/ / / / / x / s / / / s s s / s / 
 
 y///y/////////. 
 
 //////////// 
 
 / / / / / s s / s / 
 
 S/fSf'/S\ 
 
 '/A 
 
 
 
 
 
 y'x/^/v/v/x/ 
 
 
 
 V 
 
 v /\/ 
 
 >0(>OOO 
 
 >oo 
 
 \/\/ 
 
 
 
 s\s\ 
 
 \x\/ 
 
 >6cx>(><>^ 
 
 >(>OCx 
 
 X/v/v/ 
 
 ^^^^^ 
 
 v A 
 
 >c>; 
 
 \ \ X X X X x VVW^ 
 
 \\\N\\\\\^> 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 \\\\\N\\\\\\X\\\\\N\X 
 
WOOD 
 \HlfiU .VTHEKT. 
 IURMIXGHA.M. 
 
 
P3 
 
Printed by T. D AVI soy, 
 
 Whitefriars. 
 
TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS 
 
 THE DUKE OF YORK. 
 
 SIR, 
 
 IN times like these, when the wicked 
 intentions and wild chimeras of misguided or de- 
 signing men have so widely disseminated prin- 
 ciples of a fallacious equality as to shake all 
 Europe to its foundation, it becomes the duty of 
 every reasonable person, especially the inhabitant 
 of this truly free nation, to manifest a lave of 
 order, by proper expressions of regard for high 
 station and illustrious ancestry. Yet it was 
 not this consideration alone which made me 
 solicitous to obtain that leave for the present 
 dedication which your Royal Highness, with 
 such ready condescension, has been pleased to 
 grant me. 
 
 In the following pages, I have endeavoured 
 to spare my country the loss of many a valu- 
 able, though humble, member, whom misrepre- 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 sentation might tempt to emigrate ; and to pre- 
 vent the ruin of many a family, by an unadorn- 
 ed relation of my own disappointments in Ame- 
 rica. To whom could I inscribe a work of this 
 tendency with so much propriety as to your 
 Royal Highness y who forsook, in the spring of 
 life, the pleasures of a court to maintain the. 
 rights of your august king and father, and 
 submitted to the dangers and hardships of fo- 
 reign campaigns to afford protection to your 
 fellow-subjects ? 
 
 I have the honour to subscribe myself 
 YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESSES 
 
 most obedient 
 
 and devoted humble servant, 
 
 RICHARD PARKINSON. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 IT will afford me infinite pleasure if the pub- 
 lication of the following sheets, giving an ac- 
 count of my disappointments in America, 
 should have the desired effect that of pre- 
 venting my countrymen from running head- 
 long into misery, as myself and many others 
 have done. The incontrovertible facts here 
 related will perhaps stagger many : those in- 
 terested they will probably offend ; but to 
 such persons I shall only reply, by repeating 
 the old adage" Truth may be blamed, but 
 it cannot be shamed." 
 
 It may be proper to mention that my first 
 design was to print the Tour in one volume ; 
 the materials however increasing as the work 
 advanced, I thought it preferable, for the sake 
 of convenience, to divide it. 
 
 R. P. 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Introduction, p. 25, last line, for 3,400, read 34,000 acres. 
 Page 84, line 19, for Lord Starting, read Lord Starling. 
 
 222, . . 3 to crack and smell, add what is termed slip-coat 
 299 . . 5 N. B. This cyder was made of sound apples, of dif- 
 ferent kinds. 
 264 .. 19 for Baltimore Bank, read Office of Discount an* 
 
 Deposit. 
 
 270 .. 4 for thoudred, read thousand. 
 281 . . 2 after United States, add in a year. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 ii > 
 
 INTRODUCTION, . . . page i 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 An Account of my Tour from my first Landing in America, 
 to the Time of my settling at Orange~Hill t near Baltimore; 
 being a Period of Jive Months. . . p. 37 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 The regular Proceedings on the Farm for seven Months, p. l6l 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 The second Tour, for three Months. . . p. 183 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 The regular Proceedings on the Farm. . p. 190 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 The third Tour to view the Wheat Crops, fyc. in, June and, 
 July, in some well-cultivated Parts of America. Contain- 
 ing Remarks on Fruits; on the Management of Soil; on 
 reaping and harvesting of Wheat by the Cradle and Sickle, 
 fa. p. 197 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 The regular Proceedings on the Farm. . p. 230 
 
 SECTION VII. 
 
 Another Tour ; Instructions given for brewing and malting in 
 Baltimore and Philadelphia. . . . p. 237 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 The several Kinds of Horses in general Use, Remarks on 
 Stage Coaches ; Anecdotes tliat occurred to the Author in 
 travelling ; Politics of the Americans in general. p. 249 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 
 The several Kinds of Cattle and Hogs ; with an Account of 
 some remarkably fat Calves, Cattle, $c. The Method of 
 Feeding ; the Price of Beef and Veal, $c. . p. 284 
 
 SECTION X. 
 
 The several Sorts of Sheep. . . . p. 293 
 
 SECTION XI. 
 
 A descriptive Account of the Fowls, tame and wild. p. 299 
 
 SECTION XII. 
 
 On several Kinds of Game. Diversions : Fox-hunting, fyc. 
 
 p. 303 
 
 SECTION XIII. 
 The several Kinds of Fish sold in the Markets. p. 311 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 _1T may be proper to explain what was the 
 cause of my going to America. 
 
 During the interval my EXPERIENCED 
 FARMER was printing, I had much time to 
 spend in London ; and having the honour 
 of being acquainted with Sir John Sinclair, 
 who was then President of the Board of 
 Agriculture, I frequently had occasion to 
 consult that gentleman. General Washing- 
 ton had at that time sent over to Sir John 
 proposals for letting his Mount Vernon 
 estate to English or Scotch farmers. This 
 being made known to me, I thought my- 
 self almost possessed of a real treasure, in 
 having the honour to be introduced by Sir 
 John Sinclair to so great a man as General 
 
2 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Washington (himself a great enthusiast for 
 farming), and to the rich soils of America. 
 With all these encouragements/ therefore, 
 having got the books printed, and upwards 
 of five hundred subscribers to the work (of 
 the most respectable gentlemen in England), 
 as a recommendation to the gentlemen in 
 America, I speculated to make a rapid for- 
 tune. As General Washington had sent 
 over a plan of Mount Vernon, divided into 
 distinct farms, I pitched on one of twelve 
 hundred acres of land ; the rent twenty- 
 two shillings per acre, or so much in pro- 
 duce delivered to him at a market-price; 
 to have a power of viewing the farm before 
 accepting it. This, with the view of print- 
 ing my EXPERIENCED FARMER in Ame- 
 rica,, and of taking over race-horses, cattle, 
 and hogs, in the ship, altogether seemed a 
 most favourable prospect. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 With these expectations I went to Liver- 
 pool ; and employed brokers to charter a 
 ship, which cost me eight hundred and 
 fifty pounds. I then bought the famous 
 race-horses Phenomenon and Cardinal Puff, 
 two blood stallions ; ten blood mares, and 
 four more blood stallions ; a bull and a cow 
 of the Roolright kind, a bull and a cow of 
 the North Devon, a bull and a cow of the 
 no-horned Yorkshire kind, a cow (with two 
 calves, and in calf again) of the Holderness 
 kind ; and five boar and seven sow pigs, of 
 four different kinds. These things being 
 all put on board, I followed them, with my 
 family which consisted of seven, besides 
 two servants to take care of the horses, 
 cattle, &c. 
 
 The first disagreeable thing which occur- 
 red was, the captain found his ship impro- 
 perly loaded ; she wanted ballast : we 
 B2 
 
4 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 were, therefore, stopped fourteen days to 
 get ballast, a delay which injured our 
 horses very much, besides wasting our 
 water and other provisions. One man 
 now became sick, and we sent him back. 
 No sooner had we got to sea, than one of 
 the king's boats boarded us, and pressed 
 our other servant : then I had sixteen 
 horses, nine cattle, and thirteen pigs, to feed 
 and pump water for, to clean the dirt from, 
 &c. ; with the assistance of one son, only 
 twelve years of age : my other son and the 
 rest of the family were all sick. We were 
 twelve weeks in our passage, and in that 
 time lost eleven horses, in which number 
 was Phenomenon j the cattle and eleven 
 hogs arrived safe. 
 
 The speculation of the books answered 
 very well ; as also did the horses, cattle, and 
 hogs, beyond my expectation : had it not 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 been for the great loss in my horses in 
 going over, the whole of my venture 
 would have proved very profitable. But 
 the wonderful disappointment I met with in 
 the barrenness of the land, was beyond 
 any description. Would General Wash- 
 ington have given me the twelve hundred 
 acres, I would not have accepted it, to have 
 been confined to live in that country ; and 
 to convince the General of the cause of my 
 determination, I was compelled to treat 
 him with a great deal of frankness. The 
 .General, who had corresponded with Mr. 
 Arthur Young and others on the subject 
 of English farming and soils, and had been 
 not a little flattered by different gentlemen 
 from England, seemed at first to be not 
 well pleased with my conversation ; but I 
 gave him some strong proofs of his mis- 
 takes, by making a comparison between the 
 
* INTRODUCTION. 
 
 lands in America and those of England, in 
 two respects. 
 
 First, in the article of sheep. He sup- 
 posed himself to have fine sheep, and a 
 great quantity of them. At the time of 
 my viewing his five farms, which consisted 
 of about three thousand acres cultivated, he 
 had one hundred sheep, and those in very 
 poor condition. This was in the month 
 of November. To show him his mistake 
 in the value and quality of his land, I com- 
 pared this with the farm my father occu- 
 pied, which was less than six hundred acres. 
 He clipped eleven hundred sheep, though 
 some of his land was poor and at two 
 shillings and sixpence per acre the highest 
 was at twenty shillings ; the average weight 
 of the wool was ten pounds per fleece, and 
 the carcases weighed from eighty to one 
 hundred and twenty pounds each : while 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 in the General's hundred sheep on three 
 thousand acres, the wool would not weigh 
 on an average more than three pounds 
 and a half the fleece, and the carcases 
 forty-eight pounds each. Secondly, The 
 proportion of the produce in grain was 
 similar. The General's crops were from 
 two to three bushels of wheat per acre ; 
 and my father's farm, although poor clay 
 soil, gave from twenty to thirty bushels. 
 
 During this conversation, Colonel Lear, 
 aide-de-camp to the General, was present. 
 When the General left the room, the Colo- 
 nel told me he had himself been in England, 
 and had seen Mr, Arthur Young (who had 
 been frequently named by the General in 
 our conversation) ; and that Mr. Young, 
 having learnt that he was in the mercantile 
 line, and was possessed of much land, had 
 said he thought he was a great fool to be a 
 
8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 merchant and yet have so much land : the 
 Colonel replied, that if Mr. Young had the 
 same land to cultivate, it would make a great 
 fool of him. The Colonel did me the honour 
 to say I was the only man he ever knew to 
 treat General Washington with frankness. 
 The General's cattle at that time were 
 all in poor condition : except his mules 
 (bred from American mares), which were 
 very fine, and the Spanish ass sent to him 
 as a present by the king of Spain. I felt 
 myself much vexed at an expression used 
 at dinner by Mrs, Washington. When the 
 General and the company at table were 
 talking about the fine horses and cattle I 
 had brought from England, Mrs. Washing- 
 ton said, " I am afraid, Mr. Parkinson, you 
 have brought your fine horses and cattle to 
 a bad market ; I am of opinion that our 
 horses and cattle are good enough for our 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 land." I thought that if every old woman 
 in the country knew this, my speculation 
 would answer very ill : as I perfectly 
 agreed with Mrs. Washington in sentiment ; 
 and wondered much, from the poverty 
 of the land, to see the cattle so good as 
 they were. 
 
 It may be said, " But the author has not 
 been in Kentucky, or among the back 
 woods." No : I have not. I soon found 
 those countries to be much worse than the 
 parts nearer the cities ; for as money was 
 my object, and I found it very scarce even 
 in the cities, I concluded it would be much 
 scarcer there. Of this I wanted no stronger 
 proof than that the inhabitants being a sen- 
 sible, sharp, enterprising people, as any in the 
 world, if any thing valuable was to be had 
 in that country they would be glad to secure 
 it for themselves. If a man wants wit, he 
 
la INTRODUCTION. 
 
 may go to America ; but if he wants 
 money and comfort, he should stay at 
 home. 
 
 I could give many strong reasons for my 
 not going even to see those back woods, 
 but I will trouble the reader with only one 
 instance. After I had landed my horses at 
 Alexandria, I wanted some place for them 
 cheaper than a tavern or inn. A gentleman 
 of the name of Ricketts, who with his bro- 
 ther had large flour-mills about a mile out 
 of the city, offered me a stable and hay for 
 my horses, and board and lodging for my 
 son to take care of them. This I readily 
 accepted, hay being a very scarce article at 
 Alexandria , though these gentlemen, from 
 the advantage of the water in their mill- 
 race, had a piece of timothy very good ; 
 indeed, by watering and dunging, I never 
 saw a meadow better managed in any 
 
INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 country. They offered me some lands 
 belonging to them in Kentucky. I soon 
 learnt, however, that they had purchased 
 this land with the intention of culti- 
 vating it themselves, and had actually 
 cleared some part of it ; but after some 
 time, they found it an uncomfortable life, 
 and a slow method of enriching themselves. 
 They therefore returned ; and one of them 
 being a millwright by trade, they bought a 
 mill-race and built a mill, which they occu- 
 pied : and the late war with France proving 
 a favourable event for the trade of a miller 
 in America (from the great scarcity of grain 
 and flour in England), they were said to 
 have made a rapid fortune. 
 
 But how had they made this fortune ? 
 By such care and industry as are not fre- 
 quently practised in England. My son 
 having boarded in their house for some 
 
12 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 months, I can describe their way of living ; 
 as he lived at their table, The breakfast 
 consisted of coffee and salt herrings, and 
 sometimes salt beef. The bread was only 
 cakes made of hog's -lard and wheat-flour, 
 and not buttered. The dinner was salt 
 beef and bread, and sometimes potatoes 
 (which are very bad all over the country); 
 at other times, as a treat, the cattle-cabbage, 
 which was preserved in the cellar to keep it 
 from the frost : and water to drink. This 
 was in the winter. At the time of killing 
 their pigs they had fresh pork ; and when 
 they killed their beef (which was the cows 
 they had milked) they had fresh beef. 
 During the time my son was in their 
 family, which was four months, there was 
 not any butter used in the house, except in 
 the last fortnight ; nor did they buy any 
 article of food, but lived entirely on what 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 their ground produced, although they had a 
 waggon and servants going several times 
 every day to the city of Alexandria. 
 When the cows in summer gave milk 
 enough to make butter, it was used in the 
 family. 
 
 Now I ask, where in England men can 
 be found in so large a way of business, 
 making use of so much care and living in 
 so humble a manner ? From this one 
 instance I was satisfied of the great com- 
 forts so frequently spoken of as being 
 enjoyed in the back woods : for I did not 
 put myself in competition with those two 
 gentlemen; to my knowledge, I never saw 
 two cleverer men. Their father emigrated 
 from Wales, and bought lands at Elk town 
 near the Susquehanna, and growed tobacco, 
 which at that time was profitable: but the 
 land will not bring tobacco for any long 
 
14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 time; only fresh land, or land highly 
 dunged. 
 
 I employed a servant that had lived in 
 those boasted back woods. He had been 
 hired by a man that purchased land in 
 Kentucky; and he and his master went to 
 clear lands for the purpose of growing 
 Indian corn. While performing this busi- 
 ness they built themselves a log-house, 
 which was open on the sides by the logs 
 not lying close to each other : such open- 
 ings are frequently filled up with dirt ; but 
 their time being of so much consequence to 
 raise food, this was omitted. There was no 
 entrance to it but at the top, like a hatch- 
 way in a ship. When they had raised 
 the corn, and they wanted it ground, they 
 had forty miles to go to a mill ; which, 
 with returning, was two-days journey. 
 When the master was absent on these oc- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 casions, the servant was left alone ; and was 
 much frightened by the screeching of the 
 owls, supposing the Indians were coming 
 to kill him in the night ; it being a prac- 
 tice with those savages to come into the 
 house and lie by the fire, nor dare the inha- 
 bitants forbid them. After some time, this 
 man came with his master to a place near 
 Philadelphia, where his master had lived ; 
 for his family had cleared a piece of 
 ground, and built a house there : but 
 Patrick declined going any more into that 
 country, to drink water and live on Indian 
 corn. 
 
 I take up my pen, therefore, to write the 
 following pages, free from all unfounded 
 prejudices against America; but at the 
 
16 INTRODUCTION* 
 
 request of a great number of persons there, 
 who from different parts of the United 
 Kingdom (and particularly England) have 
 emigrated with the intention of purchasing 
 lands in that country. The great advan- 
 tages held out by the different authors, and 
 men travelling from America with commis- 
 sion to sell land, have deluded persons of all 
 denominations, with an idea of becoming 
 land-owners and independent. They have, 
 however, been most lamentably disappoint- 
 ed; particularly the farmers, and all those 
 that have purchased land: for, notwith- 
 standing the low price at which the Ameri- 
 can lands are sold, the poverty of the soil is 
 such, as to make it not to pay for labour ; 
 therefore, the greater part have brought 
 themselves and their families to total ruin. 
 
