AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
Designed tu imjrroJb'^ % Jfarmer, tlje planter, attir tjje (Sarimer* 
AGRICULTURE IS TEE MOST HEAL TRY, TEE MOST USEFUL, AND TEE MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF AL4A0- Washington. 
PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY ALLEH & CO., 189 WATER ST. 
VOL. XII.—NO. 22.] NEW-YORK, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9, 1854. [NEW SERIES.—NO. 48. 
m*FOR PROSPECTUS, TER31S, <j*c., 
SEE LAST PAGE. 
A VISIT TO HOKANUM. 
“A happy rural seat of various view.” 
The finest country-seats in the land are little 
known, even to the traveling public. If a man 
of fortune starts upon the embellishment of a 
rural home, it is more than probable that he 
has gained all his notions of landscape garden¬ 
ing from descriptions of the country-seats of 
England, rather than from the actual inspection 
of any one of the country-seats that are begin¬ 
ning to cluster around our cities, and to adorn 
the banks of our rivers. For the most part, 
they are a little off from the lines of travel, and 
are held in the retirement of private life. They 
are not looked upon as in any sense belonging 
to the public, so that they are rarely visited, 
except by family friends, and an occasional 
stranger, who, in his summer rambles, stum¬ 
bles upon these rural gems, with as much of 
surprise, as Adam first looked upon Paradise. 
You will not find Hokanum, at least not the 
scene of our visit, upon any of the maps. Like 
a multitude of those beautiful and sonorous 
names of Indian origin, it lives only in the im¬ 
mediate locality, and will never command the 
attention of geographers. We confess to hav¬ 
ing spent a year within a dozen miles of the 
place, without ever hearing the name, or dream¬ 
ing that Connecticut possessed so tasteful a 
home within her borders. Hokanum is the 
country-seat of Morris Ketchum, Esq., a gentle¬ 
man much better known in Wall street, and 
among brokers, than in the State of his resi¬ 
dence, and among horticulturists. It lies within 
two or three miles of the Sound, in the town of 
Westport,, and the guest who leaves the dust 
and din of the city at four in the afternoon by 
the rail ears, finds himself wooing the evening 
breeze, and admiring the sunset clouds, amid 
the leafy groves of this rural home. And the 
ease with which this seclusion is accessible, is 
one of the charms of these country-seats along 
the Sound. But for the blue waves, and the 
whitening sails that you occasionally get 
glimpses of through the tree tops, and for the 
shrill whistle of the locomotive, echoing among 
the hills, you might imagine yourself hundreds 
of miles remote from the busy haunts of men. 
Hokanum, we are told, signifies a swampy 
place, and was appropriately applied here, for a 
large tract in the heart of the farm was origi¬ 
nally a bushy swamp, miry, and impassible. 
The spot is not by Nature adapted to ornamen¬ 
tal purposes. Thousands of places more at¬ 
tractive could have been found almost anywhere 
upon the undulating surface of Connecticut. 
There is hardly a hill thirty feet high upon tin- 
premises, and no mountain in the back-ground, 
with its bald cliffs and wooded slopes, to give 
grandeur to the scene. There is no foaming 
brook, with waterfalls, and no lake, even in 
miniature, to give variety to the landscape. 
And yet so admirably has the proprietor 
wrought up the bald materials which nature 
gave him, so constantly varied are the effects 
produced by the grouping of trees, and the 
winding of walks, that one hardly misses these 
grand accessories of art. No small part of the 
pleasure of the amateur visitor is derived from 
this fact, that every natural object in the 
grounds has been most skilfully used in bring¬ 
ing out the beauty of the landscape. 
THE HOUSE 
has three approaches; one from the street 
near which it stands; one from the north cot¬ 
tage, which winds about over the hills, and 
through the valleys for more than a mile, skirted 
with oak, walnut, maple, elm, and evergreen 
trees in all stages of growth; and the main car¬ 
riage drive, entering at the lodge nearest the 
village, which is completely shaded with well- 
grown forest trees. It stands upon the highest 
part of the grounds, and, with the adjoining 
buildings and shrubbery, forms a beautiful 
group. The house was not put up at one time, 
after the plan of an architect, but has been en¬ 
larged and remodeled from time to time, to suit 
the taste and convenience of the family. It fits 
so admirably into its place upon the brow of 
the hill, and looks out so cheerfully from its 
surroundings of flowers and trees, that you no¬ 
tice its architecture and color as little as the 
dress of a tasteful woman. 
