NEW LANDS. 
145 
sive siage oi tillage, all within range of the eye at the same in- 
stant. Yonder, for instance, appeared an opening in the forest, 
marking a new clearing still in the rudest state, black with charred 
stumps and rubbish ; it was only last winter that the timber was 
felled on that spot, and the soil was first opened to the sunshine, 
after having been shaded by the old woods for more ages than 
one can tell. Here, again, on a nearer ridge, lay a spot not only 
cleared, but fenced, preparatory to being tilled; the decayed 
trunks and scattered rubbish having been collected in heaps and 
burnt. Probably that spot will soon be ploughed, but it fre- 
quently happens that land is cleared of the wood, and then left 
in a rude state, as wild pasture-ground ; an indifferent sort of 
husbandry this, in which neither the soil nor the wood receives 
any attention ; but there is more land about us in this condition 
than one would suppose. The broad hill-side, facing the lane in 
which we were walking, though cleared perhaps thirty years 
since, has continued untilled to the present hour. In another 
direction, again, lies a field of new land, ploughed and seeded for 
the first time within the last few weeks ; the young maize plants, 
just shooting out their glossy leaves, are the first crop ever raised 
there, and when harvested, the grain will prove the first fruits 
the earth has ever yielded to man from that soil, after lying fal- 
low for thousands of seasons. Many other fields in sight have 
just gone through the usual rotation of crops, showing what the 
soil can do in various ways ; while the farm before us has been 
under cultivation from the earliest history of the village, yielding 
every season, for the last half century, its share of grass and 
grain. To one familiar with the country, there is a certain 
pleasure in thus beholding the agricultural history of the neigh- 
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