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only article that will bear the expense of transporta^ 
tion from those remote parts, induces me with 
cheerfulness to give you every information in my 
power to enable you to inform those who are de-? 
sirous of undertaking the business. 
The land in this county generally made use of 
for the raising of hemp, is our sunken swamps and 
bog-meadows, of which we have a number, and 
many of large extent, the loose black soil of which 
is frequently from 2 to 10 feet deep, before you 
reach the clay ; this we find of importance, in order 
to lay the lands sufficiently dry. When we com¬ 
mence the draining of one of those pieces of land 
we begin by removing all obstructions in the out¬ 
let, and frequently cutting through old beaver- 
dams, and clearing out the creek, or cutting a suf¬ 
ficient new ditch, wide enough, if possible, to carry 
the whole stream in the time of a freshet, and to lay 
the water from 2 to 3 feet below the surface, when 
the freshet is over ; for we find that hemp is an ar¬ 
ticle that will by no means bear overflowing, and 
does not succeed well unless you can keep the water 
in your ditches at least two feet below the surface. 
After your main outlet is compleated, your swamp 
.must be ditched into small lots, of from 2 to 5, 6 or 7 
acres, and generally long and narrow ; and if there 
are any springs, they must be led off by a ditch, and 
it requires generally a shore ditch, to be cut a small 
distance from the shore, across the heads of the lots, 
,to carry off the land springs. The division ditches 
