MARYLAND WEATHEK SERVICE 313 



land. In fact the presence of the forest was originally a source of 

 actual danger, concealing hostile Indians or dangerous animals. 

 The habit then acquired of getting rid of the trees by the easiest 

 methods, for safety, as well as for agriculture, is responsible for 

 the later indifference to the consideration of timber. 



The heavy demands upon the soil, made by the system of repeated 

 tobacco crops, soon removed the most available elements of fertility, 

 and resort would then be made to new soil, made to yield to culti- 

 vation in the way mentioned in another paragraph. The means for 

 cultivation of the ground possible in the days of the Proprietary 

 Colony, were quite different from those of the present. There were 

 no plows with iron or steel mold boards, or shares, the best having 

 flat oak mold boards with a point of iron and perhaps in the case 

 of especially ingenious or progressive farmers having a flat plate 

 of iron nailed to the surface. It was thus impossible to plow deeply 

 or to throw a well turned furrow. Hand work was called upon to 

 make good the deficiency of the plow, and the hoe in the hands of 

 the slaves became a steady implement for the preparation of the 

 soil as well as for later tillage of the crop planted. The hoe which 

 did so much for the agricultural development of the Colony, was 

 not the bright sharp-edged tool of the present type, but more nearly 

 a mattock in weight and size. Although it was not so long and nar- 

 row as the mattock, still the amount of iron used in its construction 

 was apparently not much less. That a hoe of this type was the 

 best for the work to be done is quickly seen if one remembers that 

 the fields in which the crops were grown still had the stumps, or 

 even the standing trees, scattered through the corn or tobacco, and 

 the roots, decaying but slowly, were constantly being encountered 

 as the ground was worked. With a light hoe of the present type, it 

 is sometimes difficult to strike a sufficiently hard blow to cut through 

 the root of a well developed weed ; such would have been useless then 

 in the work of actual tillage. 



The hoe was so thoroughly recognized as the farm implement of 

 the plantation, that the year's plans as to acreage of corn and the 

 number of hills of tobacco were calculated on the basis of the hoeing 

 power of the hands. It was calculated that a negro could do the 

 necessary work in the field, using the hoe, to care for 37,800 hills 



