THE CULTIVATOR. 
335 
building of railroads’ 5 between the two points. I will 
just mention that among the standing dishes at Col. H.’s 
dinner, was one of his three year old hams. 
Col. H. is earnestly engaged in a system of culture 
that I should like to see more universally prevalent 
here, where it can be followed with such pleasure and 
profit, and for which the lands of Warren county seem 
so well adapted. I allude to orcharding. Col. Hebron, 
Dr. Phillips, and several others, are making extensive 
efforts to supply the New-Orleans market, particularly 
with peaches. In a small way, this has already been 
done at a most enormous profit. Raising fruit and cot¬ 
ton will work well together; for the great hurry with 
the cotton crop is in picking time, which is long after 
the fruit season has passed. Many planters will not 
plant fruit trees only for their own use; in fact many 
of them not even that, so that the few who do en¬ 
gage largely in the business will be in no danger of 
over supplying the demand, and may be assured of ready 
sales at great profits. Peaches in this vicinity ripen the 
last of May and through June, July, and August. What 
is to hinder supplying all the up-river towns with early 
peaches? As soon as sufficient quantities can be pro¬ 
duced to make it an object, arrangements can be made 
to put the fruit in Cincinnati market in five days from 
the picking. Of course all nearer towns would be sup¬ 
plied, and this too, several weeks earlier than the or¬ 
chards in the immediate vicinity would do. Not only 
peaches can be produced in the greatest abundance at such 
an early day, but various other kinds of fruit. I have not 
the least doubt but that more money can be cleared with 
forty acres of orcharding and four hands, than with ten 
times the quantity of land and labor devoted to cotton. 
Besides the immense profits arising from the sale of 
green fruit, a vast amount may be realized from drying 
it. Every plantation has plenty of hands, old and young, 
that could be devoted to this business, which are now 
worth little or nothing for any other purpose at this sea¬ 
son of the year. I do not ask farmers to abandon their 
other crops for fruit, but that they make it an auxiliary. 
And I would like to suggest to Mississippi wives that if 
they will put up a few tons of their surplus fruits in the 
form of such rich and most beautiful preserves as I 
have eaten at several of their tables, they could be sure 
of a ready market in New-Orleans at 25 cents a pound at 
least. A nice little sum of extra “pin money” might 
thus be accumulated every year, independent of the cot¬ 
ton bales. Will Mississippians consent to make money 
at this business of raising fruit? If they do not, and that 
right soon too, I will take it upon myself to recommend 
some of the experienced fruit growers of the North to 
go down and do it for them. They will have no fear 
of ill health upon your Warren county hill-sides, and 
will soon show you how the thing is done. As for “ glut- j 
ting the market, 55 it may do for your children to talk 
about that—the present generation will not live to see it. 
The market can never be glutted nor the culture render¬ 
ed entirely unprofitable, till the price is reduced to ten 
cents a barrel, and then hogs can be fattened on them. 
Col. Hebron told me he realized ten dollars a barrel for 
peaches last year. 
I cannot urge this subject too strongly upon the atten¬ 
tion of Warren county citizens—I cannot urge it too 
strongly upon the planters to become farmers in the true 
sense of the word. I cannot urge it too strongly upon War¬ 
ren county farmers to become shepherds and orchardists if 
they wish to see their hill-sides descend unimpaired in fer¬ 
tility to their children, instead of descending to the Gulf 
of Mexico and the gulf of destruction! Orchards, Ber¬ 
muda grass, and wool, can all grow upon the same soil, 
while soil and owners will continue to grow rich. At 
present, if the owners are enriched, the soil is not. 
