expensive and laborious system of artificial 

 fountains and channels of irrigation. With us, land is so abundant, 

 in comparison with the population, that we have no just conception 

 of its value, as estimated in those portions of the globe, where the 

 inhabitants are so numerous that a few roods are considered an estate 

 so ample that the fortunate proprietor is accounted an independent 

 man. 



But even in the vast extent of the United States, with the millions 

 of acres still in a slate of nature, how many thuosands are now 

 cultivated, which, a few generations since, aye, in our day, were 

 deemed worthless! In England, what extensive morasses have been 

 reclaimed and added tothedomainof agriculture, while the heath-cover- 



* The government of Holland is now engaged in draining Harlem lake, which 

 covers an area of 45,000 acres, or over seventy square miles, to the doj)th of thirteen 

 feet below low water, in the Zuyder Zee, for the purpose of secnring Amsterdam 

 and Leyden, as well as a large region of farms and villages, from inundation, and to 

 convert the bed of the lake into tillage land. To accomplish this grand object, 

 three enormous steam engines arc employed, which work eleven pumps each, whicb 

 are 63 inches in diameter, that discharge 2,500,000 tons of water per 24 hours. 

 These engines, it has been calculated, will drain the lake in 400 days, at an expense 

 of 580,000 dollars. The first engine was oompletod in 1345. 



