50 



tide sets from the North into Fairfax and Lou- 

 doun counties is obvious. 



1. It is further from tide water, and, therefore, 

 has, at least the reputation of being more healthy. 



2. It is more accessible, being- nearer to the 

 North, and to the seat of government. 



3. The impression is, that the slaves bear a 

 much smaller proportion to the free, than they 

 do about Petersburg. Settlers from the North 

 have got a foothold in Fairfax and Loudoun. — 

 The tide of emigration is setting that way, and 

 will increase in a geometrical ratio. Had I the 

 leisure that many Virginia gentlemen have, I 

 would desire nothing easier of success than 

 would be the undertaking to swell that tide ten- 

 fold in one or two years. I would ascertain the 

 price of lands in the intervale country, between 

 the mountains and the tide. I would make me 

 a list of actual sales within a given time. I 

 would, in a course of lectures, in the Eastern 

 country towns, explain the geography and the 

 natural advantages of that region and its conge- 

 niality to the constitution of northern people. I 

 would dwell on its improvable soil — resources 

 of lime and other manures — its glorious climate, 

 with scarcely three months of winter — its ac- 

 cessibility to market, the certainty with which 

 the slave population will ultimately and rapidly 

 recede to the South, into the rice and sugar and 

 cotton growing regions. Thus would it be easy 

 to draw thousands instead of hundreds, within a 

 given space of time from New England into 

 Virginia — not by an ignis fatuus but by the sober 

 and steady light of truth and reason. More 

 than twenty years ago, I heard Mr. Crownin- 

 shield, Secretary of the Navy, say, that he had 

 given one hundred dollars an acre for land in 

 Massachusetts, which it afterwards cost him 

 fifty dollars an acre to clear of stone, so that it 

 could be ploughed ! 



Oxen. — You say that " either our horses at 

 the South are much better or our oxen are much 

 inferior to those of our Northern friends." This 

 proposition is true in both its branches ; your 

 horses are better, because they have more blood. 

 I once asked the late John Randolph, at a dinner 

 party, merely to provoke him to talk, whether 

 the horses in Virginia had of late years im- 

 proved, or been kept up to their point of ac- 

 knowledged excellence'? No, sir," said he, 

 "since we have given up horse-racing and fox- 

 hunting, and turned up the whites of our eyes, 

 our horses have sadly deteriorated." Even the 

 mules of Kentucky are far superior to those of 

 Ohio, because the sports of the turf in Kentucky 

 insure patronage to thorough bred stallions, and 

 the mules are, for the most part, bred from 

 thorough bred mares. 



But why are your oxen inferior ? Not be- 

 cause of the heat of your climate, but for the 

 same reasons that your husbandry is generally 

 inferior to that of New England. I have had 



an opportunity of reading the manuscript of a 

 dissertation on the use of oxen, by Assistant 

 Postmaster General Skinner, introductory to a 

 work on the diseases of cattle, shortly to be pub- 

 lished by Lea & Blanchard, which, in my judg- 

 ment, goes to prove that one of the greatest er- 

 rors in the practice of southern agriculture is, 

 the omission to substitute more extensively, oxen, 

 for horses ! Fie proves that there is no insur- 

 mountable difficulty on the score of climate ; for 

 he shows that in Spain they haul heavy loads 

 of ship timber twenty-five miles a day, and that 

 in South America teams of oxen are driven over 

 the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, with heavy loads 5 

 thirty miles a day, for thirty days in succession, 

 Get the North Devon breed, have them carefully 

 broken and taught to walk fast in the beginning. 

 Let them be always driven by the same man, 

 and let them be treated with humanity and dis- 

 cretion, and oxen may be made to supercede 

 more than half the horses in use, with an an- 

 nual saving of millions to the nation! 



The Measuring Cross—Country Schoolmasters 

 forty-five years ago. — A sensible, useful commu- 

 nication — marked it for the special notice of my 

 son, to whom, after perusal, I send your work, 

 he being a practical planter. I well remember, 

 when very young, that a country schoolmaster, 

 whose name was Wesley, communicated that 

 mode of ascertaining the height of objects, to 

 my father, who was very curious in all such 

 matters. At that time it was the custom for a 

 few gentlemen farmers to advertise for a school- 

 master, and one and another would " board him," 

 and for his pay they made up a club-purse. — 

 These schoolmasters were most generally, very 

 poor, and sometimes truly learned men, not al- 

 ways Yankees, but often young Irishmen, of 

 good Latin and Greek educations. In autumn, 

 down in the tide-water country, they were sure 

 to be seized with bilious and remittent fevers, 

 and it was pitiable to witness how they were 

 appalled when first taken with a chill, that 

 would make their lips turn blue and their teeth 

 chatter — a pathological phenomenon they had 

 never heard or dreamed of in the Emerald Isle ! 

 They rarely remained, if they survived, more 

 than one year, when the neighboring gentlemen 

 had to advertise for another. Sometimes the 

 new one would arrive before his predecessor had 

 " missed his chills," and then it was curious to 

 see the effect which the sight of a paroxysm of 

 raging fever would have on the sensibilities of 

 the now comer — hut it was the chill that struck 

 terror to Paddy's heart. I remember, when a 

 "little shaver," the new schoolmaster came run- 

 ning down stairs in awful dismay; he had 

 been left alone, to administer the prescribed me- 

 dicine and drinks to his poor countryman, until 

 he saw him seized with a shivering, such as he 

 had never witnessed. The poor invalid's face 

 became pale — his lips blue — his hands cold — his 