 The only consolation they enjoy is, that 
 all around them are in the same situation ; 
 
INTRODUCTION. n 
 
 and that, were they to return to their native 
 country in that reduced state, they would 
 not only be the scoff of their former ac- 
 quaintance, but feel themselves uncom- 
 fortable by not having it in their power to 
 enjoy such ease as they had been brought 
 up to. But the working-men that have 
 emigrated have it not in their power to get 
 back; for, if they have not money to pay 
 their passage, the captains of ships will not 
 bring them from America on the terms on 
 which they are taken, because there is no 
 one ready to pay their passage on this side. 
 To explain this. On their first arrival in 
 America, there are men ready to buy them 
 as slaves for a certain time ; and as these 
 people will want clothing, not having the 
 means to purchase it during their stated 
 time of servitude, they are compelled to get 
 the money of their masters, and that keeps 
 
 c 
 
13 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 them in the same state the greatest part of 
 their life. 
 
 Now, with regard to the liberty and 
 equality expected by some who emigrate 
 from these kingdoms to America, they will 
 find that not very pleasant. There is no 
 Englishman who does not think himself 
 above the negro ; but when he comes there 
 he will have to eat, drink, and sleep, with 
 the negro slaves. Hence it is that stories 
 are told of the servants in America wanting 
 to eat and drink in the dining-room with 
 their masters. As the master cannot keep 
 three tables, the white servant thinks him- 
 self (from the boast of the American liberty 
 and equality) more on an equality with the 
 master than with the negro ; and as the 
 negro is under no greater subordination 
 than to acknowledge the man he works for 
 as master, the white man (if he be not a 
 
INTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 slave), to cause a distinction, will not call 
 him Master: therefore, among the white 
 men in America, they are all Mr. and Sir - 9 
 so that in conversation you cannot discover 
 which is the master or which is the man. It 
 is the same with the white women ; they are 
 all Madam and Miss. If you call at the door 
 of any man, and ask the servant if his 
 master is at home, he will say, " Master ! 
 I have no master : do you want Mr. Such- 
 a-one ?" that is, the man he serves: and if 
 you want a man that is a, white servant, 
 the master calls him in the same manner. 
 
 Now this sits so uneasy on an English 
 servant that, by being called Mr. and Str, 
 he soon becomes the greatest puppy ima- 
 ginable, and much unpleasanter even than 
 the negro. Then, as all men imitate their 
 betters in pride and consequence, when the 
 negroes meet together they are all Mr. and 
 c 2 
 
20 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Madam among themselves. It is the same 
 with respect to the manner of wearing their 
 hair ; almost every one, child or man, has 
 his hair tied. The negro the same ; but, 
 as the hair of the negro is short, it is cus- 
 tomary to hang lead to it during the week 
 that it may have length enough to tie on 
 the Sunday. 
 
 In the different publications which I have 
 seen, some of these unpleasantries are for- 
 gotten. But the fact is, that the men that 
 publish those favourable accounts of Ame- 
 rica are frequently emigrants from this 
 country, who are hired by Americans to 
 contract with captains of ships to bring 
 over such as are unable to pay their passage, 
 that they may buy them when they arrive 
 in America ; which is an absolute slave- 
 trade, and much worse than the punish- 
 ment for convicts, The same sort of men 
 
INTRODUCTION. 21 
 
 in that country, when they are in the 
 highest distress there, buy or take up lands 
 in the back countries, to pay the money at 
 some future time ; and then either come 
 here themselves, or hire what may fairly be 
 termed their counsellors to plead for them ; 
 these agents to be paid out of the money 
 raised out of the emigrants' pockets, as 
 neither the man who is the pretended land- 
 owner nor his agent have any money to 
 support themselves. This is a mere specu- 
 lation all the way through ; and the men 
 that say so much in favour of the land, 
 know no more of land than a horse 
 nor perhaps so much, as they do not eat 
 grass : which is the only excuse they have 
 to make for their conduct. A great many 
 of them, I can prove, have never been within 
 five or eight hundred miles of the place 
 where the land lies. 
 
22 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It is precisely the same with emigrants 
 in similar circumstances from other coun- 
 tries ; who are in the same manner pur- 
 chased and treated as slaves. I will men- 
 tion a particular instance. A Dutchman 
 who had lost all his property, which was 
 considerable, and was reduced to great 
 distress, by the war with France, met with 
 a captain of an American ship, who offered 
 him and his two sons a free passage into 
 America ; but at the end of the voyage the 
 captain offered them all for sale to pay for 
 the passage. They were bought by Messrs. 
 Ricketts, whom I have before mentioned ; 
 who paid the captain ready money for them, 
 and the three emigrants had to repay those 
 gentlemen by labour for a certain number 
 of years. The father, finding himself so 
 wonderfully disappointed in the great ex- 
 pectations held out to him by the captain, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 23 
 
 proved very obstinate and would not work; 
 and was therefore (as was usual) whipped 
 with the cow-hide, in the same way as the 
 negroes. The old man, nevertheless, in 
 spite of this great punishment, still persist- 
 ing in his obstinacy, the gentlemen chose 
 to give him his liberty, and kept the two 
 boys to work out the sum. Now I " only 
 blame the captains of ships for holding out 
 such favourable prospects to the emigrants 
 as a persuasion, which they know at the 
 same time to be false ; for it cannot be 
 supposed those captains can give them 
 passage and provisions without repayment 
 in some way or other : but the fact is that 
 they do this by way of profit, and on the 
 other side the water they get the same sum 
 as from passengers to this. As to the gen- 
 tlemen who bought these three men, I can 
 
24 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 say, from my own knowledge, that better 
 characters cannot exist : the blame in this 
 case lay on the old Dutchman ; who, when 
 he had brought himself into such a situation, 
 ought with temper to have done his best, 
 and the gentlemen would have treated him 
 with kindness. 
 
 Perhaps, from my observations, it may be 
 here said, that I have been disappointed 
 and am a prejudiced man. No : I am not. 
 I never had half the condescension shown 
 me in the same time in England by gentle- 
 men of superior rank to myself, as 1 have 
 had in America ; and solemnly affirm it was 
 painful to me to leave so respectable ac- 
 quaintance : but farming being my sole object 
 in life, I found the climate and soil there to 
 be of such a nature as to put it out of the 
 power of man to enrich the land without 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 such an enormous expence as (if he had no 
 other means than what the produce of the 
 land would afford) must ruin any one. 
 
 To show this is true, I will give an exam- 
 ple in the speculations of the well-known 
 Messrs. Morris, Nicholson, and Greenleaf. 
 Mr. Morris had so much credit as a 
 banker during the American war, that his 
 notes were current when those of the 
 United -States would not be taken either in 
 their country or abroad. When the war 
 was over, Mr. Morris, not knowing what 
 to do with his money, speculated largely in 
 lands, and took these other two gentlemen 
 as partners. They are broke, have all 
 been in gaol, and Mr. Morris must die there, 
 I had one thousand acres of land offered 
 to be given me by General Stone, of Balti- 
 more in Aleganey county, to be chosen out 
 of three thousand four hundred acres, if I 
 
26 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 would stop in the country ; and he promised 
 to go and settle with me and build himself a 
 house there. Now it may be necessary to 
 explain why I would not accept so kind an 
 offer. The cause was this. The produce is 
 so small and the expence so great, that T never 
 saw any land worth having in America. I 
 know a gentleman of Baltimore, from Ire- 
 land, a man of business and good sense, who 
 acknowledges that by cultivating part of two 
 estates (the one, two thousand five hundred 
 acres, within one mile and a half of that city; 
 the other at a distance of fourteen miles) 
 he is at the loss of one thousand pounds 
 per annum. What then could be expected, 
 if it was three or eight hundred miles from 
 market ? 
 
 Large quantities of land in America are 
 indeed only greater inconveniences ; you 
 having taxes to pay for them, while they are 
 
INTRODUCTION. 27 
 
 not worth cultivation. I would rather have 
 one hundred acres than one hundred thou- 
 sand ; for the price of labour being very 
 high, and the produce so small, if I was 
 compelled to live in that country I would 
 not wish to have more than myself and 
 my family could cultivate, and woodland 
 for fire, for all the white men I employed 
 there ate much and worked little. And 
 it is allowed by every experienced man in 
 America, that no man can work a farm at 
 all to get a living upon it but by slaves ; 
 and the cause is, the black man or slave is 
 both clothed and fed at a less expence than 
 a white man ; therefore it shows plainly 
 where the livelihood is got out of that poor 
 soil it is pinched and screwed out of the 
 negro. 
 
 When I was in America, I was requested 
 by all the Englishmen whom I knew, to 
 
28 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 make this business public at my return. I 
 never met an Englishman in that country, 
 of whatever rank in life he might be, that 
 liked it, but wished himself at home again : 
 but his general acknowledgment was, he 
 had spent his money, and was either unable 
 to get back, or ashamed to come, having so 
 much reduced his circumstances as to be 
 dismayed to see his old friends. And I 
 think it a duty incumbent on me to declare 
 this to my countrymen, that if they will go, 
 they may go with their eyes open. I have, 
 when in America, discovered my intentions 
 to one American gentleman of rank and 
 fortune, who perhaps is one of the best 
 men existing, and a very great friend to his 
 own country, and one of my most intimate 
 friends. He approved of my design : say- 
 ing, the delusions carried on were improper ; 
 and that the industrious emigrant, finding 
 
INTRODUCTION. 29 
 
 himself so deceived and disappointed when 
 he arrived in America, is so much disgusted 
 as to brand the whole of the people with 
 being a set of rascals altogether. Indeed* 
 such a one will find a strange difference 
 between the former part of his life as an 
 English farmer, and the employments re- 
 quired on the lands in America ; occupa- 
 tions as different as those of a taylor and a 
 blacksmith. He will have to chop up 
 trees, and cultivate the land by the hoe and 
 pick-ax instead of the plough and harrows. 
 The implements of husbandry being so 
 expensive, and the produce of the land 
 being so small, he will be compelled to 
 make them himself, whence we may be 
 sure that they will prove of an inferior kind* 
 even when the land is got into a state pro- 
 per to use them ; but it is some time after 
 the timber is destroyed before they can be 
 
30 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 used at all ; and after that time there will be 
 great waste of produce, and inconveniences 
 in cultivating the land, by the roots of 
 trees, large stones, &c. 
 
 It may be necessary to forewarn the read- 
 er, that there are some very trivial things 
 introduced in this work ; particularly 
 where I mention myself as doing manual 
 labour, and even my wife and family. I 
 hope this will be excused ; as none but 
 those who have been in America would 
 suppose but there are people to be had for 
 either love or money to do the dirty work; 
 but I have been obliged to clean my own 
 boots and shoes when I have had four ser- 
 vants in the house ; and myself, wife, and 
 family, have risen in a morning to milk the 
 cows when our servants were in bed. I 
 should term such very bad management in 
 England ; but the idea of liberty and 
 
INTRODUCTION. 31 
 
 equality there destroys all the rights of the 
 master, and every man does as he likes. 
 Even taking fruit out of your garden, or 
 orchard, is not looked upon as a theft ; 
 nor riding your horse a few miles without 
 leave, if he be only brought back to you 
 again, and particularly if the man that rode 
 him would say he knew you did not want 
 him: it is very unpopular to look upon 
 these things as a crime ; and your only 
 way is to say he is welcome, or have his 
 anger and the whole country about you. 
 
 If a white servant is sent on an errand to 
 a neighbour's house, he will go in with his 
 hat on, and perhaps sit down with as much 
 freedom as though he was in his own or 
 master's house. It is very common if you 
 step out of your house into the garden, to 
 'find a man of any description (black or 
 white) when you come in, to have lighted 
 
32 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 his pipe and sitting down in a chair, smok- 
 ing, without apology, with as much compo- 
 sure as though he was a lodger in the house : 
 and any man that obstructs these liberties is 
 looked upon as a bad subject, andanenemy 
 to the rights of man, and infringer of the 
 rights which they and their fathers have 
 fought for./ 
 
 It is not uncommon to take hay or corn 
 out of your fields, for the waggoner's horses 
 or himself to eat ; viz. roasting ears of 
 Indian corn. I was in company the other 
 evening where a lady was speaking highly 
 of the apples grown in America : she men- 
 tioned the captain of a ship to have given 
 them to her. I took the liberty of asking 
 her what they cost ? She said, " Oh ! the 
 captain took them out of an orchard : they 
 cost nothing." By this method he would 
 take the best ; and you, as the proprietor,, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 33 
 
 have the worst fruit to use yourself : and 
 the whole of the best is taken from you by 
 similar interlopers. 
 
 If I had gone into America and travelled 
 through the country by way of a tour only, 
 I should not have had an opportunity of 
 publishing in so descriptive a manner ; for 
 in my own travels (I can say without 
 vanity) I met with every thing pleasant the 
 country could afford: but, in the occupa- 
 tion of a farm, my life was chequered, by 
 meeting with such circumstances as the 
 above ; and I hope it may be of great utility 
 to my young family, and that, from a recol- 
 lection of the insults their mother and 
 themselves received, they will ever know 
 the value of this country. 
 
 I will own, that, at the time when I left 
 England, I had a very high opinion of the 
 fertility of its soil, and was always a sup- 
 
 r> 
 
34 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 * 
 
 porter of the government, as my former 
 publication will show ; and thought it my 
 duty to support it, so far as my labours 
 could give assistance : but disliked the idea 
 of wars ; and, for want of experience, 
 thought they might be avoided by arbitra- 
 tion. But since I have been in America, 
 I have a very different opinion of the duty 
 of a subject to his king and country ; and 
 feel that he ought to stand forward on all 
 emergences so far as the Almighty has 
 given him power : and I hope every branch 
 of my family will do so. , The necessity 
 appears evident: for although America, dur- 
 ing my abode there, was a neutral nation, it 
 was frequent in company to hear the Ame- 
 ricans say the West -Indies would be theirs; 
 they should be soon in a state to command 
 them by war. This is to me a convincing 
 proof that a government should be able and 
 
INTRODUCTION. 35 
 
 ready to check insult, and the subjects of a 
 country ought to be ready to give every 
 assistance ; and no term of years, so long 
 as God gives me health and strength to do 
 it, shall prevent me, if I am called upon. 
 
 I flatter myself that my experience in 
 America will enable me to give a clear 
 account of the inhabited parts ; of which it 
 is my intention to describe with candour 
 the soil and climate, and the manners and 
 customs of the 'people. My whole wish 
 is to relate what I have seen in America, 
 in such a plain, familiar style, as shall be 
 perfectly intelligible to the reader, * 
 
 D 2 
 
TOUR 
 
 IN 
 
 AMERICA. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 An Account of my Tour from my first Landing 
 in America, to the Time of my settling at 
 Orange-Hill, near Baltimore ; being a Pe- 
 riod of five Months. 
 
 I SAILED from Liverpool, September 3d, 
 17985 and, after a very long and bad 
 passage, arrived at Norfolk in Virginia, on 
 the llth of November. During my stay 
 of four days in this town, I met with many 
 English gentlemen ; and was very plea- 
 santly treated, particularly by Mr. Cox, a 
 gentleman from Derbyshire. When I was 
 
38 
 
 first introduced here, the conversation, as 
 the company were seated at dinner, was 
 on politics ; and the Englishmen were all for 
 England, and great supporters of the crown 
 and its dignity. Mr. Cox being in the 
 chair, the King of England was the first; 
 health, and Mr. Pitt next. 
 
 After dinner was over, I began to in- 
 quire for some hay for my horses and 
 cattle ; but was told there was no such thing. 
 I was astonished to find in so large a town, 
 where a great number of horses, mules, and 
 cows, were kept, no hay, and in the month 
 of November too. The people seemed as 
 much surprised at my asking for hay, as I 
 was at there being none : and well they 
 might ; for when I walked out into the 
 ground, I saw no such thing as grass grow- 
 ing, nor any sort of green herb. This to 
 me, as an Englishman, was a very unusual 
 spectacle ; to see land without something 
 upon it : and not a little mortifying, to one 
 who had been tempted to believe it to be 
 (as they term it) the best land in the world. 
 
39 % 
 
 1 knew that if all their land was like that, a 
 man could not live in plenty and splendor 
 from the produce of such crops as it would 
 bring. 
 
 It was natural for me now to inquire, 
 what they kept their cows and horses on 
 during- the winter. They told me their 
 horses on blades, and their cows on slops. 
 I neither knew what blades nor slops were. 
 The people seemed to laugh at me for my 
 inquiry ; as by this time they had learnt 
 that I was the English farmer who had 
 come over with a quantity of horses, bulls, 
 cows, hogs, and dogs, and taken a farm of 
 General Washington at Mount -Vernon. 
 I have reason to say, indeed, I was not a fit 
 man to farm in their country ; which I 
 heard said repeatedly, both at that time and 
 afterwards during my stay in America. 
 This I knew to be true : nor is any Eng- 
 lishman : it does not suit very well to take 
 any thing from rich land to poo.. 
 
