22 
jitters from tl)e illrst—$ 0 . 4. 
The Sciota Valley'—Virginia Farming in Ohio. 
Perhaps one of the most beautiful and fertile regions 
to be found upon the face of the globe, is the Sciota 
Valley, stretching from north to south about two- 
thirds the distance across this great and most highly fa¬ 
vored state, presenting in its whole length, varied and 
picturesque views of limestone precipices, hold gravel¬ 
ly or argillaceous blulfs, and deep alluvial banks, spread¬ 
ing out into wide rich bottoms, and hounded by rolling 
uplands of the most desirable and eligible kind. As de¬ 
scribed to me by those who first saw it in its pristine 
glory, of dense lofty forest, umbrageous parks, tall wa¬ 
ving grass and fiowery prairie, studded by high mounds 
and wide ruins of ancient fortifications, it must have 
been a sort of aboriginal paradise, that one might almost 
deplore was ever fated to be marred by the hand of 
civilized man ; judging from appearances too, this Val¬ 
ley must have been densely populated by barbarous 
tribes, thousands of years ago, who had their happy 
days as ive have now ; and even when first discovered 
by the white man, it was the favorite residence of nume¬ 
rous and probably more savage bands than the inhabi¬ 
tants of the first epoch, the wide-spread and powerful 
Shawnee stock, and so great was their love for this de¬ 
lightful region, that they fought for and clung to it till 
the last, with the convulsive grasp of the child to its 
mother’s bosom, that a hated and superior power w'ould 
feign force away. Poor hapless race ! Here from time 
immemorial, they gave chase to the wild deer, the shag¬ 
gy bear, and huge buffalo ; cultivated the golden maze, 
feasted on its roasted ears, boiled succatash, and pound¬ 
ed hominy ; spouted their eloquence and made their 
wars, sung their songs, and danced to the music of the 
bowstring, the tom-tom and chichicon, and smoked to 
the Great Spirit of all. What themes were these for 
the imagination of the poet to revel in, or the pen of 
the novelist, or even that of the graver and more mat¬ 
ter of fact historian* to trace, but they are not mine, 
and I turn to what is more likely to interest the read¬ 
ers of the Cultivator, that is, the growing of stock and 
management of farming lands. 
Just above Columbus, the Sciota is joined by its lar¬ 
gest branch the Whetstone, or according to its more 
euphonious Indian name, the Olentangy, where in fact 
commences the great corn region and Valley of the 
Sciota par excellence. Plere a decided geological change 
takes place ; the deep limestone quarries crop out a mile 
or two below, and are no longer found in the whole 
course of the Valley to the Ohio ; the hills recede and the 
bottoms at once quadruple their width and become of 
the richest vegetable mold, of a depth from three to ten 
feet, resting on a bed of light yellowish clay, close sand 
or limestone gravel. The waters, also, become more 
sluggish, and with the exception of now and then a 
short shallow ripple, mailing a convenient ford, they 
wheel lazily along to their final mingling with those of 
the Ohio. 
At the head of this lower Valley, on the right hank 
of the river, commence the almost princely domains of 
the Messrs. Soxlivants, stretching a long distance 
down its clear win ling stream, enclosing the village of 
Franklin immediately opposite Columbus, anl running 
in parallelograms of about an equal width on each side 
of the National Road west, to the distance of between 
six and seven miles, making an aggregate of land, in 
one compact body, of upwards of eight thousand acres. 
This, however, is only called the homested, for in ad¬ 
dition, I believe, there are some five and twenty or 
thirty thousand acres more of out-lots in this and the 
adjoining counties, of the best quality of farming up¬ 
lands, much of which that is cleared is devoted to the 
growing of stock. But as the homested embraces ail the 
varieties of soil to be found in this county, and as it is 
a fair sample on a large scale of Virginia farming in 
Ohio, I shall at present confine my observations to this, 
trusting at a future day to give a pendent to it, in the 
management of some one of the numerous hundred or 
two acre farms of my northern brethren, that have set¬ 
tled here and are adding so much to the populousness 
and wealth of this great state. 