But there are a good many other things that southern¬ 
ers might learn economy in. And one of the first things to 
learn is, that out of their own staple we furnish them al¬ 
most every manufactured article, for which they pay us for 
carrying the raw material from the gin and press we 
* built for them, done up in our bagging and rope, and 
sewed with our twine and needles, drawn upon our wag¬ 
gons by our horses In our harness, over roads made with 
our plows and hoes and spades, to our steamboats, and 
upon that to our ships; not forgetting to let our commis¬ 
sion merchants have a good share of “ skinnage;’ 5 and 
then after manufacturing, to return it in the same w ay to 
exchange for more of the raw material; by all which 
means we constantly keep a raw spot in your feelings; 
but it is not yet sufficiently “galled” to teach you to 
become home manufacturers —the only healing salve that 
you will ever find to cure the festering sore of “ such low 
prices for cotton that planters cannot live by it.” Would 
you adopt a more prosperous course ? Quit planting as you 
understand it, and become farmers as we understand it— 
raise upon your farm every thing as far as possible that you 
eat, drink, wear, and use, and never buy an article of cotton 
goods except it is of home manufacture—that is, manu¬ 
factured in the country where the raw material grows— 
and never bale your cotton in anything but cotton bal¬ 
ing made from cotton not worth sending to market in 
any other shape. Get up and keep up agricultural as¬ 
sociations, and give premiums to tiiat farmer who shall 
come the nearest to raising everything he consumes, and 
to him who will exhibit the greatest proportion of his ne¬ 
groes clothed in plantation manufacture throughout— 
and above all things else, read and support agricultural 
papers. 
After leaving Col. Hebron's plantation we passed over 
another of those great ulcers upon the face of this rich 
country, a tract of worn out and “thrown out” land,— 
gullied to death-—a frequent sight that the traveller can¬ 
not avoid. Then crossing the railroad at “ Bovina,” a 
name without a town, but a place that has lately been 
selected for a site for a cotton factory which I hope will 
cause the name long to be remembered—then after the 
fashion of this country, having ridden through sundry 
plantations, and more than sundry gates, and along a 
‘‘bridle path” to a new ferry over the Chittaloosa, 
and through “ the swamp,” we reached Log Hall, by 
hard riding, just in time to save us the necessity of spend¬ 
ing the night upon a road I should think might be im¬ 
passible in the dark, and it is next thing to it in day 
light. But this is one of the ways to get to the worthy 
Doctor’s, and the others are not much better. So we 
will not attempt to get away again till morning. 
Again adieu, Solon Robinson. 
VIRGINIA LANDS, &c. 
Some time last spring, in writing a short communica¬ 
tion for the Cultivator, I remarked that Virginia had the 
finest sheep walks in the world. Since this I am ad¬ 
dressed privately on this subject, and to which I answer 
publicly. 
It is the mountainous parts of Virginia which for this 
purpose I so highly recommend. I reside in Amherst 
county, 12 or 14 miles from the Blue Ridge, on the spurs 
of which 1 hold some 3000 acres of land, the greater 
portion of which is rich; and on which I have never 
failed to make my flock of sheep as fat as I desired. The 
soil of the greater portion of Ihesc mountains is of good 
quality, being in many places, one, two, and three feet 
deep. The hornblend and granite lands are rich; the 
slates are poor. The natural grasses are the green¬ 
sward, (or Kentucky blue grass,) and white clover, which 
never faii to appear so soon as the timber is cleared off. 
The timber is principally chesmut, of superior quality for 
building houses and fences; and in many places, locust and 
other valuable timber. The mountains afford abundance of 
purest water. No part of the world can excel those 
mountains in the production of rye, oats, potatoes, hemp, 
flax, cabbage, beefs, turners, buckwheat, orchard grass, 
timothy, green-sward, and white clover. 
A few days past, a tract of land lying near Amherst 
Court-house, sold on a credit, for $6 the acre, and an¬ 
other adjoining, at $5 the acre. Both those tracts lie well, 
the soil being tolerably good, and the subsoil very good. 
Near my residence, and on an excellent trunpike road, 
a few days past, a tract of 353 acres sold on a credit for 
$4 the acre, a good portion being bottom lands, and 
the remainder good though hilly. 
Our fathers were growers of tobacco, and we are yet 
too much at the old trade to be growers of wool, or man 
