32 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
LETTER FROM SOLON ROBINSON, 
To HIS FKIEND RICHMOND OF STATEN ISLAND. 
Much Respected Friend —Your letter in the Culti¬ 
vator of the present month, has been read with much plea¬ 
sure by me, and I hope equally so by the thousands of 
readers of that paper: who I also hope will be pleased 
to meet their old friends and acquaintances in the new 
dress that friend Tucker has very properly put on. This 
method that you have adopted of interchanging facts with 
one another as individuals, seems to me to be a very fa¬ 
miliar and happy way of conveying useful and amusing 
information to the public. Your letter too is a most com¬ 
plete illustration of my own theory, that if we will it 
ourselves, we can always find an abundance of material, 
out of which to work up a letter that is not only enter¬ 
taining, but conveys much useful instruction. To me it 
sounds like the conversation of an old acquaintance from 
the land of my birth: 
The land of rocks, and hills, and gravelly knolls, 
Stone walls, and wells, where “oaken buckets” swing; 
Where rivers rapid run, and where tide water rolls, 
And back on mem'ry’s page the scenes of childhood bring. 
For among the rocks and hills of Connecticut, I was 
born. Although you probably thought little of doing so 
when you wrote, yet your letter conveys much geologi-, 
cal and geographical information. It tells me too, that 
some of the inhabitants of my native state, like many oth¬ 
ers of all other states, are actually advancing backwards 
in civilization, when they strike from their vocabulary 
an ancient historical name, because it is Indian, and sounds 
barberous in our delicate ears. But we differ in taste. 
Now to me, 
There’s music in the soft sounding name of “ Saugatuck,” 
While “Westport” harshly sounds of traffic, trade and truck. 
But from your description, I judge that Mr. Ketchum 
in the improvement of his farm, has advanced the other 
way; and I doubt not that it would be useful for some 
western farmers, who do not now even do as much as 
Mr. K. used to do, make the value of a new pair of bools 
tt year, to visit his farm and learn a lesson of improve 
ment. But far as your country is in improvemens behind 
what it may and will profitably he brought to, it will be 
many, many years before ours will be what yours now 
is. The west is so vast in extent and fertility, and we 
are so prone to run over a great deal, instead of cultiva 
ting a little land, that I despair of a life long enough to 
see real improvement begin, much more be brought to 
that successful issue which you have so pleasingly de 
scribed upon the farm of Mr. Ketchum. 
Over a vast extent, in the region of county where I 
live, stone walls will never be built for fencing; for there 
are no stones except scattering boulders, principally gra¬ 
nite, which have been wafted here upon their ice boats, 
from a far distant, and to me unknown locality, and lie 
scattered wherever their frail conveyance melted beneath 
the rays of a warming sun. These stones as they lay 
upon or near the surface, are a little detriment to the 
plow, but are easily removed, and will always be valua¬ 
ble to the owner of the land, and well worth his care in 
Electing and laying up till time of need. And in some 
large districts, even this small supply of such a useful ma¬ 
terial, is entirely lacking. Even where most plenty, 
they are of such a rough uneven shape, and exceeding 
hard quality, that I would defy the superior accomplish¬ 
ments of the celebrated Yankee stone wall builder, whom 
you mention, to lay them into a decent looking stone 
wall, fire place or well; so they are seldom used except 
for underpinning. In the first settlement of the country, 
when brick cannot be obtained, a very good fire place and 
hearth is made by pounding clay a little damp, into a 
compact mass, the shape that is required for the fire place, 
while the chimney is built of sticks and clay, which if* 
well done, costs but little labor and lasts for years. But 
that is more than I can say of the wooden walls of wells, 
for at first they give our “ hard water” a very ancient 
and bilge water like smell, and by the time that is well 
over with, the wood begins to decay, and which I have 
no doubt is one of the many removable causes of siclc- 
nesw which is wrongly charged to the unhealthiness of 
the -climate. Also the sinful carelessness in which a great 
pom on of the inhabitant permit themselves to live in 
cold, open, damp, uncomfortable houses, is the cause of 
many a day of suffering from fever and ague. Your pro¬ 
fession, as well as long experience, has taught you what 
all had ought to learn, that we are less liable to take cold 
and contract disease when “camping out” in the open 
air, than we are while living in what we are pleased to 
call a house, through the walls and roof of which, the 
old cat and all her kittens can go without let or hindrance. 