The bottom lands of this large estate are about two 
and a half miles wide, and till within a few years, from 
time immemorial, have been devoted almost entirely to 
corn, they having been found in this crop when first 
discovered under the sway of the aborigines of the 
country. The Sciota then occasionally overflowed its 
banks with back water, which left a thick rich sedi¬ 
ment, that kept up the fertility of the land drawn out 
by the growing crop. But this overflow has occasion¬ 
ally been found to destroy the corn, and latterly an em¬ 
bankment or levee has been thrown up along the lower 
banks of the river, which serves to keep the water out, 
and the consequence is, that the same lands that would 
average with common attention 75 to 90 bushels per 
acre, do not now yield over about 65 bushels, when the 
* Mr. J. Sullivant is now employing himself with the mea¬ 
surement, plans and views of the ancient mounds and ruins 
of this region, and I trust when completed, he will give them 
to the public, together with a history of their probable origin 
and relics, coupled with a geological, geogranhical, and his¬ 
torical memoir of the Sciota Valley, from its first discoverv to 
the present time. His elegant pen could not be better employ¬ 
ed, and would give an interest to nil these matters that the 
public would highlv appreciate. What is more valuable than 
the local histories of Europe ? They are the treasures of the an¬ 
tiquary, and mines of the general historian. 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
stalks and corn are annually cut up and carried olf. In 
order to recruit them then, under this exhausting system, 
as soon as the corn is glazed, say the fere part of Sep¬ 
tember, it is cut up close to the ground, and shocked in 
straight rows across the field, and the ground between 
immediately plowed and sowed to wheat. In the course 
of the winter, the corn is husked out in the field, and 
the stalks carried olf as wanted for fodder, and the nar¬ 
row strips of land they occupied in shocks between the 
wheat in the spring is sowed to oats and the whole field 
stocked down with clover, and then fed off for two sea¬ 
sons and the land again put into corn till found to lessen 
its crop. In this way, with the application of a little 
lime, which can be made from the quarries of the es¬ 
tate at the trifling cost of eight cents per barrel, the 
Messrs. S. think they can keep up the fertility of their 
bottom lands to the end of time, and yet annually carry 
oft' all the corn and fodder when in crop, to be fed upon 
and fertilize the uplands. 
The fields being very large, the soil light and friable, 
and no obstructions of stones or any thing else in the 
way, all the labor of planting, covering, and weeding is 
done by different made plows, harrows, and cultiva¬ 
tors, drawn by horses, and with great care and rapidi¬ 
ty, the details of which I will give hereafter, when I 
have fully witnessed them. I shall confine myself now 
to the manner in which the lands are farmed or rented. 
The first and most usual way, is for the tenants to find 
every thing and take one-half of the crop shocked in the 
field, or deliver neatly husked one-third in the crib. 
Second, pay a corn rent of twenty bushels to the acre, 
of sound bright corn, delivered in the crib. Third, find 
seed and cultivate the crop for three dollars per acre, 
to shocking it in the field, and two and a half 
cents more per bushel for husking, and cost of de¬ 
livery according to the distance to be transported. 
Fourth, the owner of the soil hiring his own men by the 
day or the month, and doing every thing then within 
himself. 
