ridges high in the middle and descending on each side, reaching from a 
space of six or eight feet from the hollow or descent of one ridge to the 
crown and descent on the other side ; and so on, over fields of fifty acres, 
the hollow carrying off the water as it fell on the ridge or crown, to the 
base or hollow and so running down the furrows of these long ridges to 
the bottom of the field, where the water was run into a ditch against the 
fence, and either left there or allowed to take its course out, which, if it 
had lower land it failed not to do, and so flowed on until it fell into a 
lower deep, which, in time, constituted a lake or morass, or swamp, or 
bog. 
Some of the earliest successful attempts at draining and improving 
lands were made by the Dutch. Holland and the low countries being 
subjected, as they were to inundations, mud dykes and ditches of great 
breadth and depth were erected ; by one of which they shut out the over¬ 
flowings, and by the other contained the excess of water. The skill and 
labors of this people were potent in all Europe and America. 
In England where tenant farmers are the tillers of the soil, and where 
the hire of land is from five to seven, and ten to twenty shillings per acre, 
men are compelled to produce large crops, and it is notorious what skill 
and energy has effected in that country. The position of an occupier from 
year to year is against permanent improvement, although I must admit 
for the honor of my country, that there are many, very many land owners, 
who would go with an enterprising tenant-farmer rather than against him, 
yet there are dishonorable exceptions, and not a few have been made 
to regret their spirited endeavors to improve their farms by the grasp¬ 
ing stewards of the aristocratic owners of land. I have myself had to 
experience this, for after an acknowledged improvement in cultivation, I 
had to escape with difficulty from the penalties subject to an infringement 
of a prescribed mode of cultivation. I put in drains and tore up land 
that was going fast into a primitive state of sterility, and an ignorant 
steward of the estate almost compelled me to pay five thousand dollars 
for breaking up old grass land, that is land that has been in pasturage 
for cattle for a generation. I managed this land, for which I paid $8 
per acre, as I did my own; that which required draining I drained, that 
which was returning into mountain herbs instead of producing grass I 
plowed up, and with such management I not only effected a change from. 
