348 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
enlivening the public plains; their villages that gem the 
valleys; the imperial magnificence of their cities; and 
when you have collected all these things in your thoughts, 
then hear me when I say to you, that you of this living 
generation, as you outnumber all the dead—are bound, 
before your eyes are sealed in death, to accomplish for 
New-York more than has been accomplished for New- 
York thus far in all time. Well have you taken the de¬ 
vice on your banners; the sun as he emerges gloriously 
above the horison and comes rejoicing in the East:— 
Well have you chosen your motto: “ Excelsior ,” upwards, 
still upwards. Mighty commonwealth ! lift up your heart; 
let your sun ascend with increasing splendor towards its 
zenith. You shall be a light to humanity: a joy to the 
nations—the glory of the world. 
LETTER FROM “ DOWN EAST.” 
Messrs. Editors —I belive that you have a corres¬ 
pondent to your truly valuable paper, from every State in 
the Union, but this, and for lack of a more interesting 
writer to fill this vacancy, I take advantage of a leisure 
evening to tell you a little about the part of the country 
I live in. And firstly, as to locality. If you will take a 
map of the State of Maine, and glance at the north-east¬ 
ern portion of said State, that tract of land formerly 
known as the “Disputed Territory,” you will see in the 
first range from the east line of the State, about 
forty miles north of Houlton, a township with a ca¬ 
pital D in the middle of it. Well, in that town¬ 
ship, only two miles from Fort Fairfield, so celebrated 
in the annals of the Aroostook war, lives your humble 
servant. Doubtless some of your southern or western 
readers will wonder what there can be to write from 
such an out of the way corner, that can interest any body 
“ out in the world,” as we term it. But I can assure 
you that this place is not so devoid of objects of attract¬ 
ion as one might suppose. In the first place there is 
some comfort in being far enough east to have a fair view 
of sunrise, and then I am only half a dozen miles from 
the “jumping off place;” the eastern end of this lower 
world. Then again there are yet to be seen by the curi¬ 
ous traveler, the identical stump on which some time in 
the course of the aforesaid Aroostook war, in the times 
that tried men’s soles, sat one of our soldiers, the unfortu¬ 
nate Bassett, when he cut his thumb making a pudding 
stick, for which he now receives a pension of seven dol¬ 
lars per month, and the house in which our Land Agent 
was captured, while sleeping soundly upon that feather 
bed, to enjoys which, he had left the “ posse” sleeping upon 
boughs at the Fort, and had crossed the river into the en¬ 
emy’s country. The road too, upon which we travel in¬ 
to this country, is quite a natural curiosity', and I think 
would rival any of the Michigan roads of which Miss 
Martineau gives such a spirited description in her letters. 
The gridiron bridges, generally the dread of travelers, 
are the only decent part of our roads. The swampy pla¬ 
ces are mostly causewayed with logs laid lengthwise , and 
there they are now; some of them so rotten as to offer no 
resistance to the wheel's cutting down through deep into 
the mire below, while of the remainder, one end rears 
ip most ambitiously, ready to catch the horse or wagon 
of the unwary traveler, while the other end is sunk into 
he lowest depths of the “slough of despond.” But no 
lescription of mine can convey to you any idea of our 
roads, and I can only say that I considered I “ escaped a 
great mercy,” as I once heard a person say r , in only 
jreaking one axletree while coming in this fall. Perhaps 
you will wonder at my choice in leaving civilized life 
for a home in the woods, in leaving the cold regions of 
my native Kennebeclc, for the still colder Aroostook; 
thus jumping not exactly out of the frying pan into the 
fire, but out of the refrigerator into the ice-house. But 
the cheapness and fertility of the land, and the nearness 
and facility of a good market, offered sufficient induce¬ 
ments to lead me to pitch my tent here, and I have not as 
yet seen sufficient reason to repent my choice. The State 
land can be bought here at 75 cents per acre, only one- 
fourth of which is to be paid in cash, the remainder be¬ 
ing payable any time within four years, in work upon the 
roads built for our own accommodation. The soil, I 
presume from the representations of those who have tra¬ 