There are two ways of feeding off the corn and 
pumpkins here. One is to turn fatting cattle into the 
field, and let them eat at their own discretion, and then 
be taken out and followed by droves of hogs, who clean 
up pretty much all that is left. This, to a northern 
man, may be considered very wasteful, but it is a great 
saving of labor, and the corn being comparatively soft, 
is easily ground by the animals and digested. Besides 
it is the very principle adopted in Europe, where labor 
is much cheaper than with us, in feeding off their root 
crops, by cattle, sheep, and swine, and a bushel of corn 
costs the Ohio farmer no more, and I suspect on an ave¬ 
rage hardly as much, as the same quantity of turneps 
does an Englishman. Why then should we object to 
it on a larger scale, when every thing must be done at 
a high rate of ivages, and the course returns nearly 
every thing back to the soil in the way of manure, anl 
thus keeps it up in a state of everlasting fertility ? The 
other manner of feeding it to swine, makes the very 
beau ideal of animal existence, fulfiling the assertion of 
Doctor Franklin’s servant, that “ de hog, he eat, he 
sleep, he lib like a gentleman.” They have a large 
grass pasture to range through, with a running stream 
to wallow in and slake their thirst, beds of leaves to lie 
in, and mossy trees to shelter them from the hot rays 
of the sun. To this place loads of pumpkins anl corn 
are brought out twice a day, anl they are amply fed 
till fat enough to go to market, an l it is amusing enough 
for a stranger to be present at the scene. In wheels to 
the hog pasture, a great heavy Dutch wagon with four 
stout horses, the driver astri le on the near hind one, 
coolly whistling some animating air, and keeping time 
with the flourishing of his whip in loud pistol cracks, 
while another genius, standing on top of the load, 
commences pitching it to the right an l left, stopping 
and standing up now and then to give the long drawn 
roll-call, at the top of his voice, of vhCo-GG-hCO, or per¬ 
haps more poetically from a horn slung by his side, he 
draws forth a clear tremulous blast that rouses the 
whole grunting field from their recumbent positions and 
sets them on the move, reminding one of the stanza in 
the old ballad: 
He took a horn of silver bright. 
And blew a blast so loud and shrill, 
Each bush it grew a warrior disrhq 
Each rock a knight upon the hill. 
The uplands are occasionally cropped, and will give 
an average yield of 40 to 50 bushels of corn per acre, 25 
to 30 of rye, 20 to 25 of wheat, and 40 to 50 of oats, 
and finer and larger root crops I have never seen. The 
summers here, are long enough usually for the sweet 
potato to ripen, if cultivated with care, and they grow 
as large as in their favorite home, the sands of the Ca- 
rolinas. Grass is first rate, and one anl a half to two 
tons to the acre, with plenty of rowen or aftermath is 
not at all uncommon. But the great superiority of the 
south-west over the northern regions is its milder cli¬ 
mate, the almost ceaseless growth of grass during the 
whole year, an 1 the consequent ability of the pastures 
supporting stock well out doors upon it, airy where in 
the latitude of 40° or below all winter, excepting some 
few short weeks, when the season happens to be unu¬ 
sually severe, as was the case in the cold snowy win¬ 
ters of ’36 and ’37. 
For the summer, the stock have their range in cool 
open woodlands, or more properly parks formed by 
cutting out all the small growth and underbrush, and 
when too thick, of some of the larger trees of the origi¬ 
nal forest, and then sowing it to a variety of grasses. 
White clover, and the famous Kentucky blue grass,* 
and another tolerable fair variety for early and late pas¬ 
tures, called b 3 'the odd name of Nimble Will,f come in 
naturally. The early spring and late fall pastures are 
clear open fields, and for the winter, meadows fringed 
with belts of thick woods. Here the stock feeds through 
the day, even pawing up the light snows from the 
ground to do so, in preference to going to a stack, and 
at night they find a dry warm bed of leaves to repose 
on in the forest and close underwood around, and 
branches overhead to shelter them from winds and 
storms, making their coats look as sleek as a mole’s. 
Most stock growers agree that cattle thus tended thrive 
and appear better than when housed in sheds and with 
straw yards to run in,- and the saving in cost of build¬ 
ings, cutting and securing hay, foddering, and the cart¬ 
ing out of manure to the fields again is immense, for in 
this way of pasturing, only when the weather is se. 
vere, foddering from adjoining hay stacks and corn 
fields, one man will easily take care of 200 head of cat¬ 
tle during the winter, making real sport of his busi¬ 
ness. 