And in such houses, a vast majority of the inhabitants of 
the west stay, and not only for a season, but year after 
year, using water from such wells, or what is more com¬ 
mon, from some hole in the ground that is familiarly 
called “ the spring,” (on account I suppose of the frogs 
that spring into it,) and occasionally going without bread, 
because it is too much trouble to go to mill; doing with¬ 
out potatoes, because they were to busy to dig them be¬ 
fore they froze up; doing without pork half the year, not¬ 
withstanding they had a thousand and one hogs, but they 
were in the woods, and did'nt come up; and as a substi¬ 
tute, living upon fresh beef, green corn and unripe wild 
fruits, and ten thousand et cetera? of the fever breeding 
family, and as a most natural consequence, shaking with 
the augue so much of the time that they have no time to 
build stone walls, drain peat swamps, build barns and hou¬ 
ses, and of course they have no money to devote to im¬ 
provement of lands, while there is so much land for sale, 
jj every spare dollar is devoted to a further accumulation of 
acres, to lie like those already owned, idle, untilled and 
unproductive; or if tilled, quantity and not quality of til¬ 
lage, seems to be the very height of ambition among 
western cultivators. 
Do not think that this is an over-wrought picture. It 
is not a week since I v isited one of my friends who owns 
fifty cows, whose good wife had to make an excuse to 
mine that she had no cream for her coffee. And this 
arose wholly from the prevailing western epidemic— 
carelessness. And do not imagine that your friend Solon 
is a singular exception to this all-pervading disease. 
Although my log cabin is rather “ aristocraticly com¬ 
fortable and convenient,” and my well is walled with 
brick, with a pump, &c., and I never was out of pork 
and potatoes since my first winter here, yet I have some¬ 
times looked in vain for my hogs in the woods, and bought 
land when I had much better been improving that alrea¬ 
dy owned; yet I keep clear of the fever and ague, and 
candidly believe that this country is generally as healthy 
as all new countries usually are. The soil is extremely 
productive, yet it must be acknowledged that few of us 
at the end of the year are any better able from the profits 
of farming, “ to buy a new pair of boots,” than your 
friend Ketchum used to be, while pursuing the same 
careless, skinning system of farming. It is true, that ma¬ 
nuring our soil produces but little present advantage, but 
the time will come when the waste of it will he seen. 
One reason, perhaps the greatest one, why a more stable 
system of farming is not pursued in this country, is be¬ 
cause that not one person in a hundred feels as though he 
was working for himself and children; such is the uni¬ 
versal all-pervading disposition to change. There is no 
certainty if a man makes improvements this year, that he 
will enjoy them next; for the fashion of “ selling out,” 
and making a new location, is so strong, that no one can 
resist it; so that it may be said that nearly the whole of 
the western population are afloat, with sails unfurled and 
anchors tripped, and ready to be off with the first favora¬ 
ble breeze that blows. If then you ever travel through 
the west, bear this in mind, that it may serve as an ex¬ 
planation why you see so few, such solid and permanent 
improvements as those you have described upon the banks 
of the Saugatuck. How seldom will you see a synonym 
of these good roads that you mention, while traveling 
over this country. For the same neglect of improvement 
is painfully visible upon the roads as upon the farms. But 
you must also bear in mind that we are yet in our infan¬ 
cy, and that every thing is to he created anew. That in 
buying a farm, you get a perfect naked piece of smooth 
prairie, covered with a thick strong sod, that requires a 
strong team of three or four yoke of oxen to break up to 
advantage; and this sod requires several years to rot be¬ 
fore it becomes perfectly mellow for tillage. And how 
much is required beside the breaking up of the ground 