 Now to return to the slops and the blades. 
 -The latter proved to be blades and tops of 
 
40 
 
 Indian corn : and the slops were the same 
 that are put into the swill- tub in England, 
 and given to hogs; composed of broth, dish- 
 washings, cabbage-leaves, potatoe- parings, 
 &c. The cows even eat the dung of a 
 horse, as naturally as an English cow does 
 hay ; and are all in the streets, robbing 
 every man's cart of these blades as they 
 come to be sold, or picking up any thing 
 else they can find. It appeared to me that 
 a man's having land in or about that town, 
 was of no advantage to him in keeping 
 cows, as it growed no grass ; the street 
 was the cheapest place to keep them in, 
 and the best. 
 
 I then began to ask for these blades ; 
 which, they told me, were very fine for 
 horses : but my wants, I found, could not 
 be supplied that day ; but that in the 
 morning there would be carts with these 
 blades to sell. Being, however, very de- 
 sirous to give -my horses and cattle .some 
 refreshment as well as myself, as I had had 
 a very good dinner I wished them the same \ 
 

 41 
 
 and I imagined that some tavern or stable 
 keeper would certainly be able. to supply 
 my wants, and would, from mere benevo- 
 lence, let me have some blades for my stock, 
 as I had been at sea so long, though his 
 trade might not be to sell them. I began, 
 accordingly, to inquire for some person of 
 this description ; but I found myself disap- 
 pointed in this matter, as no one had more 
 of this article than for his own use that day 
 and night. At last I chanced upon a stable- 
 keeper who had about fifty pounds weight ; 
 and who for an advanced price, or if I 
 would let him have some bran to feed his 
 horses for the night (which I readily did), 
 would let me have forty bunches, which 
 were computed at forty pounds weight for 
 I found that it was the practice to sell the 
 blades by the pound, in the same manner as 
 tea in England. 
 
 When I got these blades, my horses were 
 frightened at them ; for they rattle much, 
 having the same appearance as our dry flag- 
 leaves in England. From their delightful 
 
42 
 
 smell, however, the horses began to eat 
 them ; and very good they are : but I had 
 only forty pounds for thirteen horses, bulls, 
 and cows ; and this was all I could procure 
 in the totvn of Norfolk, where there ap- 
 peared to be a great deal of shipping and 
 trade. I learnt, indeed, that these blades 
 were frequently a very scanty supply in the 
 markets ; and that perhaps T might not meet 
 with what I wanted, if I did not look sharp 
 about me. I, therefore, rose early in the 
 morning, and walked out along the road 
 which I was told was the most likely for 
 meeting the carts coming with them to 
 market. I found several people on the 
 roads with the same intent. With one of 
 these persons I formed an agreement to buy 
 a cart-load betwixt us : and I stood market- 
 man, and bought that quantity, which con- 
 sisted of four hundred bundles, or four 
 hundred pounds, (to be either weighed or 
 counted, which I pleased.) My promised 
 partner in this business, however, deceived 
 me, and did not accept his share ; there- 
 
43 
 
 fore, the whole cart-load became mine, 
 Being told by the captain that we should 
 sail the next morning, and he expected to 
 be at Mount- Vernon in eleven hours, the 
 quantity was more than I wished for. But 
 it proved lucky: as we did not sail until the 
 Tuesday, which was an interval of four 
 days, instead of two ; and hoping to meet 
 with hay at Mount- Vernon on better terms, 
 I did not choose to .buy more than was 
 necessary to carry me to my destination. 
 The price was, a penny per pound. 
 
 The cause of our putting into Norfolk 
 was, that when we were about thirty miles 
 south-west of Norfolk, lying at anchor, a 
 gale of wind came on and did the vessel 
 some damage, which we were obliged to 
 put-in to repair. On Tuesday morning we 
 set sail : and in nine days reached Mount- 
 Vernon, instead of eleven hours ; having 
 head-winds or calms all the passage. 
 
 About thirty miles down the river I*o- 
 towmac, a gentleman, of the name of 
 Grimes, came up to us in his own boat. 
 
44 
 
 He had some little time before shot a man 
 who was going across his plantation; and 
 had been tried for so doing, but not 
 punished. He came aboard, and behaved 
 very politely to me : and it being near din- 
 ner-time, he would have me go ashore and 
 dine with him; which I did. He gave me 
 some grape-juice to drink, which he called 
 Port wine, and entertained me with saying 
 he made it himself: it was not to my taste 
 equal to our Port in England, nor even 
 strong beer ; but a hearty welcome makes 
 every thing pleasant, and this he most 
 cheerfully gave me. He showed me his 
 garden ; the produce of which, he told me, 
 he sold at Alexandria, a distance of thirty 
 miles. His garden was in disorder : and so 
 was every thing else I saw about the place ; 
 except a favourite stallion, which was in 
 very good condition a pretty figure of a 
 horse, and of proper size for the road, about 
 fifteen hands high. He likewise showed 
 me some other horses, brood-mares and 
 foals, young colts, &c. of rather an useful 
 
45 
 
 kind. His cattle were small, but all much 
 better than the land. 
 
 He praised the soil very highly. I asked 
 him if he was acquainted with the land at 
 Mount- Vernon. He said he was ; and 
 represented it to be rich land, but not so 
 rich as his. Yet his I thought very poor 
 indeed ; for it was (as it is termed in 
 America) gullied ; which I call broken land. 
 This effect is produced by the winter's frost 
 and summer's rain, which cut the land 
 into cavities of from ten feet wide and ten 
 feet deep (and upwards) in many places ; 
 and, added to this, here and there a hole, 
 makes it look altogether like marl-pits, or 
 stone-quarries, that have been carried 
 away by those hasty showers in the sum- 
 mer, which no man who haqlfiot seen them 
 in this climate could form any idea of, or 
 believe possible. They are called gusts. 
 A small cloud appears first, and very 
 quickly gathers and blackens the sky. The 
 wind begins to blow, with thunder and 
 lightning so tremendous that a stranger 
 
46 
 
 might suppose it would destroy every thing 
 upon the earth. The thunder-bolts will 
 split the trees in the woods in such a man- 
 ner as was very surprising to me when 
 I first saw it ; and made me believe the 
 country was ordained by the Almighty a 
 proper place for convicts, as it would make 
 them repent of their former sins. 
 
 After seeing the farm, I returned to the 
 ship, and Mr. Grimes with me. He pre- 
 sented me with some cabbages, veal, fresh 
 butter, and a bushel of oysters ; and having 
 two sons on board who were very fond of 
 oysters, this last article gave them great 
 pleasure. But they were never very de- 
 sirous of American oysters afterwards j 
 for these are not salt, but are fresh- 
 water oysters, large and watery, and thus 
 very disagreeable to me; yet a great many 
 are consumed by the Americans, They 
 are easy to get ; as there are banks of them, 
 and sometimes from four to six hang to- 
 gether. 
 
 I had not yet seen any grass ; except a 
 
47 
 
 few bunches of orchard-grass, which Mr* 
 Grimes valued much, saying he meant to 
 preserve the seed, as he found the roots of 
 that grass to stand the winter. All this 
 added little to my prospects as a farmer in 
 America. After Mr. Grimes was gone, the 
 pilot on board the ship said, " Sir, you have 
 come very well off with your friend Grimes; 
 you have got back alive : he sometimes 
 shoots his friends, when they do not please 
 him," I found this to be true : for some 
 time afterward I became acquainted with 
 the two gentlemen that took him for the 
 crime; and, from the story they tell, it 
 appears he acted as if crazy after he had 
 shot the man ; therefore, on his trial, he 
 was proved insane, but I did not learn 
 from the gentlemen that he was ever so 
 before he shot the man, or has been so 
 since. 
 
 In two days after we left this place, we 
 came in sight of Mount- Vernon ; but in all 
 the way up the river, I did not see any 
 green fields. The country had to me a 
 
48 
 
 most barren appearance. There were none 
 but snake-fences ; which are rails laid with 
 the ends of one upon another, from eight to 
 sixteen in number in one length. The 
 surface of the earth looked like a yellow- 
 washed wall; for it had been a very dry 
 summer ; and there was not any thing 
 that I could see green, except the pine trees 
 in the woods, and the cedars, which made a 
 truly picturesque view as we sailed up the 
 Potowmac. It is indeed a most beautiful 
 river. 
 
 When we arrived at Mount- Vernon, I 
 found that General Washington was at Phi- 
 ladelphia ; but his steward had orders from 
 the General to receive me and my family, 
 with all the horses, cattle, &c. which I had 
 on board. A boat was, therefore, got ready 
 for landing them ; but that could not be 
 done, as the ship must be cleared out at 
 some port before any thing was moved : 
 so, after looking about a few minutes at 
 Mount- Vernon, I returned to the ship, and 
 we began to make way for Alexandria. 
 
49 
 
 We were two days in going this small 
 distance, which is only nine miles. 
 While we lay at anchor about two miles 
 from that city, my stock of blades being 
 consumed, and as I perceived a house, 
 situated in what is in America termed very 
 fine land, I went on shore to purchase some 
 food for my horses and cattle. The gen- 
 tleman of this house, named Rozer, had 
 some hay. I thought this would do 
 finely : but when I saw it, I found it was 
 grown on land where water continually 
 stood, and had a great deal of different 
 sorts of weeds in it, ' and among the rest 
 wild mint ; and besides stunk so much of 
 one nastiness or other, that the horses would 
 not touch it, 
 
 The next day we landed at Alexandria. 
 General Washington's steward had recom- 
 mended me to the inn kept by Mr. Gadsby, 
 an Englishman. Here the stables were floor- 
 ed with boards ; for in many parts of Ame- 
 rica, as there is not straw enough produced 
 to litter the horses with, this is the practice, 
 
 
 
50 
 
 We put our horses, cattle, pigs, &c. into 
 these rooms. The charges were very high ; 
 and in about twenty- one days our bill 
 amounted to seventy pounds currency : we 
 had moved our horses and cattle some days 
 before, or it would have been much more. 
 I had repeatedly invitations to buy lands, 
 or take farms ; but my reply was, that I 
 wanted only forty acres, or between that 
 quantity and a hundred. At this the peo- 
 ple were amazed ; for having heard that I 
 had agreed with General Washington for 
 twelve hundred acres, and now did not like 
 it, they thought I was mad. Great numbers 
 of them came ..to see my live stock. They 
 wanted to give me land for them : but I 
 was not so fond of the land as they expect- 
 ed ; I did not think any I had seen worth 
 having ; for by this time I had learnt the 
 price of labour, and likewise what was the 
 produce. 
 
 When I had been about seven days at 
 Alexandria, 1 hired a horse and went to 
 Mount- Vernon, to view my intended farm; 
 
51 
 
 of which General Washington had given 
 me a plan, and a report along with it- 
 the rent being fixed at eighteen hundred 
 bushels of wheat for twelve hundred acres, 
 or money according to the price of that 
 grain. I must confess that if he would 
 have given me the inheritance of the land 
 for that sum, I durst not have accepted it, 
 especially with the incumbrances upon it; 
 viz. one hundred and seventy slaves young 
 and old, and out of that number only 
 twenty-seven in a condition to work, as 
 the steward represented to me. I viewed 
 the whole of the cultivated estate about 
 three thousand acres ; and afterward dined 
 with Mrs. Washington and the family. 
 Here I met a Doctor Thornton, who is 
 a very pleasant agreeable man, and his 
 lady ; with a Mr, Peters and his lady, who 
 was a grand daughter of Mrs. Washington. 
 Doctor Thornton living at the city of 
 Washington, he gave me an invitation to 
 visit him there : he was one of the commis- 
 sioners of the city. 
 
 E 2 
 
5% 
 
 I slept at Mount- Vernon, and experienced 
 a very kind and comfortable reception; 
 but did not like the land at all. I saw no 
 green grass there, except in the garden: 
 and this was some English grass, appearing 
 to me to be a sort of couch-grass ; it was 
 in drills. There were also six saintfoin 
 plants, which I found the General valued 
 highly. I viewed the oats which were not 
 thrashed, and counted the grains upon each 
 head ; but found no stem with more than 
 four grains, and these of a very light and 
 bad quality, such as I had never seen be- 
 fore : the longest straw was of about twelve 
 inches. The wheat was all thrashed, there- 
 fore I could not ascertain the produce of 
 that : I saw some of the straw, however, 
 and thought it had been cut and prepared 
 for the cattle in the winter ; but I believe 
 I was mistaken, it being short by nature, 
 and with thrashing out it looked like chaff, 
 or as if chopped with a bad knife. The 
 General had two thrashing-machines ; the 
 power given by horses. The clover was 
 
very little in bulk, and like chaff; not 
 more than nine inches long, and the leaf 
 very much shed from the stalk. By the 
 stubbles on the land I could not tell which 
 had been wheat, or which had been oats or 
 barley ; nor could I see any clover-roots 
 where the clover had grown. The weather 
 was hot and dry at that time ; it was in De- 
 cember. The whole of the different fields 
 were covered with either the stalks of weeds, 
 corn-stalks, or what is called sedge some- 
 thing like spear-grass upon the poor lime- 
 stone in England; and the steward told me 
 nothing would eat it, which is true. In- 
 deed, he found fault with every thing, just 
 like a foreigner ; and even told me many 
 unpleasant tales of the General, so that I 
 began to think he was suspicious of my 
 having come to take his place. But (God 
 knows!) I would not choose to accept of it : 
 for he had to superintend four hundred 
 slaves, and there would be more now. 
 This part of his business especially would 
 
54 
 
 have been painful to me : it is, in fact, a 
 sort of trade of itself. 
 
 I had not in all this time seen what we 
 in England call a corn-stack, nor a dung- 
 hill. 'There were, indeed, behind one of 
 the General's barns, two or three cocks of 
 oats and barley ; but such as an English 
 broad-wheeled waggon would have carried 
 a hundred miles at one time with ease. 
 Neither had I seen a green plant of any 
 kind : there was some clover of the first 
 year's sowing : but in riding over the 
 fields I should not have known it to be 
 clover, although the steward told me it was; 
 only when I came under a tree I could, by 
 favour of the shade, perceive here and there 
 a green leaf of clover, but I do not remem- 
 ber seeing a green root. I was shown no 
 grass-hay of any kind ; nor do I believe 
 there was any. The cattle were very 
 poor and ordinary, and the sheep the same; 
 nor did I see any thing that I liked except 
 the mules, which were very fine ones, and 
 
in good condition. I saw here a greater 
 number of negroes than I ever saw at one 
 time either before or since. 
 
 The house is a very decent mansion : 
 not large, and something like a gentleman's 
 house in England, with gardens and planta- 
 tions ; and is very prettily situated on the 
 banks of the river Pot owmac, with extensive 
 prospects. It took its name from Admiral 
 Vernon: the General's brother, who former- 
 ly owned the place, having served under 
 that Admiral. The roads are very bad 
 from Alexandria to Mount- Vernon, even. 
 very near to the General's house : I men- 
 tion this circumstance, merely because it 
 seemed strange to rne that so capital a man 
 had it not in his power to provide an agree- 
 able conveyance to that city, a distance of 
 only nine miles. 
 
 The General still continuing at Phi- 
 ladelphia, I could not have the pleasure 
 of seeing him ; therefore I returned to 
 Alexandria, where my family resided. 
 Here I found a letter from Hugh Thomp- 
 
56 
 
 son, Esq. merchant in Baltimore, requesting 
 me to go to that city, and making me an 
 offer of two situations : the one near Ana- 
 polls ; the other upon Elk-Ridge (where the 
 fine kite-foot tobacco was formerly grown), 
 in the road between Alexandria and Balti- 
 more, and nine miles from the latter. I like- 
 wise had an invitation to put my cattle and 
 hogs over the river to Mr. Rozer, the gentle- 
 man whom I formerly mentioned, and who 
 behaved to me with the greatest kindness. 
 I had now met with a Colonel Lyles, who 
 lived at Broad-Creek in Maryland, about 
 four miles from Alexandria. With him I 
 formed an acquaintance ; and he gave me 
 some friendly advice, respecting what sort 
 of people these were whom I was invited to 
 connect myself with : and as I had made up 
 my mind not to have the General's farm, he 
 advised me not to send my stock there to 
 be kept. To this I most readily agreed : 
 for as the General's cattle and hogs were 
 poor, I feared that mine would share the 
 same fate ; nor did I see any thing proper 
 
67 
 
 to keep them on. I thought my cattle 
 would eat in one month all the clover that 
 I had yet seen, to keep them as we keep 
 our cattle in England. I therefore sent 
 them to Mr. Rozer, and one of my sons 
 to take care of them, as he proposed to give 
 me hay and blades for nothing, the corn 
 and bran I was to pay for. Another gen- 
 tleman, named Ricketts, who had a mill 
 about a mile from the town of Alexandria, 
 offered me in the same manner hay for my 
 horses ; this I readily accepted, and sent 
 my other son with them. This last gen- 
 tleman had a small field of timothy; which 
 was so situated as to be watered, and cut a 
 great deal of hay ; and the horses fattened 
 very much on it, with only the cost of 
 four pounds ten shillings currency for three 
 months' corn : a circumstance which gave 
 me proof of the great efficacy of timothy- 
 hay for horses, and this opinion I still retain. 
 Mr. Ricketts had a great quantity of land 
 in Kentucky, and he gave me some account 
 of that country; but such as was to me no 
 
58 
 
 encouragement to go into the back woods 
 to live. He said it was not worth culti- 
 vating, even as a gift. 
 