Mounting a flashy galloper, or swift pacer, that 
will come up kindly to the opening and shutting of gates, 
take a big log and low fence at a flying leap, the horse¬ 
man is soon in the field. The pasture may be from 100 
to 500, and sometimes, though rarely, of 1000 acres. Of 
course he cannot see all without some trouble ; he there¬ 
fore leads oft' in the musical line, like our friend the pig- 
man, with a regular Indian halloo, varying the whGG-GG 
somewhat by a final ending in a higher key, of e pee, 
or whGG-GO-GG epe. At this familiar sound, the cattle 
raise their heads, and at a second or third repetition set 
off upon the full scamper in every direction for the 
herdsman, tossing their heads, kicking up their heels, 
and plunging to the right and left like a herd of wild 
buffaloes, and in the most joyous mood imaginable. 
They are then talked to in a petting way as if they un¬ 
derstood every word that was said, thrown a little salt, 
seen that none is missing, and foddered from the stacks 
if necessary. Large fields of rye are sown in the fall, 
for early spring pasture, but really, since I have come 
to see the country, I am almost of opinion that in large 
stock farms, it is quite as profitable and as well to shut 
up the winter pastures all summer, and leave the grass 
to grow, reserving four separate pastures, one for De¬ 
cember, one for January, one for February, and one for 
March ; and by the first of April, the grass has got a 
fresh bite again in the summer pastures, ready to receive 
the stock. Too much hired labor for plowing, planting, 
sowing, and harvesting, will eat up the whole produce 
of the best of farms, when conducted on a large scale ; 
those in a small way, worked by the owner himself and 
family, with a little hired help, can undoubtedly profi¬ 
tably pursue a different course, but of all this I do not 
wish to be understood that I have decidedly made up 
my mind, as I must be longer in the country before I 
can do so. But where thick belts of forest are not re¬ 
served for shelter, I would by all means recommend 
protection of cheap sheds to stock ; even in a climate 
much more mild than this, snows and sleets, and cold 
winds, and drizzling early spring rains, cannot be borne 
by cattle without much suffering. 
Leaving the brothers, with their highly cultivated 
minds, to their favorite studies of Botany, Natural His¬ 
tory, &c., many a bland day, with the clear November 
sun shining warmly out, have I mounted horse with 
Mr. M. L. Sullivant, who is the great farmer and 
stock man of the trio, an 1 bolted forth to view the nu¬ 
merous and varied animals, that grace his larger share 
of the estate. He does not allow' a single scrub on his 
farm, but all are thorough-bred, or more or less graded, 
making a most gratifying show' of cattle ; and it is as¬ 
tonishing what a revolution a good Durham bull will 
create in a few years. Here were animals on the same 
food, fifty per cent larger than common cattle would 
have been of the same age, with broad loins, deep thick 
quarters, fine heads and short horns, and as fine and 
silky and sleek in their coats as a blanketed horse, and 
as fat as butter. Among so many animals, it will not 
do to particularize too much, or I should be calling a 
roll as long as the catalogue of Homer’s heroes ; it will 
therefore suffice to say, that his imported Flora is of 
great size, a good animal, and one that fleshes easily. 
She girths largely, and has a wide spread of the hips, 
measuring slightly over tw'o feet six inches. Imported 
Bertha is fine and compact, and but a trifle less size 
than Flora ; but one of the prettiest to my notion, is 
Jessica, out of my father’s imported Rachel, got by 
Whitaker, brought out from England by the Ohio Com¬ 
pany in 1336. Of the bulls, Talleyrand is long and 
large, with a lofty and well set head and neck, and fine 
flat arched horns. He was bred by Wi. F. Paley, 
Esq., of England, and took the premium there as the 
best yearling at the Wharfdale Agricultural Society. 
Red Jacket is a capital heavy snug fellow, and Niaga¬ 
ra, of pure wliite, will yield to few' in fineness of point, 
and to none in depth of pedigree. Aside from the above, 
there is a scattering of promising young ones of both 
sexes. 
In mules, Mr. S. drives an extensive trade, often 
having a countless herd, and at other times is pretty 
well thinned out. They are of large sizes bred here, 
much more so than is usually found at the east; and as 
frr Jacks and Jennies, I suppose I must not talk much 
of them till I net to Kentucky ; but as Mr. S. sent a herd 
of crack females some two years ago, down among his 
* Poa trivialis. f Muhlenbergia diffusa. 
