1847 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
77 
EMIGRATION TO VIRGINIA—FAIRFAX COUNTY LANDS.—Bv an Emigrant. 
It was at the close of a bleak, windy, and gloomy 
October day—the temperature below the freezing point 
—and the elements giving legible tokens of the ap¬ 
proach of the dreary and almost interminable northern 
winter, that with my family and a goodly assortment of 
carpet-bags, which we had contrived to substitute for 
those most troublesome and vexations of all appenda¬ 
ges, travelling trunks, I took passage in the noble 
steamer “ Knickerbocker,” from the Albany wharves, 
for the great metropolis—from whence it was my in¬ 
tention to proceed by the Camden and Amboy railroad, 
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, to some point 
south of “ Mason and Dixon’s Line,” in pursuit of health, 
and to escape the rigors of the coming season. Ten 
years constant confinement within the pent up walls of 
the city, and an unintermitted devotion to sedentary occu¬ 
pations and literary pursuits, had served effectually to 
undermine a constitution naturally not the strongest, 
and to beget a craving thirst for the fresh breezes and 
pure air of the country; while the necessity of making 
some permanent provision for the future for myself and 
growing family—a provision not dependent upon the 
capricious fluctuations either of trade or politics—point¬ 
ed to the purchase of a snug little farm, in the vicinity 
of a good market, where all the advantages of a tho¬ 
rough agricultural education might be combined with 
those to be derived only from the inexhaustible resour¬ 
ces of a large town. Governed by these motives and 
inducements, joined to an early imbibed and long che¬ 
rished love for u rural sights and sounds,” I availed my¬ 
self of the facilities afforded by the emigration, a few 
years previous, of an esteemed relative and friend, him¬ 
self a practical and experienced farmer, from one of the 
New-England states, to Fairfax county, in Virginia, to 
carry into effect the views and projects thus indulged, 
and in less than three days from my departure, found 
myself comfortably established at his hospitable man¬ 
sion, seven miles from the city of Washington, within 
the confines of the u Old Dominion,” and under what, 
compared with that I had so recently left, might fairly 
be termed a tropical sky. Within one month thereafter, 
I succeeded in purchasing, on very advantageous terms, 
a farm of seventy acres, eligibly situated, and which I 
am now engaged in improving. 
Doubtless all of your readers are more or less familiar 
with the topography and associations of this part of 
Virginia—the theatre of our earliest annals as a peo¬ 
ple—the nursery of our greatest statesmen and patriots 
—the home and the final resting place of the Father 
or his Country. Here, on the verdant banks of the 
Potomac—wrapt, as is most fitting and emblematic of 
the fame of its great founder, in perennial shrubbery,— 
is Mount Vernon, —and here, at a little distance from 
the noble mansion, is the Tomb of Washington —the 
consecrated shrine watered by the tears of a grateful 
country, and resorted to by crowds of “ succeeding pil¬ 
grims ” from every part of the civilized globe. Here 
stands the venerable though dilapidated wooden walls, 
where, at the periodical sessions of the county courts, 
during those u times which tried men’s souls,” imme¬ 
diately preceding the outbreak with the mother country, 
the former heroes and statesmen of the republic—-the 
Washingtons, the Lees, the Henrys, and the Ran¬ 
dolphs, were wont to assemble and to discuss the por¬ 
tentous aspects of the political horizon; and here, after 
the storms of war had spent their fury—after a new 
republic had sprung into existence—and its high desti¬ 
nies had received the lasting impress of its founder’s 
counsels and guidance, the soldier statesman retired 
to find in the shades of private life that repose and se¬ 
clusion he had so nobly earned, and so long and ardent¬ 
ly coveted. These are all and each matters of general 
notoriety; but it may not be known to all that for a few 
years past, this little county, so richly fraught with tha 
proud associations of the brightest period of our coun¬ 
try’s history, has been the theatre of a very general and 
extensive emigration from the northern and eastern states; 
that the original proprietors of its broad acres and vast 
forests and noble streams, have, in numerous instance** 
either abandoned their patrimonial estates, and taken 
up their line of march for the boundless prairies and 
virgin fields of the west, or contracted their domains 
within practicable limits for agricultural improvement: 
and that the lands thus abandoned, exhausted as a larg® 
proportion of them have been by heavy and unintermit¬ 
ted croppings, without any corresponding return in the 
shape of fertilizing manures, have been purchased at a 
low price compared with their intrinsic value for farming 
purposes, by northern and eastern men, who have 
brought with them to their new abodes that indomitable 
industry and practical skill before which every obstacle 
to the attainment of an independent competence for 
themselves and their children speedily disappears, and 
the tangled wilderness of a luxuriant but neglected soil 
is rapidly made to “ bud and blossom as the rose.” Not 
less than two hundred of this enterprising class of our 
fellow citizens have within the past five years, issued 
from the great “ northern hive ” and quietly effected the 
most desirable settlements in this attractive and genial 
clime, and within the boundaries of this single county; 
and upwards of two hundred thousand dollars have 
already been invested in the purchase of improved and 
unimproved real estate within its limits—most of it at 
prices ranging from two to five and ten dollars an acre* 
according to its productiveness and the extent of its im¬ 
provements. This land consists chiefly of estates, tho 
greater part of which has at a period not very remote* 
been under vigorous cultivation, and subjected to a suc¬ 
cession of exhausting crops, when instead of being 
placed under a judicious treatment, with a view to the 
restoration of its fertility, it has been exchanged for 
other portions, destined in their turn to share the same 
fate. Thus abandoned, a rank and luxuriant growth of 
pines, and other evergreens, and shrubs of various de¬ 
scriptions, has usurped the place of tillage. In the 
mean time, a similar process has been slowly but con¬ 
stantly going on with the adjacent lands, until their 
proprietors have found no other alternative than emi¬ 
gration or a return to their worn-out lands. The lat¬ 
ter presents a formidable enterprise to the planter wh* 
who has hitherto only found it necessary to follow th« 
established routine of putting in his crops at the accus¬ 
tomed season, to realize at the end of the agricultural 
year, an abundant, even though a regularly diminishing 
harvest, and who, when the results of this species of cul¬ 
ture, carried on by the agency of slave labor, rendered 
it no longer practicable to rely upon one set of fields, 
had only to resort to others adjacent, and to continue 
the same process, regardless of ulterior consequences. 
The former, accordingly, is unhesitatingly adopted; and 
vast quantities of land are thrown into market at nomi¬ 
nal prices, which, in the hands of northern farmers, ac¬ 
customed to rely upon cheir own labor, and to make th^ 
most of every acre, by husbanding its resources, and by 
systematic and judicious modes of culture, in a few 
years resumes its original fertility, and amoly compen- 