 Having got my horses, cattle, hogs, &c. 
 fixed, and my wife and family in lodgings, 
 I began to look out for some place to settle 
 in j and clearly seeing that farming would 
 not do on any of the soils I had seen, and 
 Colonel Lyles being a friendly, creditable, 
 and well-informed man, and a man of 
 property, I advised with him on every 
 occasion. I thought I would try to get a 
 connection to brew ; and the city of Wash- 
 ington being a small distance from Alex- 
 andria, I made my thoughts known to him. 
 He offered to join me in a brewery at 
 Washington, and we agreed to go together 
 to look out for a situation. We had an 
 invitation to dine with Doctor Thornton: 
 and the Doctor having a public dinner on 
 that day, I got introduced to many respect- 
 able characters ; and among the rest to Mr. 
 Law, a gentleman married to the grand- 
 daughter of Mrs, Washington, Mr. Law 
 
is an Englishman, and brother to Lord 
 Ellenborough. He gave Colonel Lyles 
 and myself an invitation to go to sleep at 
 his house ; but we were prevented by- 
 General Washington coming to sleep there 
 that night, and Colonel Lear, his secretary. 
 I had, however, the gratification to be in- 
 troduced to the General ; and Colonel 
 Lyles being a neighbour and a particular 
 acquaintance of his, a most pleasing evening 
 I spent. The General was quite sociable, 
 and received me very kindly. After sup- 
 per, at nine o'clock the General went to 
 bed, as that was his hour ; for the supper 
 in most houses being tea, and some broiled 
 fish, sausages, steaks, &c. it is generally 
 introduced between six and seven o'clock, 
 which was done that evening. Doctor 
 Thornton, Colonel Lyles, Mr. Law, and 
 myself, sat some hours after ; and the 
 Colonel and I went to sleep at a tavern in 
 the city, which was kept by an English- 
 man named Tunnercliffe. We were asked 
 the next morning to breakfast at Mr. Law's, 
 
6o 
 
 with the General ; which we did : and 
 the General gave me a most kind invita- 
 tion to go to see him in a few days. After 
 breakfast, he set off in his carriage for 
 Mount- Vernon. 
 
 Mr. Law having speculated largely in 
 city lots (viz. of the intended new federal 
 city, as it was called, of Washington J, he 
 offered to let Colonel Lyles and me have 
 any lot we should choose, at the price it 
 cost him, and to leave the money on com- 
 mon interest for any time we should men- 
 tion. We looked out a lot, and made a 
 conditional bargain. I was to make an 
 estimate and plan ; which I did. But the 
 expences of building I found very high ; 
 nor did I like the appearance of the place at 
 alL I began to think that it was too young 
 a city for a brewery, there not being above 
 three hundred houses ; nor could I find 
 that there was another man of any consi- * 
 derable moneyed property in the city, besides 
 Mr. Law. I thought too that, water being 
 the usual drink of the country, there was 
 
6i 
 
 very little probability of that custom 
 changing for some time ; and especially 
 while they were employed in building 
 houses, paving streets, &c. I therefore 
 made known these sentiments to Colonel 
 Lyles ; and we dropped that scheme. In- 
 deed, I began to think of coming to Eng- 
 land again. 
 
 After we had parted with the General, 
 and viewed the lot, we returned to the 
 tavern : where we found a gentleman 
 from Washington county, General Sprigg, 
 who was in search of me to buy some of 
 the cattle, or all of them, and the hogs ; 
 which he said were the best he had ever 
 seen come from England, though he had 
 had some himself, and had seen a great 
 many. He offered me a very good price 
 for some of them. I had determined to 
 sell every thing 1 had brought with me 
 (having soon, however, learnt that it was a 
 dangerous place to sell any thing without 
 having the money in hand) ; for I had 
 seen no land I thought good enough to 
 
62 
 
 keep such cattle as mine on, and they would 
 take a great deal of artificial support, which 
 I knew in all countries is very expensive, 
 especially in so poor a country as that. 
 The winter too had set in, which was very 
 severe, and such as I had never experienced 
 in England ; though it was not so severe as 
 had been expected, the thermometer being 
 now at 13 degrees, whereas I was told 
 it is sometimes down at 0. I then was in 
 great fear of my cattle and hogs being all 
 starved to death : for the w r eather having 
 been very hot in some part of our voyage, 
 k so as to make the cattle hang out their 
 tongues for several hours in the day, it had 
 caused them to cast their hair at a very 
 improper season ; which was much against 
 their standing such severe cold now, and 
 especially as no houses were to be had for 
 them. 
 
 I spent the day with General Sprigg at 
 George Town, w r hich joins to the city ; 
 and supped with him, in a tavern, on their 
 famous canvas-back ducks, the flesh of 
 
63 
 
 which is in my opinion superior to the 
 woodcock in England. These ducks are 
 to be found only in two rivers in America, 
 the Potowmac and the Susquehanna, which 
 seems a very odd circumstance ; and in 
 these rivers there are thousands of them. 
 I returned, next morning, to Alexandria ; 
 and in a day or two afterward went to 
 see General Washington. ' I dined with 
 him ; and he showed me several presents 
 that had been sent him, viz. swords, china, 
 and among the rest the key of the Bastille, 
 I spent a very pleasant day in the house, 
 as the weather was so severe that there 
 were no farming objects to see, the ground 
 being covered with snow. The General 
 wished me to stay all night ; but having 
 some other engagements, I declined his 
 kind offer. He sent Colonel Lear out after 
 I had parted with him, to ask me if I want- 
 ed any money ; which I gladly accepted, 
 
 A few days afterward I set off to Balti- 
 more, to see Mr. Thompson, with an inten- 
 tion to view his estate, I had previously 
 
64 
 
 obtained the General's approbation to print 
 a second edition of my EXPERIENCED 
 FARMER, and his permission to dedicate it 
 to him ; but he desired I would not mention 
 this in the dedication, as he had refused a 
 similar permission to a great number of his 
 own countrymen. I then opened my sub- 
 scription, in which I found great encou- 
 ragement as I travelled along, and uncom- 
 mon success in Baltimore. 
 
 At this last place I stopped a few days ; 
 and then went to Anapolis, to see an estate 
 of Mr. Thompson's, called Strawberry-hill. 
 I had a letter of introduction from Mr. 
 Gough of Baltimore, to General Ridgely ; 
 a gentleman of very great landed property, 
 and member of the assembly. The assem- 
 bly being at that time sitting at Anapolis, I 
 got introduced to Mr. Carrol, a gentleman 
 of the greatest property in America, and who 
 lives at Anapolis. He kindly asked me to 
 dine with him in two days from that time ; 
 and invited a great many of the assembly to 
 meet me there. The governor of Mary* 
 
65 
 
 land was in the company ; and I spent a 
 most agreeable day. 
 
 I went the next day to view Strawberry- 
 hill. I found it a beautiful situation, but 
 every thing in very bad order. It had 
 been a good house ; there were large gardens 
 and orchards, with a great number of dif- 
 ferent fruits, more than I had ever seen in 
 America, but the fruit-trees very much 
 broken and abused. Here was, however, 
 the same complaint as every where else. 
 The land was very poor, covered with sedge- 
 grass and small pine-trees, which latter par- 
 ticularly denote a poor soil. It was a place 
 for a man to spend money at, but I could 
 see very little prospect to get any ; other- 
 wise, Mr. Thompson's offer was such as it 
 seemed a folly to refuse for he requested 
 no rent ; and would repair the buildings, 
 lend me money, or any thing. But as I 
 had then formed an opinion of cows, and 
 selling milk, Anapolis appeared to me a 
 poor place, for there was nothing to keep 
 cows on ; and, if there was, no person to 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 buy milk, or at least no money to pay for 
 it with so I declined his very favourable 
 proposals. 
 
 I had then an offer from General Ridgely, 
 of a farm of great note, nine miles from 
 Baltimore. I got an invitation, and a letter 
 of introduction, to Colonel Mercer ; by 
 whom I was very kindly received, and I 
 found him a most agreeable man. He 
 was said to live on one of the best planta- 
 tions in America, and indeed I do not know 
 whether it be not as good as any I saw, 
 It is called West River ; and lies on the 
 west side of the bay. His cattle were very 
 poor. He had got two thrashing-ma- 
 chines, one of them from England, that 
 .were to 'thrash the ears only ; which he 
 said answered very well for thrashing 
 wheat injured by the mildew, or what the 
 Americans call the rust. I staid some time 
 there ; and the Colonel then introduced me 
 to a Mr. Stewart, a tobacco-planter. ,At 
 this gentleman's I spent an agreeable day, 
 and slept all night ; and then returned to 
 
67 
 
 Alexandria, to see my family, horses, cat- 
 tle, &c. 
 
 After a few days, I went into the coun- 
 try to see Colonel Lyles and some other 
 gentlemen ; and then set off to Baltimore. 
 In my journey I slept at Major Sriowdon's, 
 a very hospitable man indeed. He showed 
 me a bull of his, a stud horse, and some 
 different things ; but nothing of any superior 
 value, except a pair of coach-horses. I 
 arrived at Baltimore ; and^ soon afterward 
 set off to see General Ridgely's farm. 
 
 On my way I was introduced, by a Mr. 
 Thomas Ringold, to a Mr. Gittings, who 
 lives fourteen miles from Baltimore, a gen- 
 tleman of property and of good informa- 
 tion. He has the finest timothy-meadows 
 that are in America ; and knows how to 
 treat them better than any other man I ever 
 met with, either there or in England. 
 He told me an anecdote of his first gaining 
 the proper idea. He used to cut his timo- 
 thy-meadow as those meadows are in gene- 
 ral cut, viz. when they were in flower; 
 F 2 
 
68 
 
 but one year (by misfortune, as he then 
 thought) he was prevented from getting the 
 whole cut in the usual time, and about half 
 of his crop stood till it was quite brown in 
 the head and some of the leaf, and (he sup- 
 posed) was nearly spoiled for good hay. 
 The part that had been mown (as usual) 
 when in bloom and green, was by his order 
 particularly kept for his waggon-horses : 
 because, he having a merchant-mill, four- 
 teen miles from the city of Baltimore, and 
 the road being very bad, it was of great 
 consequence to him to keep his horses in 
 good condition, and he was therefore very 
 curious about their hay. Having too, at 
 that time, a waggoner (an Englishman) 
 that took great pride in the appearance of 
 his team, Mr. Gittings never suspected his 
 conduct in any order he might give ; but 
 during the winter, going to look at the 
 horses after what is called suppering them 
 up at night, he found, to his great surprise, 
 the brown hay in the rack. He imme- 
 diately put himself in a passion about the 
 
69 
 
 matter ; but the waggoner very mildly told 
 him, he had found the horses to eat the 
 brown hay the best ; and if Mr. Gittings 
 pleased, he would fetch some of the fine 
 green hay and put in the rack at one end, 
 and let the brown hay remain in the other, 
 and he would see in the morning the brown 
 hay would be eaten and the green hay left: 
 the man observed too that the green hay 
 would sell for more in the market than the 
 other, and thus there would be a saving. 
 This was done ; and in the morning the 
 horses had eaten the brown hay, and left 
 the green untouched. He made some other 
 experiments of the like nature during the 
 winter, and with the same effect. But fur- 
 ther. He could discover a difference in his 
 next year's crop. The meadows that stood 
 to be ripe had a much greater burthen than 
 the rest ; and he is fully convinced that the 
 great cause of his meadows not wanting 
 renewing, as in general others do, is the 
 time of cutting, A similar circumstance is 
 
70 
 
 mentioned in my former work* in curing 
 hay, I scarcely know any plant that it 
 does not very materially injure, to cut it 
 when the stump bleeds ; I have known it 
 entirely destroy a willow. This gentleman 
 waters greatest part of his meadows, and his 
 is the most productive farm I ever saw in 
 America. I rode over in the summer on 
 purpose to see his timothy-meadows ; 
 which were very fine indeed, and vastly 
 superior to any other in that country. 
 
 Now to resume my journey to view 
 General Ridgely's farm. In my way was 
 the residence of Mr. Ringold, whom I have 
 before mentioned. He had married a 
 daughter of Mr. Gittings ; and therefore I 
 must spend a night with him too. He 
 had built himself a very genteel house : 
 he said, in the English fashion ; though a 
 violent republican. His land was very 
 poor, and every thing in an unfinished 
 state. The next day he went with me to 
 General Ridgely's, where I stopped some 
 
 * Experienced Farmer, vol. ii. p. 99. 
 
71 
 
 days. The General's land is of great note, 
 being what is termed limestone land, and 
 more productive than any other in that 
 country. 
 
 In America, limestone is usually reckon- 
 ed the best soil, As this was quite contra- 
 ry to my former ideas, I wished much to 
 inform myself of the nature of the lime- 
 stone land there. I thought it might in all 
 probability grow saintfoin ; and it would 
 be of great value, should that prove the 
 case : but on examining the different strata, 
 I found them very irregular ; so much so, 
 that to one square yard that would grow 
 saintfoin, there were great distances that 
 would not. I apprehend, from the different 
 trials that have been made, it will not grow 
 for any length of time, if it would at all : 
 as I know in England saintfoin land must 
 be regular, and no great distance from the 
 rock ; for this herb in general takes its 
 nutriment from the stone, and not from the 
 surface or top soil, and the young plant 
 will die before it reaches the stone if at 
 
72 
 
 much depth. I was, therefore, frustrated 
 in my projects on this head. 
 
 The farm which the General had intend- 
 ed for me, was of four hundred acres ; with 
 a very good new house, smoke-house, a 
 spring-house for rnilk, and several other 
 useful and profitable things, besides a young 
 orchard of ten acres ; and the whole at about 
 four shillings currency per acre yearly rent. 
 Indeed he offered it at my own price ; and 
 to purchase me ploughs, horses, negroes, 
 and every thing else I might want for the 
 cultivation, and let me have the money at 
 common interest. I kindly thanked him : 
 but, however, rejected this offer. 
 
 The great cause of the fertility of the 
 limestone lands is, that the stone keeps it 
 cool in that hot climate. The General's 
 lands are very well cultivated, and much 
 better than most others in the country : 
 his cattle, sheep, horses, &c. of a superior 
 sort, and in much finer condition than 
 many that I saw in America. He is very 
 famous for race-horses, and usually keeps 
 
73 
 
 three or four horses in training, and what 
 enables him to do this is, that he has very 
 extensive iron-works, or otherwise he could 
 not, He is a very genteel man, and is said 
 to keep the best table in America. I con- 
 tinued in friendship with him to the time of 
 my leaving the country ; and as he had a 
 house in Baltimore, where he spent his 
 winter, I often experienced his great hospi- 
 tality. 
 
 In the General's farm was a part (of fifty 
 acres) equal in quality to Mr. Gittings's for 
 timothy-meadow : and by pains and la- 
 bour it might be watered ; but the expence 
 of those things in America are not to be 
 estimated, which forbids all improvements. 
 Besides, the roads from thence to Balti- 
 more are so bad for carriages, as to be a 
 day's work in the winter for a team ; and 
 horses are of much more chargeable keep- 
 ing than in England, from the two ex- 
 tremes of hot and cold. These fifty acres 
 produced a sort of grass, by nature rather 
 superior to most that I saw in the country : 
 
74 
 
 indeedj as a farm, it had the greatest natural 
 advantages of any farms I had occasion to 
 view that were to let. 
 
 While I remained with the General, a 
 half-brother of hi-s (of the name of Holi- 
 day) came and gave me an invitation to go 
 to see him. This gentleman was said to 
 be one of the best farmers in America; and 
 was as much distinguished for tillage as 
 Mr. Gittings for meadow. I went and 
 stopped a day with him : and as his farm 
 joined to General Ridgely's estates, I had 
 great satisfaction in his company ; and got 
 my own ideas substantiated by facts from 
 him, he having tried saintfoin, rye-grass, 
 and several other English grasses, and dif- 
 ferent things in the same way. He grow- 
 ed wheat upon his land, or on a small part 
 of it. He told me it was a very precarious 
 crop ; that his best produce was from eight 
 to ten bushels per acre ; and sometimes 
 not even the seed again, it being frequently 
 totally destroyed by the Hessian fly. Inrich 
 or highly-manured lands, the crops of wheat 
 
75 
 
 are seldom destroyed by that insect. On 
 the whole he concluded, there was nothing 
 to be got by growing wheat in that part of 
 the country. He shewed me his sheep ; 
 which were from the Cape of Good Hope, 
 and as fine as ever I saw of that sort, and 
 in good condition : but the number, 
 though six hundred acres of land in the 
 farm, was only sixteen sheep. In general, 
 the sheep kept are merely to grow wool for 
 making negroes' stockings, a little lamb and 
 mutton for themselves, and some few for 
 the butcher ; as no part of America is 
 proper for sheep, that I ever saw. 
 
