Tour from liffew York to Mount Vernon—Southern Products. 
I might perform a duty most grateful to my personal 
feelings, but foreign from the object of this letter, and 
out of place here; yet I could not but regret that a 
spot so holy as the last resting-place of Washington 
should be so utterly neglected, and the noble domain 
which his genius so well loved to cultivate, and on 
which for a long series of years he had given so shin¬ 
ing an example of agricultural advancement to his 
countrymen, should thus be abandoned to ruin and de¬ 
cay. This to be sure, is no monumental country. 
History alone is to be the record of noble deeds and of 
great actions in our land, yet I felt sorrowful and cast 
down, that the supineness of his native state should 
permit the once highly cultivated and tasteful residence 
of her cherished son, to present so gloomy a shadow of 
its once luxuriant greatness. 
Mount Vernon, and all the country on both sides the 
Potomac, is susceptible of great fertility by the applica¬ 
tion of active stimulants to its soil; and I devoutly 
trust that the time will arrive, when all this beautiful 
and most interesting region will again luxuriate in 
gladness, and become redolent with its fruitful fields, 
and teeming harvests, and superb flocks and herds. 
L. F. Allen. 
For the American Agriculturist. 
SOUTHERN PRODUCTS. 
Mississippi City , 18th Jan., 1843. 
Messrs. A. B. & R. L. Allen : 
It always affords me great pleasure to communi¬ 
cate anything useful to the agricultural interests of this 
great Union. I only regret I am not capable of doing 
more to aid your virtuous and laudable undertaking, 
and more fully realize your expectations with regard to 
our productions. I am well aware that “ the people of 
the North have strange conceptions of Southern capa¬ 
bilities, in an agricultural point of view.” The rea¬ 
son of this is very evident. We have, it is true, many 
people from the North living in the South, many of 
whom are now planters; but we have very few who 
were raised farmers in the North. The Northern peo¬ 
ple who have come South, were everything and any¬ 
thing but farmers; priests, lawyers, doctors, mechanics, 
merchants, traders, pedlars, seamen, patent-right ven¬ 
ders, &c., &c., but no farmers; hence they do not en¬ 
lighten the minds of their farming friends North, with 
regard to the agricultural resources of this country. 
True, they sometimes speak of large cotton or sugar 
estates, with large stocks of slaves to work them, with 
interesting descriptions of certain rich tvidows, or plant - 
ers > daughters of fortune, and how successful trade has 
been in this, or other respects, with themselves or 
some of their friends. But this is a kind of informa¬ 
tion that your real honest, industrious, economical far¬ 
mers rarely see and never heed; such stuff offers 
them no inducements ; it is worthy only of the atten¬ 
tion of professional gentry of every nam| and denomi¬ 
nation. 
I witnessed in the island of Cuba a striking evidence 
of some of the above facts. From Matanzas to Carde¬ 
nas, decidedly one of the finest tracts of country I ever 
saw, in which are settled and engaged in planting, 
both sugar and cotton, many persons from our North¬ 
ern States ; every one of whom, so far as I could learn, 
(except one,) had either been raised merchants or sea¬ 
men. The one raised a farmer in Maryland, had the 
finest and most j>rofitable estate in the country. The 
Creole Spaniard pursues with great tenacity and reve¬ 
rence the unaltered course of his ancestors, and con¬ 
siders all improvements innovations. The American 
merchant, or ship Captain, when turning planter, must 
pursue the same course as the Creole; because he 
knows nothing of agriculture himself, experimentally. 
The consequence is, no improvement is made by North¬ 
ern men in Southern agriculture. But if we could 
start a company of your real sound, sensible, practical 
farmers, to our sunny shores, they would soon give 
you accounts of the agricultural capabilities of our 
country, as strange and astonishing to their friends left 
behind them, as the reality would be profitable and 
pleasing to them in their new homes. I would refer 
such as desire information on this subject, to Dr. S. A. 
Cartwright’s truly valuable and interesting communi* 
cation, published in the October No. of your paper, 
and some of my own opinions in the August No. of said 
work. My own experiments are very limited, but so 
far have proved very successful. The capacity of this 
country for raising grapes, equal to any other for mak¬ 
ing wine, is not now a doubtful question. Some of my 
vines yielded, last year, fifteen bushels of grapes to the 
vine; and not one less than three bushels from cut¬ 
tings planted in January, 1839. I think that the suc¬ 
cessful cultivation of the olive,, for making oil and 
pickles, may be carried on to any extent; and a suc¬ 
cessful competition with any other country may now 
be regarded as certain, from the experiments of Mr. 
Debuys, at Biloxi, ten miles east of this. 
I have now a few fine apples and pears raised near 
here this year. The quince, peach, nectarine, apricot, 
plumb, (all kinds) pomegranate, jujube, fig, mulberry, 
pecan, chestnut, chincopin and raspberry, all grow 
and bear as finely here as any place on earth, and 
never miss a crop any year. From an experiment I 
made this year on a poor ridge, I find our poorer lands, 
without manure, will yield seventy-five bushels of pin- 
dars and one ton of hay per acre. The pindar tops 
are equal to the best clover for hay, and resembles it 
very much. I have raised fine turnips on new land, 
with no other manure than three barrels shell lime to 
the acre, many of the turnips seven and a half inches 
across; but mostly four to six inches, planted Gth Sept, 
last. We raise from seventy-five to one hundred and 
fifty bushels sweet potatoes to the acre, and I think 
with proper culture could raise over two hundred. 
I know of no spot within a mile of the sea shore, 
where there is not plenty of decomposed vegetable 
matter, in low places, or the bottoms of slow running 
streams. These beds of manure lay parallel with the 
sea shore, and rarely more than two hundred yards 
apart; they are from ten to two hundred yards wide, 
and from one to six feet deep, of purely decomposed vege¬ 
table matter. Since reading Dr. Dana’s Muck Manual 
last summer, I have made some experiments with this 
muck, mixing lime with it, and am persuaded it will 
answer as well as the best stable manure for our lands. 
I planted my watermelons in hills thus prepared last 
spring, and had more melons than I expected by thou¬ 
sands, many hundreds were permitted to rot in the 
field. The earliest ripened 28th May. I am now 
preparing to plant a small vineyard with cuttings, and 
if I do not make 5000 gallons of wine to the acre in 
the summer of 1846,1 shall not realize my present ex¬ 
pectations. I have planted one hundred olive cuttings 
and thirty of the jujube trees, to get a start of those 
fruits. The undoubted health of our country and our 
delightful Southern sea breezes, and convenience to 
the New Orleans and Mobile markets, must make the 
growing of fruits and vegetables here a very important, 
profitable and desirable business. 
I have lately procured a small flock of sheep ; they 
were raised in this country, and have never tasted food 
except what they get in the forest; they look well, and 
have a good coat of wool, and I think will double their 
number in another month. Several gentleman have 
