64 
A JAUNT IN OHIO.—NO. 1. 
cuttings of Italian rye grass, amounting, in 
weight, to between 30 to 40 tons per Scotch 
acre, [our readers will bear in mind that the 
grass was weighed wet; perhaps it would not 
have been over five tons dry. A Scotch acre is 
equal to about 1^ acres English.— Eds.], enabling 
him to keep six cows to the acre, by house 
feeding; also, 20 sheep to the Scotch acre. But 
you should have large tanks to keep the liquid 
manure in until it decomposes and ferments.” 
I would ask, why cannot we, too, do it ? 
Charles R. Alsop. 
Middletown, Conn., Nov., 1850. 
A JAUNT IN OHIO.—No. 1. 
On the last day of September, 1850, I landed 
from on board steamboat, at Sandusky city, fa¬ 
vorably located on the bay of that name, near 
the southwest end of Lake Erie, and the termi¬ 
nus of the Lake-Erie and Cincinnati Railroad. 
It was thirty years since I had last seen the 
place. Thirty-two years ago, I knew it with a 
single log cabin and a framed warehouse, on 
the margin of the water, built there for the pur¬ 
pose of receiving the casual goods which arriv¬ 
ed at that early day from Albany, via the Mo¬ 
hawk River, Wood Creek, Oswego, Niagara, 
and Lake Erie, before the construction of the 
Erie Canal. 
Sandusky was then “O’Gont’s Place,” so 
called, after an old French trapper, who so¬ 
journed a part of his obscure life at that pleas¬ 
ant spot. It was a wild, lonely yet cheerful 
place in 1818; a few scattered brushwood, 
patches of wild grass, an oak opening, spots of 
bare lime rock now and then cropping out, 
a spring or two of water gushing out of the 
rocky bank next the bay, where I have often 
slaked my boyish thirst, after a weary travel 
among the woods which separated me from my 
log cabin, a few miles distant. A fine stretch 
of bay to the left, some twenty miles inland, 
parallel to the lake, a glimpse of Lake Erie, 
blue and boundless to the right, with a point of 
Cunningham’s (now Kelley’s) Island, shutting 
off a part, the peninsula in front, woods in the 
back ground; and that comprised the scenery 
of the now city of Sandusky, then, on paper. I 
found it altered only by the clearing of a por¬ 
tion of the forest, and the erection of a thriving, 
well-built town of 4,000 inhabitants, the termi¬ 
nus of two railroads, and teeming with the 
promise of a great, commercial city in future. 
Taking the morning train of cars for Cincin¬ 
nati, we passed rapidly into the interior, and on 
the route of the road, a flat, monotonous, and 
painfully-straight course, leaving the farms and 
villages, principally, either out of sight, or so 
far distant, as to hardly be recognised; yet, 
sufficiently distinct to show that it is a fine agri¬ 
cultural country, prolific in corn, wheat, and 
grass; yet rather slovenly cultivated, with an 
occasional exception, and passing many a field 
of limestone opening, which I was informed 
had harvested thirty to fifty bushels of wheat 
to the acre the past season, an uncommonly 
bounteous one, even for this region. The corn 
looked slovenly; yet it had a good growth, but 
full of weeds, which I learned was caused by 
an uncommonly wet weeding season, preventing 
in many cases, the usual cultivation. The fruit 
trees were luxuriant, wild in too many cases, 
for want of pruning, and the apples hung in 
ropes and clusters on the trees, and covered the 
ground beneath. But few of them appeared to 
be grafted. The peach trees were exceedingly 
thrifty and luxuriant—the fruit mostly ripened 
and grown, and no disease cankering nor infest¬ 
ing leaf, bark, nor root. The people literally 
lived like “ pigs in clover.” 
With the exception of the wood and water 
stations, an occasional small freighting depot, 
with a post office and a few surrounding build¬ 
ings in a fertile country of oak openings and 
prairie and forest mixed, the only town for 
the first forty miles, is Tiffin, the county seat 
for Seneca. Tiffin is a smart town on the east 
bank of the Sandusky River, well built and 
thriving. The country about here was chiefly 
forest, in its original state. There are now 
many farms along the road, which still main¬ 
tains its everlasting, straight, monotonous course, 
occasionally passing a new and uninteresting 
village, until it reaches Belle Fountaine, the 
county seat of Logan, a stirring town of a thou¬ 
sand or fifteen hundred people, and a point of 
transit for much farm produce and merchan¬ 
dise. A few miles further on, is West Liberty, 
where the road first strikes the valley of Mad 
River, one of the richest and most fertile, agri¬ 
culturally, in the state. Here opens a fine 
farming country with broad cultivation, great 
crops of corn and wheat, and a commencing 
show of the fertility and abundance of Ohio. 
The farms have long been cleared, the build¬ 
ings generally good, have a neat and tidy ap¬ 
pearance, great fields spreading out on all sides; 
and although but few of them immediately on 
the road, yet showing grandly on either side, in 
its immediate vicinity. Occasional herds of welL- 
bred cattle were seen in the pastures; the corn 
was mostly cut up and neatly shocked, while 
