September 28, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



459 



women. For this training two wires are used, and in tliese 

 vineyards the lower wire is three feet from the ground and 

 the upper one five and a half feet. 



About fifteen miles from Geneva the horticultural region 

 was left behind, and we came at once into general farming on 

 the high land well up between the lakes. The whole country- 

 is admirably adapted to fruit of various kinds, and the time 

 cannot be far away when the farmers will believe that fruit- 

 growing is more profitable in this region than hay and grain. 

 The country becomes much lower northward, and rolls away 

 on all sides in mighty billows, until lost in the blue hills be- 

 yond the lakes. Near Geneva, beyond the foot of Seneca 

 Lake, is the farm where John Johnston did the first tile-drain- 

 ing done in America. The old house still stands as he left it, 

 with low ceilings, quaint " cubby-holes " and curious old latches. 

 The farm is now owned and managed by Mr. Charles R. Mel- 

 len, a young man of spirit and intelligence, who makes the 

 most of his opportunities. "The old farm still outdoes any of 

 its neighbors in productiveness," he remarked, "and I attribute 

 the fact to the good old tile-drains and to the careful manage- 

 ment which the land received in its early days. That field 

 over yonder we always expect shall give us forty bushels of 

 wheat to the acre, and last year it gave us an average of forty- 

 two bushels and a peck." Adjoining the old Johnston farm is 

 Rose Hill, the finest farm homestead between New York and 

 Chicago ; this is the estimate of a committee of appraisers to 

 award damages entailed by a new railroad which cuts off one 

 corner of it. Originally it contained over 1,100 acres ; it was 

 settled early in the century by a Virginian by the name of 

 Rose. The present house and appurtenances are palatial, and 

 of a type very rarely seen in American country-seats. 



Cornell University. L. H. Bailey. 



The Old Southern Country-seat. 



THE house in which a man lives goes far toward disclosing 

 not only his tastes and intellectual development, but also 

 his habits and modes of living. It has always seemed to me 

 that the old southern homestead of the better class was pecu- 

 liarly characteristic of our people in the halcyon days before 

 the war. A thousand things told of boundless and tireless 

 hospitality. The sagging "big gate" on the public road, one 

 of whose posts, at least, was often a living tree, while ex- 

 tremely hard to shut, would open almost of its own accord. 

 Besides, it had a great habit of hanging wide open as if invit- 

 ing every passer-by to enter and make himself at home. And 

 the chances were that the yard gate had the same habit. In- 

 side, the shaded walk was broad and ample, as if many visitors 

 were expected to walk abreast between the files of stately Box- 

 trees up to the mansion, whose porch and hall and rooms and 

 all their belongings were of the same generous dimensions. 

 The kitchen fireplace was huge enough to cook for an army. 

 An abundance of roomy arm-chairs, made of native wood and 

 bottomed with native bark, offered comfortable nesting-places, 

 so comfortable that it seems as if chair-making is now one of 

 the lost arts. 



The architecture of the building depended, of course, on 

 the era of its erection. If early in the century, sharp roofs 

 and dormer-windows were apt to prevail. Later, just previous 

 to the war, hip-roofs abounded. Whatever the style, the 

 rooms were almost sure to be large and square, and there 

 were plenty of them. Eighteen feet square was a favorite 

 size, though many were larger and few smaller. The house 

 was invariably white, with green blinds ; with their accessories 

 of green trees and dense shade, these colors were beautiful 

 and appropriate beyond all others. Red kitchens, smoke- 

 houses, carriage-houses and other outbuildings lent pictur- 

 esqueness to the scene. The palings, generally of large orna- 

 mented posts and small pickets, were also invariably white. 

 Hedges in the way of enclosures were practically unknown, 

 while ornamental hedges of Box were common. Cedar was 

 also used for this purpose, though to a much less extent on 

 account of the great care necessary to keep it trim. Flowers 

 were nearly all grown in the vegetable-gardens some distance 

 to the rear of the house, but there were always some Roses 

 along the front walk, and often a bush of running Roses 

 trained on one side of the porch. But little attention was paid 

 to pot-plants, the Geranium taking precedence among the 

 few flowers grown. In most yards no sowing of grass-seed 

 was necessary, the native grasses, if protected from weeds, 

 giving usually an excellent sward. Protected by the fallen 

 tree-leaves purposely left in autumn, it remained green from 

 the uncovering in early March till the trees again cast down 

 its winter robe of russet-brown. Few Oak-trees were located 

 in the yard, or at least to the front of the house, on account of 



their injury to the grass, while under most of the other trees 

 planted for shade or ornament it grew even more luxuriantly 

 than in the open. 



