cultivation. 
151 
dence, and who presume to say, that it is in the 
breasts of Americans alone that the blessings 
of freedom are held in just estimation ! 
The Northern Meek, with the exception of 
some few spots only, is flat and sandy, and 
abounds with pine and cedar trees. Some 
parts of it are well cultivated, and afford good 
crops; but these are so intermixed with ex¬ 
tensive tracts of waste land, worn out by the 
culture of tobacco, and which are almost desti¬ 
tute of verdure, that on the whole the country 
has the appearance of barrenness. 
This is the case wherever tobacco has been 
made the principal object of cultivation. It 
is not, however, so much owing to the great 
share of nutriment which the tobacco plant 
requires, that the land is impoverished, as to 
the particular mode of cultivating it, which 
renders it necessary for people to be continually 
walking between the plants, from the moment 
they are set out, so that the ground about each 
plant is left exposed to the burning rays of the 
sun all the summer, and becomes at the end 
of the season a hard beaten pathway. A ruin¬ 
ous system has prevailed also of working the 
same piece of land year after year, till it was 
totally exhausted ; after this it was left neg¬ 
lected, and a fresh piece of land was cleared, 
that always produced good crops for one or two 
seasons; but this in its turn was worn out, and 
