mr. Robinson’s tour.—no. 12. 
27 
MR. ROBINSON’S TOUR.—No. 12. 
Estates of the Messrs. Burgwin .—About three 
miles below the ferry at Halifax, N. C., on the 
east side of the Roanoke, I entered the Bur¬ 
gwin estates, formerly owned by the late 
Thomas Pollock, Esq., of Edenton, and only for 
a few years past by the present proprietors, 
Mr. Burgwin, senior, and his sons, T. Pollock 
Burgwin and Henry K. Burgwin. 
It was just before sundown, on the 13tn of 
May, when I crossed the ferry, after a long day’s 
drive, which I was prompted to do by the fact 
that the river and clouds both threatened a flood 
that might detain me several days, which I pro¬ 
posed to spend beneath the hospitable roof of 
an intelligent North Carolina planter, rather 
than in a dull town. So taking such directions 
as a negro only can give a stranger, I com¬ 
menced a voyage of discovery through two or 
three intervening plantations, and was very 
near becoming entangled with blind roads and 
back water, already overflowing and cutting 
off communication, with darkness and a thun¬ 
der-storm threatening, when I discovered a car¬ 
riage approaching, which I found to contain a 
handsome, intelligent-looking gentleman, with 
piercing black eyes, and black hair just begin¬ 
ning to show a few silvery streaks. No sooner 
had I inquired if that was Mr. Burgwin, and 
announced my name, than he leaped from his 
own, and approached my carriage to welcome 
me most heartily as an old acquaintance, 
though this was our first meeting. Sending for¬ 
ward the carriage upon the errand of mercy 
that brought him out, which was to carry con¬ 
solation and mercy to a sick servant, he took a 
seat with me and drove to the “ Cottage,” the 
residence of Mr. T. Pollock Burgwin, whom I 
had just met, and of his father when not at his 
place on the Trent. Although I missed the 
much-loved pleasure of female society, we 
managed to pass the time rapidly along some¬ 
what beyond midnight, conversing exclusively 
upon the subject of improving and rendering 
fertile the worn-out lands of North Carolina and 
Virginia. Upon this subject Mr. B. is an enthu¬ 
siast. He has been an extensive traveller, and has 
visited some of the best cultivated farms of the 
northern states; and when he came into posses¬ 
sion of his property here in 1840, instead of 
leaving it to be utterly worn out by overseers, 
who never learned any other art of tillage than 
cutting down and burning up timber, planting 
cotton, and wearing out land,—which is then 
“turned out” to grow up again while they cut 
down more,—he determined to apply the know¬ 
ledge he had gained from reading and travel¬ 
ling, and devote all the energies of his strong- 
mind to an effort to change that old, ruinous 
system, which has nearly destroyed and depopu¬ 
lated some sections of the south. To carry out 
his plans, he found it absolutely necessary to 
change his overseer for a young man who had 
no plans of his own, but was willing to obey 
orders. 
In speaking of .the operations of this gentle¬ 
man it may be understood that I also include 
the plantations of his father and brother, as all 
three are conducted upon the same general sys¬ 
tem. In the first place, cotton is utterly discarded 
from the premises, and clover, yes, rich, luxuriant 
red clover, by the hundred and thousand acres, 
has been made to grow where nothing but brown 
sedge and oldfield pines grew before. Illustra¬ 
tive of this fact Mr. B. related to me an anecdote. 
There was one tract known as the “ old field,” 
containing about an hundred acres, upland, 
clayey, loamy soil, nearly level, “ lying out,” 
that is, abandoned as no longer fit for cultiva¬ 
tion, covered with brown sedge, and growing 
up to oldfield pines. 
Calling the attention of his overseer one day, 
who had already set him down as utterly crazy, 
and determined to ruin his land if not himself 
by his “ new-fangled plows,” and insisting upon 
having every furrow at least ten inches deep, he 
fairly drove the man to a standing point by 
ordering him to prepare that “old field” for the 
plow. Utterly amazed at the order, the fellow 
dropped the reins upon his horse’s neck, turned 
round, and stared Mr. B. in the face as if to dis¬ 
cover whether he was in sober earnestness, and 
answered him with an inquiring “ Sir V? Mr. B. 
repeated the order, and the overseer replied: 
“ Why, Mr. Burgwin, do you expect to raise a 
crop upon that field ? If you do, I can assure 
you that I wore that land out ten years ago.” 
“ I know it,” said Mr. B.; “ but I don’t intend 
you shall wear out my land; and if you think 
you cannot conduct my business just as I think 
best, I will try to get some one that will do it; 
for I would not allow you to manage the place 
according to your notions, if you would give me 
five thousand dollars a-year.” 
“ Well, sir, if you order it, I suppose I can 
clear up and plow the land; and, if you insist 
upon it, will turn you up a bed of brick clay, 
ten inches deep; but let me tell you, sir, you will 
never make enough to pay for the salt your horses eat 
while doing it .” 
Well, the “ old field” was plowed up, and ma¬ 
nured as well as the scanty supply would afford, 
and planted with corn. The first crop was 
twelve bushels to the acre, the second, thirteen 
bushels, the third, six bushels of wheat; it was 
then dressed with a good coat of stable manure 
and forty bushels of lime to the acre, and sowed 
with wheat, in October, ’48, which, if it had not 
been for that destructive frost in April, ’49, 
would undoubtedly have averaged twenty, and 
probably twenty-five, bushels to the acre, and 
still carry a most excellent crop of clover, which, 
after receiving a bushel of plaster to the acre 
in May, if it does not “pay fob the salt the 
horses eat,” it will pay for a considerable quan¬ 
tity that the herd of cattle will require while feed¬ 
ing upon it. Cattle so fed are under charge of a 
herdsman, and at night are yarded in temporary 
pens upon the most barren knolls or galled hill 
sides; which puts them in a condition, in their 
turn, to produce rich crops of corn, wheat, and 
clover. 
The order of rotation is,—commence with a 
field at rest, and plow ten inches deep, in April 
and May, and sow cowpeas broadcast, and har¬ 
row in; or break up, that is plow in the fall 