Riding was almost universally practiced by both sexes, and 

 the horse-block from which the ladies of the family reached 

 their saddles was a fixture in every homestead. Sometimes 

 this " block" was a granite cube rudely dressed by the farm 

 mason, or may be a lichened boulder which nature had placed 

 just in the right spot or very near it. Almost every place had 

 its pigeon-cote ; some of these were elaborate and ornamental, 

 housing many hundred birds. The squabs were occasionally 

 killed, but generally the pigeons were allowed to multiply un- 

 disturbed, much to the annoyance of the overseer, who was con- 

 stantly complaining of their attacks on newly planted corn and 

 peas. Few places had wells, or, having them, used their 

 waters. Everybody preferred spring-water, which was con- 

 sidered better and more wholesome. Among the hill-districts 

 these springs were often wonderfully bold and beautiful, their 

 sparkling waters pausing a moment in the natural basin of 

 solid rock, and then dashing off between mossy roots and 

 lichened stones down a glen all greenness and shade. That 

 these springs were all the way from a hundred yards to half a 

 mile from the house made little difference as things then were. 

 There was always a swarm of nimble-footed pickaninnies 

 ready for this or any other errand. Indeed, some such light 

 service was necessary to keep them out of mischief, and to 

 drive cows, mind gaps, blow fires akindle, and keep chickens 

 out of the garden left enough idlers to give a world of trouble 

 about the kitchen and back-yard. " I use daily a five-hundred- 

 dollar candle-stand, a four-hundred-dollar washstand, and a 

 towel-rack nearly as valuable," was the mild and oft-repeated 

 joke of an old gentleman who was served by a swarm of these 

 sable urchins. 



But all these things belong to a past whose remoteness can- 

 not be measured by years, because they are a part of a differ- 

 ent era, a different order. The chances are that the old 

 homestead has long since gone to decay. All but a pitiful cor- 

 ner of the spacious garden has been turned into a corn-field ; 

 browsing stock have played havoc with the grass and shrub- 

 bery of the yard ; the shorter-lived shade-trees have long ago 

 died, and others have grown scraggy or unkempt ; the long, 

 well-kept rows of negro quarters have succumbed to time, and 

 the laborers are scattered in fragile huts so as to be conve- 

 nient to the fields they tend. 



The "Great House" itself has shared in these changes. 

 Thirty years of wind and weather have toned down its once 

 cheerful white and green into melancholy dinginess. The 

 roof, despite its shroud of moss and lichens, is so frayed and 

 unsound that one wonders how it contrives to keep out the 

 rain. The former occupants and their fortunes have under- 

 gone no less a change, and, if they remain under the old roof- 

 tree, maintain scarcely a shadow of their former state and 

 hospitality. 



There is, of course, no lack of snug and thriving homes all 

 through the south, but few of these grand old places, too cum- 

 bersome for modern needs, remain, and the old-time southern 

 country-seat is fast becoming a memory. _ ,,, „, , 



Kittrell, N. C. O. W. Blackiiall. 



"Shong-um." — I. 



THE Shawangunk Range is a minor branch of the great Ap- 

 palachian chain. Its most northern point, near Kingston, 

 Ulster County, New York, divides the valley of the Wallkill from 

 the great Rondout valley, and thence, extending south-west, at- 

 tains in some places a height of 1,800 to 2,000 feet. The Erie 

 Railroad crosses it at Port Jervis, and afterward it is lost in the 

 AUeghanies. Its elevation is so inconsiderable in comparison 

 with the lordly Catskills, which look down upon it across the 

 wide and fertile farm-lands of the valleys, that it was left un- 

 noticed and unknown for many years after the higher moun- 

 tains had been well explored by summer tourists. But, aside 

 from the historical interest connecting it with the early history 

 of the Dutch settlements along the Hudson, this region is 

 worth consideration for its own sake. Its easy accessibility by 

 rail and river makes the little world thus elevated above the sea- 

 level a ready refuge from the summer heat, and its system of 

 lakes and streams and cascades and forests affords picturesque 

 delights to the artist and unending studies to the botanist. 



When the mighty forces of primeval nature uplifted these 

 masses of white sandstone and quartz conglomerate it was done 

 with so steady a hand that the level strata were hardly anywhere 

 tilted ; and they stood in parallel lines with gaps between, one 

 mountain wall pushed a little past the next and commanding 

 it — in military phrase — en fehelon. Then came the long win- 



