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wood. When a heavy rain pours down upon it, this wood 
sounds like a roof of copper or brass." So Mittelberger 
moves on in his entertaining narrative, every page being 
crowded with valuable information. He homeward sailed in 
the year 1754, and after a stormy ocean voyage, and by way 
of the River Thames, reached London, England, October 
tenth, so grateful that he wrote, "We all thanked God from 
the bottom of our hearts; I kissed the ground with joy, and 
took to heart the 107th Psalm." 
In "History of New Sweden," Israel Acrelius, an 
observer who returned to his native land in the year 1756, 
records: "Germantown, 6 miles north of Philadelphia, is 3 
miles long. It has one principal street, which is a public 
wagon road, and 305 houses. Its inhabitants are generally 
German merchants." 
Of the country about Philadelphia Acrelius wrote: "Yet 
most of the farms are already cleared. Some miles up in 
the country but few places are to be seen where the stumps do 
not still stand thick upon the ground. Not one half of the 
forests are cleared off as they ought to be. The clearing is 
not made by the destructive burning of the trees, whereby 
the fertile soil is converted into ashes and carried away by 
the winds. Some sticks or stumps may be thus burned so as 
to put them almost entirely out of the way. As labor is very 
high, so sometimes only the bushes and undergrowths are 
removed; but the large trees are still left standing, but 
around these a score is cut, and they then dry up within the 
first year, and thus some fall down ; so one may see fields filled 
with dry trees, and a heavy crop of grain growing under 
them." 
Progress, if it sometimes appeared slow, was steady, and 
we find that upon the "Great-Road," and opposite to what 
is now Armat Street, was started by Christian Lehman, one 
of the earliest nurseries in the colonies, — and without question 
the first in Germantown for the commerical growing of plants. 
The necessity for this was apparent, for Judge William 
Allen, who lived at his country place named "Mount Airy," 