A broad flight of steps receives you from the 
carriage and conducts you to a broad airy pi¬ 
azza, running the whole length of the building. 
The front doors, opening upon this piazza, in¬ 
troduce you to a spacious hall, elaborately fin¬ 
ished in oak pannel work, and furnished with 
oak chairs of grand dimensions, lounges, and 
other appliances of summer comfort. The draw¬ 
ing-room, parlors, and library, opening upon this 
hall, are elegant rooms and furnished in excel¬ 
lent taste. The piazza is nearly seventy feet 
long, and its pillars are covered with the trum¬ 
pet creeper, and that most elegant of all our 
creepers, the Wistaria. This is trained along 
the roof the whole length of the piazza, and 
when its purple radioes are in full bloom, it 
must form a gorgeous scene. The steps are 
fringed with splendid green-house plants, the 
palm, the pine-apple, rhododendron, cape jessa¬ 
min, and others; some of them in full bloom 
and filling the air with their fragrance. On 
either side of the steps is a beautiful flower bor¬ 
der, filled with a great variety of plants, princi¬ 
pally from the green-house. In the center of 
the oval carriage drive, in front of the house, is 
a tasteful plat of close-shaven grass, and in the 
center of the grass-plat is an oval bed of ver¬ 
benas. At one end of this grass-plat stands a 
noble elm, its whole trunk entwined with the 
branches of a gavel rose, and showing splendid 
clusters, for at least twenty feet from the ground. 
It was one of the finest exhibitions of roses we 
ever remember to have seen. 
THE LAWN, 
as seen from the terrace in front of the house, 
is the finest rural picture we have ever gazed 
upon. It embraces several acres, and is regu¬ 
larly shaven every fortnight, and kept as neatly 
as a parlor carpet. It is completely belted with 
forest trees, embracing almost every variety 
found in our climate, and many from other 
lands. Through this belt of trees, winds a 
beautiful walk, branching off into all parts of the 
grounds. The lawn is threaded by a little 
streamlet, whose course is marked by the deeper 
green along its margin. It disappears at the 
lower end, passing under a rustic bridge. Just 
beyond this bridge is a grove of white pine, 
which, though set but a few years, are already 
more than a foot in diameter. In striking con¬ 
trast with these dark evergreens, is the silvery 
foliage of the abele. A solitary tulip tree 
stands near the middle of the lawn, and on 
either side you see fine copses jutting out from 
the belt of woods. In one place, through the 
trunks of tall elms and walnuts, muffled with 
ivy and creepers, you get a charming view of 
the green fields beyond. Scattered along these 
walks, you find tasteful statues made in imita¬ 
tion of stone, which bring back to you the my¬ 
thology of the Greeks, and people this rural re¬ 
treat with the divinities of classic days. Here 
the rock crops out in a rough angular ledge, 
and the summit is crowned with 
A SUMMER HOUSE. 
Its frame-work and seats are made of red cedar, 
and its roof is thatched. Wild vines and honey¬ 
suckles are trained about its arched door-ways. 
There at the foot of the hillock, an old walnut 
has thrust its gnarled roots into the crevices of 
the ledge, and its trunk is given up to the com¬ 
panionship of a whole family of creepers. The 
bitter-sweet, the trumpet, and the Virginia 
creeper, the native and the English ivy, are run¬ 
ning a race for the top of its branches. 
THE FLOWER GARDEN 
is on the north of the mansion, and is under the 
supervision of the lady of the house. Its fenc¬ 
ing upon two sides, is a beautiful hedge. By 
the road you have the althea, whose flowers in 
their season form an attractive sight for the tra¬ 
veler, On the other is a well-trained arbor- 
