25 
On October 10, 1748, Peter Kalm again accompanied 
Mr. Cook to his country seat, where he "had a paper mill, on 
a little brook, and all the coarser sorts of paper are manu- 
factured in it. It is now annually rented for fifty pounds, 
Pennsylvania currency," — so our chronicler records. We, 
however, must pass many of Kalm's Germantown notes of 
value, to include notes upon our subject, for Kalm's descrip- 
tions have been singularly overlooked, and I know no writer 
who shows the life of early Germantown so clearly as he. 
"In the garden of Mr. Cook," Kalm records, "was a 
raddish which was in the loose soil grown so big as to be 
seven inches in diameter. Everybody that saw it, owned it 
was uncommon to see them of such a size." "The Polytrichum 
Commune," a species of moss, grew plentifully in wet and 
low meadows between the woods, and in several places quite 
covered them, as our mosses cover the meadows in Sweden. 
It was likewise plentiful on hills. Agriculture was in a very 
bad state hereabouts. 
"When a person had bought a piece of land, which 
perhaps had never been ploughed since the creation, he cut 
down part of the wood, tore up the roots, ploughed the 
ground, sowed corn on it, and the first time got a plentiful 
crop. But the same land being tilled for several years suc- 
cessively, without being manured, it at last must, of course, 
lose its fertility. Its possessor, therefore, leaves it fallow, 
and proceeds to another part of his ground, which he treats 
in the same manner. Thus he goes on till he has changed a. 
great part of his possessions into corn fields and by that 
means deprived the ground of its fertility. He then returns 
to the first field, which now is- pretty well recovered; this he 
again tills as long as it will afford him a good crop, but when 
its fertility is exhausted, he leaves it fallow again, and pro- 
ceeds to the rest as before." "Almost all the houses here- 
abouts were built either of stone or bricks, but those of stone 
were more numerous." 
"Germantown, which is about two English miles long, 
had no other houses, and the country thereabouts were all 