 I again returned to Baltimore ; and met 
 with a Mr. O'Donnell, who, having been 
 informed of me, desired me to be intro- 
 duced to him being himself confined to 
 his bed with the gout. Though I had be- 
 gun to entertain a very low opinion of the 
 American lands, he still lowered it more ; 
 for he told me that he had brought between 
 sixty and seventy thousand pounds sterling 
 from the East-Indies into America, and 
 
could not live comfortably with it. The 
 cultivation of one's own land, he was sure 
 would make any man poor. 
 
 He had just got from Mr. Honeyborn a 
 bull and two cows, which had cost him 
 one thousand pounds currency. He wish- 
 ed me to dine with him. I did so ; and 
 he made me promise to go, as soon as he 
 was well enough, to Canton (the name of 
 the place where he kept these fine cattle) 
 to give my 1 opinion of them. That planta- 
 tion was at the distance of a mile and a half 
 from Baltimore ; and consisted of two 
 thousand five hundred acres. Soon after- 
 wards a day was appointed ; and I accom- 
 panied Mr. O'Donnell, General Ridgely, 
 and a Mr. Gough, to Canton* This last 
 gentleman was distinguished for breeding 
 short-horned and large cattle ; although 
 very improper for America, as no poor land 
 ought to have large animals upon it. We 
 found two tolerably good cows, or what 
 must be termed very good ones in America ; 
 the bull was but so-so. I gave Mr. O'Don- 
 
77 
 
 nell every encouragement on this new breed. 
 General Ridgely was highly pleased with 
 the sight ; and Mr. Gough having some 
 time before sold a bull to Mr. O'Donnell, by 
 my desire a comparative view was taken of 
 the two bulls when Mr. Gough was so 
 well convinced of the superiority of the 
 long-horned, that he desired to have the 
 first bull-calf that Mr. O'Donnell would 
 sell. We saw also some Chinese pigs, 
 ivhich were not good at all ; some blood- 
 horses ; an imported Irish cow , and seve* 
 ral other things : as a straw-chopper of a 
 new construction, but of no utility; a most 
 beautiful green-house ; a very handsome 
 garden, in great order ; and a hot-house. 
 Upon the whole, it was a very magnificent 
 ,place for that country ; though I have 
 heard Mr. O'Donnell frequently say, he 
 would rather live two years in England 
 than ten years in America. We returned, 
 and dined at Mr. O'Donnell's. He wished 
 me to call on him again, the first opportu- 
 nity ; which I did, and spent part of a day 
 
78 
 
 with him. He then surprised me more 
 than ever, by opening a fresh scene of 
 distress to me, which I felt sorry for. 
 
 From the many civilities I had received 
 in the town of Baltimore, I began to have 
 a respect for it ; and General Washington 
 having in a most friendly manner given 
 me his opinion of the whole country, 
 so that I might know how to situate my- 
 self, he had told me Baltimore was and 
 would be the risingest town in America, 
 except the federal city. But there being 
 many things previously necessary, to make 
 the produce get conveyed to the federal 
 city, that now in greatest part goes to Bal- 
 timore such as navigable cuts, turnpike- 
 roads, &c. I had made up my mind to 
 settle near to Baltimore ; thinking that as 
 I was in America, and had got a large sub- 
 scription to my intended treatise, a farm 
 would employ my family, and improve my 
 own ideas. I knew that situation was a 
 great point in any place ; and especially 
 where labour is so high, and indeed, in 
 
79 
 
 measure, scarcely to be obtained. 
 The General told me, Philadelphia would 
 decline ; but New- York would always 
 maintain an eminent commercial rank, from 
 its position the frost not stopping the na- 
 vigation so early, and sometimes not at all. 
 To convince me, he gave me reasons why 
 Baltimore and the federal city must be 
 ultimately places of great trade ; observing, 
 that from all the western country, which is 
 so extensive, and is said to be fertile, the 
 produce must come to these two markets 
 the Potowmac bringing it to the federal 
 city, and the Susquehanna to Baltimore. 
 
 To return to Mr. O'Donnell's informa- 
 tion. It was, that the merchants in Balti- 
 more, as a body of men, were not worth 
 a guinea ; and that in the course of one 
 year, there would be such distress among 
 them as would amaze me. He said, there 
 were indeed rich merchants in the place, 
 but these could not overbalance the poor 
 ones. Now, according to Mr. O'Donnell's 
 observation, this happened j and forty 
 
80 
 
 merchants failed in one month. He like- 
 wise told me that when peace should come, 
 one-third of the inhabitants must leave 
 Baltimore. It may be necessary to observe 
 to the reader, that Mr. O'Donnell is mate- 
 rially concerned in that city ; he having 
 there wharfs, houses, &c. to an immense 
 amount. Before that time, I thought Bal- 
 timore one of the most industrious, lively 
 places I ever saw, and do so yet : but from 
 my observations on all things, I do not 
 know how a body of people can be nation- 
 ally rich, where land is poor ; for, if the 
 produce costs more in raising and sending 
 to market than it is worth, I cannot see 
 from whence the riches of such a nation 
 are to come. Now, from the calculations 
 which will be hereafter stated under the 
 head of Experiments, it will appear plainly 
 that the lands of America are so barren, 
 that it will cost a man more to raise a crop, 
 and carry it to market, and return with 
 what he has obtained for his article, than 
 will afford him the usual comforts of life. 
 
81 
 
 The day after I left Mr. O'Donnell, I 
 had an offer from Mr. John Holmes, of a 
 grazing-farm on the Susquehanna river, 
 opposite Havre-de-Grace, and thirty-seven 
 miles from Baltimore. This was said to be 
 one of the best grazing-farms in America, 
 there was a mill seat upon it, and every 
 advantage. Mr. Holmes offered to join 
 with me in the concern. Finding the 
 tillage-farms in America to be attended with 
 so much expence, I was ready to embrace 
 this proposal : my friend Mr. O'Donnell 
 having offered me the use of a horse, I 
 took a ride to view the situation, accom- 
 panied by a Mr. Allen, a very respectable 
 merchant from Philadelphia. 
 
 The weather, however, being bad, and 
 Mr. Allen's company very agreeable, I 
 went forward to Philadelphia (without 
 staying to look at this farm), with letters of 
 introduction from different gentlemen in 
 Baltimore to some respectable persons in 
 Philadelphia ; and as congress was at that 
 time sitting, 1 had great opportunities both 
 
 G 
 
6f acquiring information and of soliciting 
 subscriptions to my intended Treatise. 
 My first introduction was to Colonel How- 
 ard, a very worthy man, and member of 
 the senate : his wife was one of the Chews 
 family in Philadelphia. From him I got 
 introduced to Mr. Jefferson, the then vice- 
 president, and now president. This gen- 
 tleman, being very fond of the subject of 
 agriculture, was kind enough to ask me to 
 step into his room any time when I should 
 find him at leisure. On such occasions 
 a most pleasant man I found him. Hif 
 travels having been chiefly into France, I 
 was much edified by hearing what was the 
 practice there ; and likewise what sort of 
 agriculture he carried on in that part of 
 Virginia where he lived. He made me a 
 present of the mold-board of a plough he 
 had invented himself; and told me of some 
 red peas, which he offered to give me. He 
 invited me to go to visit him, and showed 
 me every possible civility. He told me 
 the average crops of wheat in Virginia and 
 
S3 
 
 Maryland were nearly three bushels and a 
 half per acre. I was next introduced to a 
 gentleman of distinguished character ; Mr. 
 Boadley, the author of some SKETCHES 
 upon Agriculture, which I shall insert in 
 the present work. This I shall do to au- 
 thenticate my calculations ; and as showing 
 the produce in Pennsylvania, and on the 
 Chesapeak on the Bay. He having a most 
 Valuable estate on Why-Island, which he 
 cultivated himself for some years, the greater 
 part of this work is the result of actual 
 experience. Mr. Boadley introduced me 
 to Judge Peters ; who had written on the 
 mode of using plaster of Paris, and its effi- 
 cacy. I obtained some useful knowledge 
 from him. I was then introduced to Mr. 
 Stodard, secretary of the navy ; to Mr. 
 Timothy Pickering, secretary of the war- 
 office ; and several other eminent characters. 
 I omitted waiting on Mr. Adams, the thea 
 president, being told by Mr. Pickering that 
 he never subscribed to books. I soon after 
 became acquainted with Mr. Jeremiah Ward- 
 C 2 
 
84 
 
 cr, a quaker, a very useful and intelligent 
 man ; and he introduced me to a Mr. William 
 West, who i& famous for the improvements 
 he has made on grass, particularly timothy. 
 He feeds large quantities of cattle ; and 
 appears to have great judgment on the sub- 
 ject. Mr. Warder had some of the best 
 Chinese pigs I ever saw ; the most beauti- 
 ful that can be imagined : from my being 
 so pleased with them, he has sent some 
 over into this country, to a Mr. Barber's, 
 somewhere near Derby. 
 
 After staying in Philadelphia some days, 
 I got letters of introduction to different 
 gentlemen in New-York ; particularly the 
 Livingstones, who are very distinguished 
 characters, one of them being chancellor. 
 They made me an offer of an estate, form- 
 erly Lord Starling's ; but the weather 
 being very severe, and I now almost weary 
 of looking at lands in which I found none 
 that I liked, I declined their kindness. I 
 met with Mr. William King^ brother to 
 Mr* Rufus King, the American consul in 
 
85 
 
 England. He appeared a very well in- 
 formed man. He asked me much to go to 
 see him ; and wished me to fix myself in 
 the country where he lived, about three 
 hundred miles north ; but my curiosity be- 
 gan to be satisfied, and I resolved to live in 
 some settled part. I was very much attach^ 
 ed to Baltimore ; finding that New- York 
 and Philadelphia were much cheaper sup- 
 plied with the land's produce than that city; 
 they having great plenty of hay, more 
 clover than could be sold, excellent beef, 
 good veal, (the mutton but middling,) pork 
 very fine, turkeys very fine, and all sorts of 
 poultry ; vegetables in very great plenty. 
 I returned, therefore, from New- York, 
 after passing a few days ; and having an 
 introductory letter from Mr. Warder to the 
 quakers, I received many civilities from them, 
 particularly as subscribers to my books. 
 
 In my return from New-York to Phila- 
 delphia I had promised to meet Mr. Warder, 
 at a plantation of his $ which caused me to 
 change my road. In my journey between 
 
86 
 
 New-York and Philadelphia along that road, 
 thefarm- housesseemed tobeas thicklyplant- 
 ed as in most parts of England, and had a 
 greater show of produce than I ever saw any 
 where else in America ; but from the best 
 information I could get, land was very 
 dear. I met Mr. Warder at his farm. He 
 had an English servant, who had formerly 
 lived in the county of Lincoln, and who 
 now complained very heavily of America : 
 the man brought over one hundred pounds 
 sterling with him ; and though he had been 
 no adventurer, yet he had got rid of most of 
 his money : he talked much of returning. 
 Mr. Warder had built a barn of a large size, 
 I imagine on a Dutch plan ; it had cellars 
 under it, arched, for turnips, potatoes, &c. 
 to keep them from the most severe frost, 
 I found many of this sort of improvements ; 
 but nothing in them, or so little as to be 
 worth no notice ; which disgusted me much 
 with this reputed rich land country. All 
 this time I had not seen any wheat, barley, 
 pr oatrStacks, nor any thing of the kind. 
 
87 
 
 There were a few half-starved cattle ; in- 
 general standing shaking with cold, and 
 many more complaining of what they call 
 the hollow-horn. This arises from matter 
 in the horn, which kills numbers. They cut 
 the horns off in some that are affected, or 
 stop up the hollow part of the horns (after 
 the matter is run out) with rosin and tow, 
 this repeated as a dressing to a wound ; 
 and thus they cure now and then one. 
 The Hessian fly is another complaint. 
 Little or no wheat grown there ; the rust 
 (which we call mildew) much prevails. 
 I rather suspect that a fat beast never has 
 the hollow-horn : it comes from cold and 
 hunger, which is the general complaint of 
 the animals in America ; and from the two 
 extremes of weather, it must be expected, 
 and want of food. 
 
 After viewing Mr. Warder's improve- 
 ments, I returned with him to Philadelphia. 
 Here I was met by Judge Turner, who 
 had been at Mount- Vernon and had heard 
 of me. He offered to give me two hundred 
 
88 
 
 acres of land called priory, that is, rich mea- 
 dow without wood upon it, to be chosen out 
 of six thousand acres. This staggered me 
 much, and I had almost made up my mind 
 to go ; but having got acquainted with a 
 gentleman named Woods, a member of 
 congress, who lived at Pittsburgh, I told 
 him my offer and intention. He at once 
 condemned the design which appeared to 
 me so reasonable. He said it would be 
 shameful to allow me to go ; the situation 
 was about eight hundred miles from Phila- 
 delphia, and as far from market ; and all the 
 produce must be raised by my own labour 
 and that of my family and as to money, 
 there would be no such thing. He said, 
 none but fools ought to go ; and he would 
 much rather, from the respect he entertained 
 for me, follow me to my grave, than see 
 me set off to such a place. This gentle- 
 man, who lives near those back coun- 
 tries, thus prevented me accepting any of 
 the lands ; and on this account I shall ever 
 respect his name : for since that time, I 
 
89 
 
 have met with some from those back woods 
 who now and then stray into 'a city ; and 
 they look like persons who have been lost in 
 a wilderness for years. 
 
 About this time I met with General 
 Humpton, who had been an officer in the 
 American war, and a great friend to Gene- 
 ral Washington ; and I told him of Judge 
 Turner's kind offer. He condemned the 
 scheme totally, and gave me the following 
 narratives, published by Dr. Knight and Mr. 
 Slover, of the cruel murder of Colonel 
 Crawford, by the Indians in the back woods 
 of Kentucky, and of their wonderful escape; 
 from which will be seen the danger I avoided 
 by not settling in those parts. 
 
 Dr. Knight says " About the latter end 
 of the month of March, or the beginning of 
 April, of the year 1 782, the western Indians 
 began to make incursions upon the frontiers 
 of Ohio, Washington, Youghagany, and 
 Westmoreland counties, which has been their 
 constant practice ever since the commence- 
 
90 
 
 ment of the present war between the United 
 States and Great- Britain. 
 
 " In consequence of these predatory in- 
 vasions, the principal officers of the above- 
 mentioned counties, namely, Colonels Wil- 
 liamson and Marshall, tried every method 
 in their power to set on foot an expedition 
 against the Wyandot towns, which they 
 could effect no other way than by giving 
 all possible encouragement to volunteers. 
 The plan proposed was as follows : Every 
 man furnishing himself with a horse, a gun, 
 and one month's provisions, should be ex- 
 empted from two tours of militia duty. 
 Likewise that every one who had been 
 plundered by the Indians, should, if the 
 plunder could be found at their towns, have 
 it again, proving it to be his property : 
 and all horses lost on the expedition, by 
 unavoidable accident, were to be replaced 
 by horses taken in the enemy's country. 
 
 " The time appointed for the rendezvous, 
 or general meeting of the volunteers, was 
 
91 
 
 fixed to be on the 20th of May, and the 
 place, the old Mingoe town on the west 
 side of the river Ohio, about forty miles 
 below Fort Pitt by land, and I think about 
 seventy-five by water, - 
 
 " Colonel Crawford was solicited by the 
 general voice of these western counties and 
 districts to command the expedition. He 
 accordingly set out as volunteer, and came 
 to Fort Pitt two days before the time 
 appointed for the assembling of the men. 
 As there was no surgeon yet appointed to 
 go with the expedition, Colonel Crawford 
 begged the favour of General Irvine to per- 
 mit me to accompany him, (my consent 
 having been previously asked,) to which the 
 General agreed provided Colonel Gibson 
 did not object, 
 
 " Having obtained permission of the 
 Colonel, I left Fort Pitt on Tuesday, May 
 1st, and the next day about one in the 
 afternoon arrived at the Mingoe bottom. 
 The volunteers had not all crossed the river 
 until Friday morning the 24th, they then 
 
distributed themselves into eighteen com-, 
 panics, choosing their captains by vote. 
 There were chosen, also, one colonel 
 commandant, four field and one brigade- 
 major. There were four hundred and 
 sixty- five who voted. 
 
 " We began our march on Saturday 
 May 25th, making almost a due west course, 
 and on the fourth day reached the old 
 Moravian town, upon the river Muskingum, 
 about sixty miles from the river Ohio. 
 Some of the men, having lost their horses 
 on the night preceding, returned home. 
 
 " Tuesday the 28th, in the evening, 
 Major Brenton and Captain Bean went some 
 distance from camp to reconnoitre : having 
 gone about one quarter of a mile they saw 
 two Indians upon whom they fired, and 
 then returned to camp. This was the first 
 place in which w T e were discovered, as we 
 understood afterwards. 
 