veled considerably through the eastern States, is equal to 
any that can be found in New-England. It is of four 
kinds—a light yellow, a chocolate color, a whitish gray, 
and in the cedar swales, a black mucky substance, appa¬ 
rently as rich as barn-yard manure, lying above one of 
the other varieties of soil. These different kinds of soil 
are all frequently found in the distance of two rods, and 
we like to have them in close proximity so as to mix by 
harrowing and plowing. The subsoil is generally gra¬ 
velly and rests upon a limestone ledge, set up edgewise 
and so porous that the water, in a wet spell, runs down 
through it as it would through a sieve. The consequence 
is that the land can never be wet, and is always fit to 
work upon immediately after a rain. Another peculiar¬ 
ity is that it stands a drouth remarkably well, also. Why 
this should be, I do’nt know, unless it be that the mois¬ 
ture, in a dry time, draws up from down in the ledge by 
capillary attraction. The ledge appears to be in process 
of decomposition, and can in many places be shovelled 
with facility; the soil is full of little pieces of slate or 
limestone, which upon being turned up and exposed to 
the air, soon pulverize and disappear. The soil is gen¬ 
erally pretty clear from stone, although there is now and 
then a stony spot, but there are no large boulders to be 
found. The great drawback upon this region as a farm¬ 
ing country, is its liability to early frosts, but I think that 
all our crops except corn and beans, are as sure here as 
in Massachusetts, or the oldest settled parts of Maine; 
that is, I think the frost does not injure us any more than 
the rust, drouth, &c., do there. And if we are so unlucky 
as to lose our crops every third year even, we are twice 
as well off as farmers in other parts of New-England, for 
we can raise three times as much crop with the same la¬ 
bor in a good season, as they can. Wheat has been rai¬ 
sed here on-burnt land at the rate of more than forty 
bushels to the acre, and oats at the rate of eighty. I am 
satisfied that no part of New-England can compare with 
our section for raising wheat, oats, rye, barley and pota¬ 
toes. The growth is generally, I believe, a pretty fair 
indication of the soil beneath, and the trees here will av¬ 
erage about twenty feet taller than in Kennebeck, and 
large in proportion. The growth consists principally of 
rock and white maple, yellow birch, ash, pine, cedar, fir, 
spruce, and hackometack, juniper or larch, as it is vari¬ 
ously called. The birches are generally from three to 
five feet through, and I saw one which was cut down last 
year which measured five feet across the stump. The ce¬ 
dars are very large and plenty, and grow on as dry land 
as any we have, with birches scattered among them. A 
missionary who is now visiting us, noticing that a spruce 
recently felled, looked very long, took the trouble to 
measure it, and found it 130 feet in length. The greatest 
difficulty with this country, appears to be in the way the 
inhabitants manage the soil. I notice that a great deal is 
said now-a-days in the agricultural papers, of rotation of 
crops, and I have seen several shifts recommended, but 
none quite equal to that adopted here. The first two 
crops after clearing are wheat; then they take off two of 
oats, three of barley, half a dozen of buckwheat; and then 
they will swear at the land, because it does not bear 
grass. This applies however only to the blue hoses, the 
aborigines of the country, as you might term them, who 
have been in quiet possession of the country on the banks 
of the Aroostook until within four or five years, but are 
now fast clearing out as the Yankees come in and take 
possession of the country. But the length of my epistle 
admonishes me that it is time to close. So no more at 
present. "When the crops are threshed, I will write some¬ 
thing about the yield here. Georgius. 
Mending a Tree. —The Boston Cultivator says— 
“ We saw at Isaac Frost’s, Newton, a tolerably large ap¬ 
ple tree that had the bark eaten all around by mice, some 
years ago, and of course would have died, without some 
extra pains to save it. Mr. Frost set about a dozen sci¬ 
ons in the tree, one end in the green bark and wood be¬ 
low, and the other above the wound. They all took at 
both ends and grew well, except one which took only at 
he bottom, and is forming a little tree by itself. The 
scions are now about two inches in diameter and are 
ouching each other. The tree is in a fine flourishing 
condition ” 