 " On Thursday the 4th of June, which 
 was the eleventh day of our march, about 
 one o'clock we came to the spot where the 
 
9-3 
 
 town of Sandusky formerly stood : the in- 
 habitants had moved eighteen miles lower 
 down the creek, nearer the lower Sandusky : 
 but as neither our guides nor any who were 
 with us had known any thing of their 
 removal, we began to conjecture there were 
 no Indian towns nearer than the lower 
 Sandusky, which was at least forty miles 
 distant. 
 
 . " However, after refreshing our horses, 
 we advanced oh in search of some of their 
 settlements, but had scarcely got the distance 
 of three or four miles from the old town 
 when a number of our men expressed their 
 desire to return, some of them alleging that 
 they had only five days' provision : upon 
 which the field-officers and captains deter- 
 mined, in council, to proceed that after- 
 noon, and no longer. Previous to the call- 
 ing of this council, a small party of light- 
 horse had been sent forward to reconnoitre. 
 " I shall here remark, by the way, that 
 there are a great many extensive plains in 
 that country. The woods in general grow 
 
9* 
 
 very thin, free from brush and underwood: 
 so that light-horsemen may advance a con- 
 siderable distance before an army without 
 being much exposed to the enemy. 
 
 " Just as the council ended, an express 
 returned from the above-mentioned party 
 of light -horse with intelligence, * That they 
 c had been about three miles in front, and 
 
 * had seen a large body of Indians running 
 
 * towards them.' In a short time we saw 
 the rest of the light-horse, who joined us ; 
 and, having gone One mile further, met a 
 number of Indians, who had partly got 
 possession of a piece of woods before us 
 whilst we were in the plains ; but our men^ 
 alighting from their horses and rushing 
 into the woods, soon obliged them to aban- 
 don that place. 
 
 " The enemy, being by this time rein- 
 forced, flanked to the right ; and, part of 
 them coming in our rear, quickly made the 
 action more serious. The firing continued 
 very warm on both sides, from four o'clock 
 until the dusk of the evening, each party 
 
95 
 
 41 
 
 maintaining their ground. Next morning, 
 about six o'clock, some guns were dis- 
 charged at the distance of two or three hun- 
 dred yards, which continued till day, doing 
 little or no execution on either side. 
 
 "The field-officers then assembled and 
 agreed, as the enemy were every moment 
 increasing, and we had already a number 
 wounded, to retreat that night. The whole 
 body was to form into three lines, keeping 
 the wounded in the centre. We had four 
 killed and twenty-three wounded; of the 
 latter, seven very dangerously ; on which 
 account as many biers were got ready to 
 carry them : most of the rest were slightly 
 wounded, and none so bad but they could 
 ride on horseback. After dark, the officers 
 went on the out-posts, and brought in all 
 the men as expeditiously as they could. 
 Just as the troops were about to form, 
 several guns were fired by the enemy ; 
 upon which some of our men spoke out and 
 said, * Our intention was discovered by the 
 * Indians, who were firing alarm-guns/ 
 
96 
 
 Upon which some in front hurried off, and 
 the rest immediately followed, leaving the 
 seven men that were dangerously wounded ; 
 some of whom, however, got off on horse- 
 back, by means of some good friends, who 
 waited for, and assisted them. 
 
 " We had not got a quarter of a mile from 
 the field of action, when I heard Colonel 
 Crawford calling for his son, John Craw- 
 ford; his son-in-law, Major Harrison ; Ma- 
 jor Rose and William Crawford, his ne- 
 phews : upon which I came up and told 
 him, I believed they were before us. He 
 asked, ' Was that the Doctor?'! told him, 
 it was. He then replied, they were not in 
 front, and begged of me not to leave him. 
 I promised him I would not. 
 
 44 We then waited, and continued calling 
 for these men till the troops had passed us. 
 The Colonel told me, his horse had almost 
 given out ; that he could not keep up with 
 the troops ; and wished some of his best 
 friends to remain with him. He then ex- 
 claimed against the militia, for riding off in 
 
97 
 
 such an irregular manner, and leaving some 
 of the wounded behind, contrary to his 
 orders. Presently there came two men 
 riding after us ; one of them an old man, 
 the other a lad : we enquired if they had 
 seen any of the above persons ; and they 
 answered they had not. 
 
 " By this time there was a very hot firing 
 before us, and, as we judged, near where 
 our main body must have been, Our course 
 was then nearly south-west ; but, changing 
 it, we went north about two miles, the two 
 men remaining in company with us. Judg- 
 ing ourselves to be now out of the enemy's 
 lines, we took a due east course, taking care 
 to keep at the distance of fifteen or twenty 
 yards apart, and directing ourselves by the 
 north-star. 
 
 " The old man often lagged behind; and, 
 when this was the case, never failed to call 
 for us to halt for him. When we were 
 near the Sandusky Creek he fell one hun- 
 dred yards behind, and bawled out, as usual, 
 for us to halt. While we were preparing to 
 
 H 
 
reprimand him for making a noise, I heard 
 an Indian halloo, as I thought one hundred 
 and fifty yards from the man, and partly 
 behind him : after this we did not hear the 
 man call again, neither did he ever come up 
 to us any more. It was now past midnight, 
 and about day-break Colonel Crawford's 
 and the young man's horses gave out, and 
 they left them. We pursued our journey 
 eastward, and about two o'clock fell in with 
 Captain Biggs, who had carried Lieutenant 
 Ashley from the field of action, who had 
 been dangerously wounded. We then, 
 went on about the space of an hour, when 
 a heavy rain coming on, we concluded it 
 was best to encamp, as we were encumber-^ 
 ed with the wounded officer. We then 
 barked four or five trees, made an encamp- 
 ment and a fire, and remained there all that 
 night. Next morning we again prosecuted 
 our journey ; and, having gone about three 
 miles, found a deer which had been recently 
 killed. The meat was sliced from the bones, 
 and bundled up in the skin, with a toma-. 
 
99 
 
 hawk lying by it. We carried all with us, 
 and, in advancing about one mile further, 
 espied the smoke of a fire. We then gave 
 the wounded officer into the charge of the 
 young man, desiring him to stay behind, 
 whilst the Colonel, the Captain, and myself, 
 walked up as cautiously as we could toward 
 the fire. When we came to it we concluded, 
 from several circumstances, some of our 
 people had encamped there the preceding 
 night. We then went about roasting the 
 venison ; and, when just about to march, 
 observed one of our men coming upon our 
 tracks. He seemed at first very shy ; but, 
 having called to him, he came up, and told 
 us he was the person who had killed the 
 deer ; but upon hearing us come up, was 
 afraid of Indians, hid in a thicket, and made 
 off. Upon this, we gave him some bread 
 and roasted venison, proceeded altogether 
 on our journey, and about two o'clock 
 came upon the paths by which we had gone 
 out. Captain Biggs and myself did not 
 think it safe to keep the road; but the 
 H2 
 
100 
 
 Colonel said, the Indians would not follow 
 the troops farther than the plains, which 
 we were then considerably past. As the 
 wounded officer rode Captain Biggs's horse, 
 I lent the Captain mine ; the Colonel and 
 myself went about one hundred yards in 
 front, the Captain and the wounded officer in 
 the centre, and the two young men behind. 
 After we had travelled about one mile and a 
 half, several Indians started up within fifteen 
 or twenty steps of the Colonel and me. As 
 we at first discovered only three, I imme- 
 diately got behind a large black oak, made 
 ready my piece and raised it up to take 
 sight, when the Colonel called to me twice 
 not to fire ; upon that one of the Indians ran 
 up to the Colonel and took him by the hand. 
 The Colonel then told me to put down my 
 gun, which I did. At that instant one of 
 them came up to me, whom I had formerly 
 seen very often, calling me c Doctor!' and 
 took me by the hand. They were Dela- 
 ware Indians of the Wingenim tribe.* 
 Captain Biggs fired amongst them, but did 
 
101 
 
 no execution. They then told us, to call 
 these people and make them come there, 
 else they would go and kill them, which 
 the Colonel did; but they four got off, and 
 escaped for that time. The Colonel and I 
 were then taken to the Indian camp, which 
 was about half a mile from the place, where 
 we were captivated. On Sunday evening, 
 five Delawares, who had posted themselves 
 at some distance further on the road, 
 brought back to the camp, where we lay, 
 Captain Biggs' and Lieutenant Ashley's 
 scalps, with an Indian scalp which Captain 
 Biggs had taken in the field of action : they 
 also brought in Biggs' horse and mine; they 
 told us the two other men got away from them. 
 
 "Monday morning, the loth of June, 
 we were paraded to march to Sandusky, 
 about thirty-three miles distant : they had 
 eleven prisoners of us and four scalps, the 
 Indians being seventeen in number. 
 
 " Colonel Crawford was very desirous to 
 see a certain Simeon Girty, who lived among 
 the Indians, and was on this account permit- 
 
102 
 
 ted to go to town the same night, with two 
 warriors to guard him, having orders at the 
 same time to pass by the place where the 
 Colonel had turned out his horse, that they 
 might, if possible, find him. The rest of 
 us were taken as far as the old town, which 
 was within eight miles of the new. 
 
 " Tuesday morning, the 1 1 th, Colonel 
 Crawford was brought out to us, on purpose 
 to be marched in with the other prisoners. 
 I asked the Colonel if he had seen Mr. 
 Girty ? He told me, he had ; and that 
 Girty had promised to do every thing in 
 his power for him : but that the Indians 
 were very much enraged against the pri- 
 soners ; particularly Captain Pipe, one of 
 the chiefs. He likewise told me, that Girty 
 had informed him that his son-in-law (Colo- 
 nel Harrison) and his nephew (William 
 Crawford) were made prisoners by the 
 Shawanese, but had been pardoned. This 
 Captain Pipe had come from the towns about 
 an hour before Colonel Crawford, and had 
 painted all the prisoners' faces black. 
 
103 
 
 " As he was painting me, he told me I 
 should go to the Shawanese towns and see 
 my friends. When the Colonel arrived, he 
 painted him black also ; told him he was 
 glad to see him, and that he would have 
 him shaved when he came to see his friends 
 at the Wyandot town. When we marched, 
 the Colonel and I were kept back, between 
 Pipe and Wyngenim, the two Delaware 
 chiefs ; the other nine prisoners were sent 
 forward with another party of Indians, 
 As we went along, we saw four of the pri- 
 soners lying by the path tomahawked and 
 scalped ; some of them were at the distance 
 of half a mile from each other. When we 
 arrived within half a mile of the place 
 where the Colonel was executed, we over- 
 took the five prisoners that remained alive : 
 the Indians had caused them to sit down on 
 the ground, as they did ; also the Colonel 
 and me at some distance from them : I was 
 there given in charge to an Indian fellow, 
 to be taken to the Shawanese towns. 
 " In the place where we were now made 
 
104 
 
 to sit down there was a number of squaws 
 and boys, who fell on the five prisoners and 
 tomahawked them. There was a certain 
 John M'Kinley amongst the prisoners, 
 formerly an officer in the 13th Virginia 
 regiment, whose head an old squaw cut off*, 
 and the Indians kicked it about upon the 
 ground. The young Indian fellows came 
 often where the Colonel and I were, and 
 dashed the scalps in our faces. We were 
 then conducted along toward the place 
 where the Colonel was afterwards executed : 
 when we came within about half a mile of 
 it, Simeon Girty met us, with several In- 
 dians on horseback. He spoke to the Colo- 
 nel; but, as I was about one hundred and 
 fifty yards behind, could not hear what 
 passed between them. 
 
 " Almost every Indian we met struck 
 us, either with sticks or their fists. Girty 
 waited till I was brought up, and asked, 
 * Was that the Doctor?' I told him, c Yes;' 
 and went toward him reaching out my 
 hand: but he bid me * Be gone!' and called 
 
105 
 
 me * A d d rascal!' upon which the fel- 
 low who had me in charge pulled me along, 
 Girty rode up after me, and told me I was 
 to go to the Shawanese towns. 
 
 5 , When we were come to the fire the 
 Colonel was stripped naked, ordered to sit 
 down by the fire, and then they beat him 
 with sticks and their fists. Presently after 
 I was treated in the same manner. They 
 then tied a rope to the foot of a post about 
 fifteen feet high, bound the Colonel's hands 
 behind his back, and fastened the rope to the 
 ligature between his wrists. The rope was 
 long enough either for him to sit down or 
 walk round the post once or twice, and 
 return the same way. The Colonel then 
 called to Girty, and asked if they intended 
 to burn him? Girty answered, 'Yes/ 
 The Colonel said, he would take it all 
 patiently. Upon this, Captain Pipe, a 
 Delaware chief, made a speech to the Indians, 
 viz. about thirty or forty men, sixty or 
 seventy squaws and boys.' 
 
 " When the speech was finished, they all 
 
106 
 
 yelled a hideous and hearty assent to what 
 had been said. The Indian men then took 
 up their guns and shot powder into the 
 Colonel's body, from his feet as far up as 
 his neck. I think not less than seventy 
 loads were discharged upon his naked body. 
 They then crowded about him; and, to 
 the best of my observation, cut off his ears: 
 when the throng had dispersed a little, I saw 
 the blood running from both sides of his 
 head in consequence thereof. 
 
 " The fire was about six or seven yards 
 from the post to which the Colonel was 
 tied: it was made of small hickory poles, 
 burnt quite through in the middle, each end 
 of the poles remaining about six feet in 
 length. Three or four Indians, by turns, 
 would take up, individually, one of these 
 burning pieces of wood and apply it to his 
 naked body, already burned black with the 
 powder. These tormentors presented them- 
 selves on every side of him, so that which- 
 ever way he ran round the post they met 
 him with the burning; faggots and poles* 
 
10? 
 
 Some of the squaws took broad boards upon 
 which they would put a quantity of burn- 
 ing coals and hot embers, and throw on 
 him, so that in a short time he had nothing 
 but coals of fire and hot ashes to walk upon. 
 
 " In the midst of these extreme tortures 
 he called to Simeon Girty, and begged of 
 him to shoot him : but Girty making no 
 answer, he called to him again. Girty then, 
 by way of derision, told the Colonel he 
 had no gun; at the same time, turning 
 about to an Indian who was behind him, 
 laughed heartily, and by all his gestures 
 seemed delighted at the horrid scene. 
 
 " Girty then came up to me, and bade 
 me prepare for death. He said, however, I 
 was not to die at that place, but to be burnt 
 at the Shawanese towns. He swore by 
 G d! I need not expect to escape death, 
 but should suffer it in all its extremities. 
 
 " He then observed that some prisoners had 
 given him to understand that if our people 
 had him they would not hurt him ; for his 
 part, he said, he did not believe it, but 
 
108 
 
 desired to know my opinion of the matter; 
 but being at that time in great anguish and 
 distress for the torments the Colonel was 
 suffering before my eyes, as well as the 
 expectation of undergoing the same fate in 
 two days, I made little or no answer. 
 He expressed a great deal of ill-will for 
 Colonel Gibson, and said he was one of his 
 greatest enemies, and more to the same 
 purpose; to all which I paid very little 
 attention. 
 
 " Colonel Crawford, at this period of his 
 sufferings, besought the Almighty to have 
 mercy on his soul, spoke very low, and 
 bore his torments with the most manly 
 fortitude. He continued in all the extre- 
 mities of pain for an hour and three quar- 
 ters, or two hours longer, as near as I can 
 judge ; when at last, being almost spent, he 
 lay down on his belly : they then scalped 
 him, and repeatedly threw the scalp in my 
 face, telling me c That was my great Cap- 
 4 tain !' An old squaw (whose appearance 
 every way answered the ideas people en- 
 
109 
 
 tertain of the devil) got a board, took a 
 parcel of coals and ashes, and laid them on 
 his back and head after he had been scalped. 
 He then raised himself upon his feet, and 
 began to walk round the post : they next 
 put a burning stick to him as usual, but he 
 seemed more insensible of pain than before. 
 
 " The Indian fellow who had me in 
 charge now took me away to Captain Pipe's 
 house, about three quarters of a mile from 
 the place of the Colonel's execution. I 
 was bound all night, and thus prevented 
 from seeing the last of the horrid spectacle. 
 Next morning, being June 1 2th, the Indian 
 untied me, painted me black, and we set off 
 for the Shawanese town, which he told me 
 was somewhat less than forty miles from 
 that place. We soon came to the spot 
 where the Colonel had been burnt, as it was 
 partly in our way : I saw his bones lying 
 amongst the remains of the fire almost burnt 
 to ashes. I suppose, after he was dead, 
 they had laid his body on the fire. 
 
 <( Tke Indian told me, that was my Big 
 
110 
 
 Captain ! and gave the scalp halloo. He was 
 on horseback, and drove me before him. 
 
 " I pretended to this Indian I was igno- 
 rant of the death I was to die at the Shawa- 
 nese town, affected as cheerful a counten- 
 ance as possible, and asked him if we 
 were not to live together as brothers in one 
 house when we should get to the town ? 
 He seemed well pleased, and said * Yes.' 
 He then asked me if I could make a wig- 
 wam ? I told him, ' I could. 1 He then 
 seemed more friendly. We went that day 
 as near as I can judge about twenty-five 
 miles, the course partly south-west. The In- 
 dian told me we should next day come to the 
 town, the sun being in such a direction,point- 
 ing nearly south. At night, when we went to 
 rest, I attempted very often to untie myself; 
 but the Indian was extremely vigilant, and 
 scarcely ever shut his eyes that night. About 
 day-break he got up and untied me: he 
 next began to mend up the fire ; and, as 
 the gnats were troublesome, I asked him if 
 I should make a smoke behind him ?- 
 
Ill 
 
 said, 'Yes.' I then took the end of a dog- 
 wood fork, which had been burnt down to 
 about eighteen inches long : it was the 
 longest stick I could find, yet too small for 
 the purpose I had in view : then I picked 
 up another stick; and, taking a coal of 
 fire between them, went behind him : then, 
 turning suddenly about, I struck him on 
 the head with all the force I was master of, 
 which so stunned him that he fell forwards 
 with both his hands into the fire ; but see- 
 ing him recover and get up, I seized his 
 gun, while he ran off howling in a most 
 fearful manner. I followed him with a 
 determination to shoot him down ; but, 
 pulling back the cock of the gun with too 
 great violence, I believe I broke the main 
 spring. I pursued him, however, about 
 thirty yards, still endeavouring to fire the 
 gun, but could not : then, going back to 
 the fire, I took his blanket, a pair of new 
 mokkisons, his hoppes, powder-horn, bullet- 
 bag, together with the gun, and marched 
 pff, directing my course toward the five 
 
o'clock mark. About half an hour before 
 sun- set I came to the plains, which I think 
 are about sixteen miles wide. I laid me 
 down in a thicket till dark, and then by the 
 assistance of the north-star made my way 
 through them, and got into the woods be- 
 fore morning. I proceeded on the next 
 day; and, about noon, crossed the paths by 
 which our troops had gone out : these paths 
 are nearly east and west; but I went due 
 north all that afternoon with a view to 
 avoid the enemy. 
 
 " In the evening I began to be very faint: 
 and no wonder; I had been six days pri- 
 soner; the last two days of which I had 
 eat nothing, and but very little the first 
 three or four. There were wild goose- 
 berries in abundance in the woods ; but, 
 being unripe, required mastication, which 
 at that time I was not able to perform, on 
 account of a blow received from an Indian 
 on the jaw with the back of a tomahawk. 
 There was a weed that grew plentifully ia 
 that place, the juice of which I knew to be 
 
113 
 
 grateful and nourishing ; I gathered a 
 bundle of the same, took up my lodging 
 under a large spreading beech-tree, and 
 having sucked plentifully of the juice went 
 to sleep. Next day I made a due east 
 course, which I generally kept the rest of 
 my journey. I often imagined my gun was 
 only wood-bound, and tried every method 
 I could devise to unscrew the lock ; but 
 never could effect it, having no knife nor 
 any thing fitting for the purpose. I had 
 now the satisfaction to find my jaw began 
 to mend, and in four or five days could 
 chew any vegetable proper for nourish- 
 ment ; but finding my gun only a useless 
 burden, left her in the wilderness. I had 
 no apparatus for making fire to sleep by, 
 so that I could get but little rest for the 
 gnats and musketoes : there are likewise a 
 great many swamps in the beech-ridge, 
 which occasioned me very often to lie wet. 
 This ridge, through which I travelled, is 
 about twenty miles broad, the ground in 
 general very level and rich, free from 
 
 I 
 
114 
 
 shrubs and brush : there are, however, very 
 few springs ; yet wells might easily be dug 
 in all parts of that ridge : the timber on it 
 is very lofty ; but it is no easy matter to 
 make a straight course through the same, 
 the moss growing as high upon the south 
 side of the trees as on the north. There 
 are a great many white oaks, ash, and 
 hickory-trees that grow among the beech 
 timber : there are likewise some places on 
 the ridge, perhaps for three or fourcontinued 
 miles, where there is little or no beech ; and 
 in such spots, black, white oak, ash, and 
 hickory, abound. Sugar-trees grow there 
 also to a very great bulk : the soil is re- 
 markably good, the ground a little ascend- 
 ing and descending, with some small rivu- 
 lets and a few springs. When I got out of 
 the beech-ridge, and nearer the river Mus- 
 kingum, the lands were more broken ; but 
 equally rich with those before mentioned, 
 and abounding with brooks and springs of 
 water. There are also several small creeks 
 that empty into that river, the bed of which 
 
115 
 
 is more than a mile wide in many places. 
 The woods consist of white and black oaks, 
 walnut, hickory, and sugar-tree, in the 
 greatest abundance. In all parts of the 
 country through which I came, the game 
 was very plenty ; that is to say, deer, tur- 
 keys, and pheasants : I likewise saw a great 
 many vestiges of bears, and some elks. 
 
 " I crossed the river Muskingum about 
 three or four miles below Fort Laurence; 
 and, crossing all paths, aimed for the Ohio 
 river. All this time my food was goose- 
 berries, young nettles, the juice of herbs, a 
 few service- berries, and some May-apples ; 
 likewise, two young blackbirds and a turri- 
 pine, which I devoured raw. When my 
 food sat heavy on my stomach, I used to 
 eat a little wild ginger, which put all to 
 rights. 
 
 " I came upon Ohio river, about five 
 miles below Fort M'Intosh, in the evening 
 of the twenty-first day after I had made my 
 escape; and on the twenty-second, about 
 seven o'clock in the morning (being the 4th 
 I 2 
 
116 
 
 day of July), arrived safe, though very much 
 fatigued, at the Fort. 
 
 " Colonel Crawford was about fifty years 
 of age -, had been an old warrior against the 
 savages. He distinguished himself early as 
 a volunteer in the last war, and was taken 
 notice of by Colonel (now General) Wash- 
 ington, who procured for him the commis- 
 sion of ensign. As a partisan, he showed 
 himself very active, and was greatly success- 
 ful : he took several Indian towns ; and 
 did great service in scouting, patroling, and 
 defending the frontiers. At the commence- 
 ment of this war, he raised a regiment in 
 the back-country by his own exertions. 
 He had the commission of colonel in the 
 continental army, and acted bravely on 
 several occasions in the years 1/7 6, 1777* 
 and at other times. He held his commis- 
 sion at the time he took command of the 
 militia in the aforesaid expedition against 
 the Indians : most probably he had it with 
 him when he was taken. He was a man of 
 good judgment, singular good nature, and 
 
117 
 
 great humanity, and remarkable for his 
 hospitality; few strangers coming to the 
 western country, and not spending some 
 days at the crossings of the Yochaghany 
 river where he lived : no man, therefore, 
 could be more regretted." 
 
 The following is the narrative of John 
 Slover: 
 
 " Having in the last war been a prisoner 
 amongst the Indians many years, and so be- 
 ing well acquainted with the country west of 
 the Ohio, I was employed as a guide in the 
 expedition under Colonel William Craw- 
 ford against the Indian towns on or near 
 the river Sandusky. It will be unnecessary 
 for me to relate what is so well known, the 
 circumstances and unfortunate event of that 
 expedition ; it will t> sufficient to observe, 
 that having on Tuesday the 4th of June 
 fought the enemy near Sandusky, we lay 
 that night in our camp, and the next day 
 fired on each other at the distance of three 
 hundred yards, doing little or no execution. 
 In the evening of that day it was proposed 
 
118 
 
 by Colonel Crawford, as I have been since 
 informed, to draw off with order ; but at 
 the moment of our retreat the Indians (who 
 had probably perceived that we were about 
 to retire) firing alarm-guns, our men broke 
 and rode off in confusion, treading down 
 those who were on foot, and leaving the 
 wounded men who supplicated to be taken 
 with them. 
 
 " I was with some others on the rear of 
 our troops, feeding our horses in the glade, 
 when our men began to break. The main 
 body of our people had passed by me a 
 considerable distance before I was ready to 
 set out. I overtook them before they crossed 
 the glade, and was advanced almost in front. 
 The company in which I was had separated 
 from me, and had endeavoured to pass a 
 morass ; for, coming up, I found their 
 horses had stuck fast in the morass, and, 
 endeavouring to pass, mine also in a short 
 time stuck fast. I ought to have said, the 
 company of five or six men with which I 
 had been immediately connected, and who 
 
119 
 
 were some distance to the right of the main 
 body, had separated from me, &c. I tried 
 a long time to disengage my horse, until I 
 could hear the enemy just behind me and 
 on each side, but in vain. Here then I was 
 obliged to leave him. The morass was so 
 unstable that I was to the middle in it, and 
 it was with the greatest difficulty that I got 
 across it ; but which having at length done, 
 I came up with the six men, who had left 
 their horses in the same manner I had done; 
 two of these, my companions, having lost 
 their guns. 
 
 " We travelled that night, making our 
 course towards Detroit, with a view to shun 
 the enemy, who we conceived to have taken 
 the paths by which the main body of our 
 people had retreated. Just before day we 
 got into a second deep morass, and were 
 under the necessity of stopping until it was 
 light to see our way through it. The whole 
 of this day we travelled toward the Shaw- 
 anese towns, with a view of throwing our- 
 selves still farther out of the search of the 
 
120 
 
 eaemy. About ten o'clock this day we sat 
 down to eat a little, having tasted nothing 
 from Tuesday, the day of our engagement, 
 until this time which was on Thursday; 
 and now the only thing we had to eat was 
 a scrap of pork to each, We had sat down 
 just by a warrior's path, which we had not 
 suspected, when eight or nine warriors 
 Appeared. Running off hastily, we left our 
 luggage and provisions; but were not dis- 
 covered by the party : for skulking some 
 time in the grass and bushes, we returned 
 to the place, and recovered our baggage. 
 The warriors had hallooed as they passed, 
 and were answered by others on our flanks. 
 ** In our journey through the glades, or 
 wide-extended dry meadows, about twelve 
 o'clock this day, we discovered a party of 
 Indians in front ; but, skulking in the grass 
 and bushes, were not perceived by them. 
 In these glades we were in great danger, as 
 we could be seen at a great distance. In 
 the afternoon of this day there fell a heavy 
 the coldest I ever felt. We halted 
 
121 
 
 while it rained ; and then, travelling on, we 
 saw a party of the enemy, about two hun- 
 dred yards before us, but hiding ourselves 
 in the bushes, we had again the good fortune 
 not to be discovered. This night we got out 
 of the glades, having in the night crossed the 
 paths by which we had advanced to San- 
 dusky. It was our design to leave all these 
 paths to the right, and to come in by the 
 Tuscarawas. We should have made a much 
 greater progress, had it not been for two of 
 our companions who were lame : the one 
 having his foot burnt ; the other with a 
 swelling in his knee, of a rheumatic nature. 
 " On this day, which was the second 
 after the retreat, one of our company, the 
 person affected with the rheumatic swelling, 
 was left behind some distance in a swamp. 
 Waiting for him some time, we saw him 
 coming within one hundred yards, as 1 sat 
 on the body of an old tree, mending my 
 mokkisons ; but taking my eye from him I 
 saw him no more. He had not observed 
 our tracks, but had gone a different way. 
 
We whistled on our charges, and afterwards 
 hallooed for him, but in vain. Neverthe- 
 less he was fortunate in missing us ; for he 
 afterwards came safe into Wheeling. We 
 travelled on until night, and were on the 
 waters of Muskingum from the middle of 
 this day. 
 
 " Having catched a fawn this day, we 
 made a fire in the evening, and had a repast, 
 having in the mean time eat nothing but 
 the small bit of pork I mentioned before. 
 We set off at break of day. About nine 
 o'clock the third day, we fell in with a party 
 of the enemy, about twenty miles from the 
 Tascarawas, which is about one hundred 
 and thirty-five miles from Fort Pitt. They 
 had come upon our tracks, or had been on 
 our flanks, and discovered us ; and then, 
 having got before, had way-laid us, and 
 fired before we perceived them. At the 
 first fire, one of my companions fell before 
 me, and another just behind : these two had 
 guns. There were six men in company, 
 and four guns ; two of these rendered use- 
 
less by reason of the wet, when coming 
 through the swamp the first night : we 
 had tried to discharge them, but could not. 
 When the Indians fired I ran to a tree ; 
 but an Indian, presenting himself fifteen 
 yards before me, desired me to deliver 
 myself up, and I should not be hurt. My 
 gun was in good order ; but, apprehending 
 the enemy behind might discharge their 
 pieces at me, I did not risk firing, which I 
 had afterwards reason to regret, when I 
 found what was to be my fate ; and that 
 the Indian who was before me, and pre- 
 sented his gun, was one of those who had 
 just before fired. Two of my companions 
 were taken with me in the same manner, 
 the Indians assuring us we should not be 
 hurt : but one in company, James Paul, 
 who had a gun in order, made his escape, 
 and has since come into Wheeling. One 
 of these Indians knew me, and was of the 
 party by whom I was taken in the last war. 
 He came up and spoke to me, calling 
 me by my Indian name, Mannuchcothee, 
 
124 
 
 and upbraiding me for coming to war 
 against them. I will take a moment here 
 to relate some particulars of my first cap- 
 tivity, and my life since. 
 
 " I was taken from New River, in Vir- 
 ginia, by the Miamese, a nation of Indians 
 by us called the Picts, amongst whom I 
 lived six years. Afterwards being sold to 
 a Delaware, and by him put into the hands 
 of a trader, I was carried amongst the 
 Shawanese, with whom I continued six 
 years ; so that my whole time amongst these 
 nations was twelve years that is, from 
 the eighth to the twentieth year of my age. 
 At the treaty at Fort Pitt, in the fall preced- 
 ing what is called Dunmore's war (which, 
 if I am right, was in the year 1773), I came 
 in with the Shawanese nation to the trea- 
 ty ; and meeting with some of my relations 
 at that place, was by them solicited to 
 relinquish the life of a savage, which I did 
 with some reluctance, this manner of life 
 having become natural to me, inasmuch as I 
 had scarcely known any other. I enliste4 
 
125 
 
 as a soldier in the continental army at the 
 commencement of the present war, and 
 served fifteen months. Having been pro- 
 perly discharged, I have since married, have 
 a family, and am in communion with the 
 church. 
 
 "To return. The party by whom we 
 were made prisoners had taken some horses, 
 and left them at the glades we had passed 
 the day before. They had followed on 
 our tracks from these glades ; on our return 
 to which, we found the horses and rode. 
 We were carried to Wachatomakak, a town 
 of the Mingoes and Shawanese. I think it 
 was on the third day we reached the town ; 
 when we were approaching which, the 
 Indians, in whose custody we were, began 
 to look sour, having been kind to us before, 
 and given us a little meat and flour to eat, 
 which they had found or taken from some of 
 our men on their retreat. This town is 
 small, and we were told was about two 
 miles distant from the main town, to which 
 they meant to carry us. 
 
"The inhabitants from this town came 
 out with clubs and tomahawks, struck, beat, 
 and abused us greatly. One of my two 
 companions they seized, and, having strip- 
 ped him naked, blacked him with coal and 
 water : this was the sign of being burnt ; 
 the man seemed to surmise it, and shed tears. 
 He asked me the meaning of his being 
 blacked ; but I was forbid by the enemy, 
 in their own language, to tell him what was 
 intended. In English, which they spoke 
 easily, having been often at Fort Pitt, they 
 assured him he was not to be hurt. I know 
 of no reason for making him the first object 
 of their cruelty, unless it was that he was 
 the oldest. 
 
 " A warrior had been sent to the greater 
 town to acquaint them with our coming, 
 and prepare them for the frolic ; for on our 
 coming to it, the inhabitants came out with 
 guns, clubs, and tomahawks. We were 
 told that we had to run to the council- 
 house, about three hundred yards. The 
 man that was blacked was about twenty 
 
127 
 
 yards before us, in running the gauntlet : 
 they made him their principal object, 
 men, women, and children, beating him ; 
 and those who had guns firing loads of 
 powder on him as he ran naked ; putting 
 the muzzles of the guns to his body, shout- 
 ing, hallooing, and beating their drums, in 
 the mean time. 
 
 " The unhappy man had reached the 
 door of the council-house, beat and wound- 
 ed in a manner shocking to the sight ; for, 
 having arrived before him, we had it in 
 our power to view the spectacle : it was 
 indeed the most horrid that can be con- 
 ceived. They had cut him with their toma- 
 hawks, shot his body black, burnt it into 
 holes with loads of powder blown into him : 
 a large wadding had made a wound in his 
 shoulder, whence the blood gushed. 
 
 " Agreeably to the declaration of the 
 enemy when he first set out, he had reason 
 to think himself secure when he had reached 
 the door of the council-house. This seem- 
 ed to be his hope ; for, coming up with 
 
128 
 
 great struggling and endeavour, he laid hold 
 of the door, but was pulled back and drawn 
 away by them. Finding they intended no 
 mercy, but putting him to death, he at- 
 tempted several times to snatch or lay hold 
 of some of their tomahawks ; but, being 
 weak, could not effect it. We saw him 
 borne off, and they were a long time beat- 
 ing, wounding, pursuing, and killing him. 
 
 " That same evening I saw the dead 
 body of this man close by the council-house. 
 It was mangled cruelly, and the blood 
 mingled with the powder was rendered 
 black. The same evening I saw him, after 
 he had been cut into pieces, and his limbs 
 and his head, about two hundred yards on 
 the outside of the town, put on poles. That 
 evening also I saw the bodies of three 
 others, in the same black and mangled con- 
 dition : these, I was told, had been put to 
 death the same day, and just before we had 
 reached the town. Their bodies, as they 
 lay, were black, bloody, and burnt with 
 powder : two of these were Harrison and 
 
129 
 
 young Crawford. I knew the visage of 
 Colonel Harrison, and I saw his clothing 
 and that of young Crawford at the town. 
 They brought horses to me, and asked if 1 
 knew them ? I said, they were Harrison's 
 and Crawford's. They said, they were. 
 
 " The third of these men I did not know, 
 but believe to have been Colonel M'Cle- 
 land, the third in command on the ex- 
 pedition. 
 
 " The next day, the bodies of these men 
 were dragged to the outside of the town ; 
 and, their carcases being given to the dogs, 
 their limbs and heads were stuck on poles. 
 
 " My surviving companion, shortly after 
 we had reached the council-house, was sent 
 to another town ; and I presume he was 
 burnt or executed in the same manner. 
 
 " In the evening the men assembled in 
 the council-house. This is a large build- 
 ing, about fifty yards in length, and about 
 twenty-five yards wide ; and about sixteen 
 feet in height : built of split poles covered 
 with bark, Their first object was to ex- 
 it 
 
130 
 
 amine me, which they could do in their 
 own language ; inasmuch as I could speak 
 the Miame, Shawanese, and Delaware lan- 
 guages, which I had learned during my 
 early captivity in the last war : I found I 
 had not forgotten these languages, especially 
 the two former, being able to speak them as 
 well as my native tongue. 
 
 " They began with interrogating me con- 
 cerning the situation of our country ; what 
 were our provisions ; our numbers -, the 
 state of the war between us and Britain. 
 I informed them, Cornwallis had been 
 taken ; which, next day, when Matthew 
 Elliot, with James Girty, came, he affirmed 
 to be a lie, and the Indians seemed to give 
 full credit to his declaration. 
 
 " Hitherto I had been treated with some 
 appearance of kindness, but now the enemy 
 began to alter their behaviour towards me. 
 Girty had informed them, that when he 
 asked me how I liked to live there, I had 
 said that I intended to take the firsj oppor- 
 tunity to take a scalp and run off. It was, 
 
131 
 
 to be sure, very probable that, if I had such 
 intention, I would communicate it to him. 
 Another man came to me, and told me a 
 story of his having lived on the south branch 
 of Potowmac, in Virginia , and, having 
 three brothers there, he pretended he want- 
 ed to get away, but I suspected his de- 
 sign : nevertheless, he reported that I had 
 consented to go. In the mean time I was 
 not tied, and could have escaped ; but, hav- 
 ing nothing to put on my feet, I waited 
 some time longer to provide for this. 
 
 " I was invited every night to the war- 
 dances, which they usually continued until 
 almost day. I could not comply with their 
 desire, believing these things to be the ser- 
 vice of the devil. 
 
 " The council lasted fifteen days ; from 
 fifty to one hundred warriors being usually 
 in council, and sometimes more. Every 
 warrior is admitted to these councils ; but 
 only the chiefs, or head-warriors, have the 
 privilege of speaking. The head -warriors 
 K 2 
 
132 
 
 are accounted such from the number of 
 scalps and prisoners they have taken. 
 
 " The third day M'Kee was in council, 
 and afterwards was generally present. He 
 spoke little, and did not ask any questions, 
 or speak to me at all. He lives about two 
 miles out of the town, has a house built of 
 squared logs with a shingled roof: he was 
 dressed in gold-laced clothes. I had seen 
 him at the former town through which I 
 passed. 
 
 " I think it was on the last day of the 
 council, save one, that a speech came from 
 Detroit, brought by a warrior who had 
 been counselling with the commanding- 
 officer at that place. The speech had been 
 long expected, and was in answer to one 
 some time before sent from the town to 
 Detroit. It was in a belt of wampum; 
 and began with addressing them, * My 
 4 children!' and enquiring why they conti- 
 nued to take prisoners. * Provisions are 
 * scarce. When prisoners are brought in, 
 
133 
 
 'we are obliged to maintain them; and' 
 ' still some of them are running away, and 
 
 * carrying tidings of our affairs. When 
 
 * any of your people fall into the hands of 
 
 * the rebels they shew no mercy : why then 
 i should you take prisoners ? Take no 
 
 * more prisoners, my children, of any sort ; 
 
 * man, woman, or child/ 
 
 " Two days after, a party of every na- 
 tion that was near being collected, it was 
 determined on to take no more prisoners of 
 any sort. They had held a large council, 
 and the determination was, that if it were 
 possible they could find a child of a span 
 or three inches long, they would shew no 
 mercy to it. At the conclusion of the coun- 
 cil, it was agreed upon by all the tribes 
 present, viz. the Tawaws, Chiappawaws, 
 the Wiondots, the Mingoes, the Delawares, 
 the Shawanese, the Munses, and a part of 
 the Cherokees, that should any of the na- 
 tions who were not present take any pri- 
 soner, these would rise against them, take 
 away the prisoners and put them to death. 
 
];34 
 
 " In the course of these deliberations I 
 understood what was said perfectly. They 
 laid plans against our settlements of Ken- 
 tucky, the Falls, and towards Wheeling. 
 These it will be unnecessary for me to 
 mention in this narrative ; more especially 
 as the Indians finding me to have escaped, 
 and knowing that I would not fail to com- 
 municate these designs will be led to alter 
 their resolutions. 
 
 " There was one council held at which I 
 was not present. The warriors had sent for 
 me as usual ; but the squaw with whom I 
 lived would not suffer me to go, but hid 
 me under a large quantity of skins : it may 
 have been from an unwillingness that I 
 should hear in council the determination 
 with respect to me, that I should be burnt. 
 " About this time twelve men were 
 brought in from Kentucky, three of whom 
 were burnt on this day : the remainder 
 were distributed to other towns ; and all, as 
 the Indians informed me, were burnt. This 
 was after the speech came from Detroit. 
 
135 
 
 " On this day also I saw an Indian who 
 had just come into town, and who said that 
 the prisoner he was bringing to be burnt, 
 and who he said was a doctor, had made 
 his escape from him. I knew this must 
 have been Dr. Knight, who went as sur- 
 geon of the expedition. The Indian had 
 a wound four inches long in his head, 
 which he acknowledged the doctor had 
 given him : he was cut to the skull. His 
 story was, that he had untied the doctor, 
 being asked by him to do so ; the doctor 
 promising that he would not go away : that 
 while he w^as employed in kindling the fire, 
 the doctor snatched up the gun, had come 
 behind, and struck him : that he then made 
 a stroke at the doctor with his knife, which 
 he laid hold of, and his fingers were cut 
 almost off, the knife being drawn through 
 his hand : that he gave the doctor two 
 stabs; one in the belly, the other in the 
 back : said the doctor was a great, big, tall, 
 strong man. Being now adopted in an 
 Indian family, and having some confidence 
 
136 
 
 for my safety, I took the liberty to contra- 
 dict this ; and said that I knew the doctor, 
 who was a weak, little man. The other 
 warriors laughed immoderately, and did 
 not seem to credit him. At this time I 
 was told that Colonel Crawford was burnt, 
 and they greatly exulted over it. 
 
 " The day after the council I have men- 
 tioned, about forty warriors, accompanied 
 by George Girty, came early in the morn- 
 ing round the house where I was> The 
 squaw gave me up. I was sitting before 
 the door of the house: they put a rope round 
 my neck, tied my arms behind my back, 
 stripped me naked, and blacked me in the 
 usual manner. George Girty, as soon as I 
 was tied, damned me j and said, that I now 
 should get what I had deserved many years. 
 I was led away to a town distant about five 
 miles, to which a messenger , had been 
 dispatched to desire them to prepare to 
 receive me. Arriving at this town, I was 
 beaten with clubs and the pipe ends of their 
 tomahawks, and was kept for some time 
 
137 
 
 tied to a tree before a house-door. In the 
 mean while the inhabitants set out to an- 
 other town about two miles distant, where 
 I was to be burnt, and where I arrived 
 about three o'clock in the afternoon. 
 
 " Here also was a council-house, part of 
 it covered and part of it without a roof. In 
 the part of it where no cover was, but only- 
 sides built up, there stood a post about six- 
 teen feet in height, and in the middle of the 
 house around the post there were three piles 
 of wood built about three feet high and 
 four feet from the post. Being brought to 
 the post, my arms were tied behind me, 
 and the thong or cord with which they were 
 bound was fastened to the post ; a rope 
 also was put about my neck, and tied to 
 the post about four feet above my head, 
 During the time they were tying me, piles 
 of wood were kindled and began to flame. 
 
 " Death by burning, which appeared to 
 be now my fate, I had resolved to sustain 
 with patience. The divine grace of God 
 had made it less alarming to me : for, on my 
 
138 
 
 way this day, I had been greatly exercised 
 in regard to my latter end. I knew myself 
 to have been a regular member of the church, 
 and to have sought repentance for my sins ; 
 but though I had often heard of the faith of 
 assurance, had known nothing of it ; but 
 early this day, instantaneously by a change 
 wrought upon me sudden and perceivable 
 as lightning, an assurance of my peace made 
 with God sprung up in my mind. The 
 following words were the subject of my 
 meditation ' In peace thou shalt see God. 
 *Fear not those who can kill the body. 
 * In peace shalt thou depart.' I was on this 
 occasion, by a confidence in mind not to 
 be resisted, fully assured of my salvation. 
 This being the case, I was willing, satisfied, 
 and glad to die. 
 
 " I was tied to the post, as I have already 
 said, and the flame was now kindled. The 
 day was clear, not a cloud to be seen : if there 
 were clouds low in the horizon, the sides of 
 the house prevented me from seeing them ; 
 but I heard no thunder, nor observed any 
 
139 
 
 sign of approaching rain. Just as the fire 
 of one pile began to blaze, the wind rose : 
 from the time they began to kindle the fire 
 and to tie me to the post, until the wind 
 began to blow, was about fifteen minutes. 
 The wind blew a hurricane, and the 
 rain followed in less than three minutes. 
 The rain fell violently ; and the fire, though 
 it began to blaze considerably, was instant- 
 ly extinguished. The rain lasted about a 
 quarter of an hour. 
 
 " When it was over, the savages stood 
 amazed, and were a long time silent. At 
 last one said, * We will let him alone till 
 
 * morning, and take a whole day's frolic in 
 
 * burning him.' The sun at this time was 
 about three hours high. It was agreed 
 upon, and the rope about my neck was 
 untied ; and, making me sit down, they 
 began to dance around me. They conti- 
 nued dancing in this manner until eleven 
 o'clock at night : in the mean time, beating, 
 kicking, and wounding me with their toma- 
 hawks and clubs. 
 
140 
 
 K At last one of the warriors (the Half 
 Moon) asked me if I was sleepy ? I an- 
 swered, ' Yes.' The head warrior then 
 chose out three men to take care of me. I 
 was taken to a block -house ; my arms were 
 tied until the cord was hid in the flesh; 
 they were tied in two places, round the 
 wrist and above the elbows. A rope was 
 fastened about my neck, and tied to a beam 
 of the house, but permitting me to lie down 
 on a board* The three warriors were con* 
 Stantly harassing and troubling me, saying, 
 * How will you like to eat fire to-morrow ? 
 4 You will kill no more Indians now!' 
 I was in expectation of their going to sleep; 
 when, at length, about an hour before day- 
 break, two laid down; the third smoked a 
 pipe, talked to me, and asked the same 
 painful questions* About half an hour after 
 he also laid down, and I heard him begin 
 to snore. Instantly I went to work ; and 
 (as my arms were perfectly dead with the 
 cord) I laid myself down upon my right 
 arm, which was behind my back ; and 
 
141 
 
 keeping it fast with my fingers, which had 
 still some life and strength, I slipped the 
 cord from my left arm over my elbow 
 and my wrist. One of the warriors now 
 got up and stirred the fire: I was appre- 
 hensive that I should be examined, and 
 thought it was over with me ; but my hopes 
 revived when now he lay down again. I 
 then attempted to unloose the rope about 
 my neck, tried to gnaw it, but in vain ; as 
 it was as thick as my thumb, and as hard 
 as iron, being made of a buffalo hide : I 
 wrought with it a long time, gave it out, 
 and could see no relief. At this time I saw 
 day break and heard the cock crow : I made 
 a second attempt, almost without hope, 
 pulling the rope by putting my fingers 
 between my neck and it, and to my great 
 surprise it came easily untied : it was a 
 noose with two or three knots tied over it. 
 " I stept over the warriors as they lay ; 
 and, having got out of the house, looked 
 back to see if there was any disturbance : 
 I then ran through the town into a corn- 
 
142 
 
 field. In my way, I saw a squaw, with 
 four or five children, lying asleep under a 
 tree : going a different way into the field, I 
 untied my arm, which was greatly swelled 
 and turned black. Having observed a num- 
 ber of horses in the glade as I ran through it, 
 I went back to catch one, and on my way 
 found a piece of an old rug or quilt hanging 
 on a fence, which I took with me. Hav- 
 ing caught the horse, the rope with which I 
 had been tied serving for a halter, I rode off. 
 The horse was strong and swift; and the 
 woods being open and the country level, 
 about ten o'clock that day I crossed the 
 Sciota river, at a place by computation fifty 
 full miles from the town. I had rode about 
 twenty miles on this side Sciota by three 
 o'clock in the afternoon, when the horse 
 began to fail, and could no longer go on a 
 trot. I instantly left him, and on foot ran 
 about twenty miles farther that day, making 
 in the whole the distance of near one hun- 
 dred miles. In the evening I heard halloo- 
 ing behind me, and for this reason did not 
 
143 
 
 halt until about ten o'clock at night, when 
 I sat down, was extremely sick, and vomit- 
 ed ; but when the moon rose, which might 
 have been about two hours after, I went 
 on, and travelled until day. 
 
 " During the night I had a path ; but 
 in the morning judged it prudent to forsake 
 the path, and take a ridge for the distance 
 of fifteen miles, in a line at right angles to 
 my course ; putting back, as I went along, 
 with a stick, the weeds which I had bended, 
 lest I should be tracked by the enemy. I 
 lay the next night on the waters of Musk- 
 ingum: the nettles had been troublesome 
 to me after my crossing the Sciota, having 
 nothing to defend myself but the piece of a 
 rug which I had found, and which while I 
 rode I used under me by way of saddle. 
 The briars and thorns were now painful to 
 and prevented me from travelling in the 
 night until the moon appeared: in the 
 mean time I was hindered from sleeping by 
 the musketoes; for even in the day I was 
 under the necessity of travelling with a 
 
144 
 
 handful of bushes to brush them from my 
 body. 
 
 " The second night I reached Cushakim; 
 next day came to Newcomer's town, where 
 I got about seven rasberries, which were the 
 first thing I ate from the morning in which 
 the Indians had taken me to burn me until 
 this time, which was now about three o'clock 
 the fourth day. I felt hunger very little, but 
 was extremely weak : I swam Muskingum 
 river at Oldcomer's town, the river being 
 about two hundred yards wide. Having 
 reached the bank, I sat down, looked back ; 
 and thought I had a start of the Indians, if 
 any should pursue. That evening I tra- 
 velled about five miles ; next day came to 
 Stillwater, a small river, in a branch of 
 which I got two small cray-fish to eat. 
 Next night I lay within five miles of Wheel- 
 ing ; but had not slept a wink during this 
 whole time, being rendered impossible by the 
 musketoes, which it was my constant employ- 
 ment to brush away. Next day came to 
 Wheeling, and saw a man on the island in 
 
145 
 
 the Ohio, opposite to that post, and calling to 
 him, and asking for particular persons who 
 had been on the expedition, and telling him 
 I was Slover, at length, with great difficulty, 
 he was persuaded to come over, and bring 
 me across in his canoe." 
 
 To shew more particularly how danger- 
 ous it is to live in the back settlements, I 
 shall add the following narrative of the cap- 
 tivity and escape of Mrs. Frances Scott, an 
 inhabitant of Washington county, Virginia, 
 
 " On Wednesday the 2Qth day of June, 
 1 785, late in the evening, a large company 
 of armed men passed the house, on their 
 way to Kentucky, some part of whom en- 
 camped within two miles. Mr. Scott, liv- 
 ing on a frontier part, generally made the 
 family watchful ; but on this calamitous 
 day, after so large a body of men had passed, 
 shortly after night, he lay down in his bed, 
 and imprudently left one of the doors of 
 his house open : the children were also in 
 bed, and asleep. Mrs. Scott was nearly 
 undressed, when, to her unutterable aston- 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 ishment and horror, she saw, rushing in 
 through the door that was left open, paint- 
 ed savages, with presented arms, raising a 
 hideous shriek. Mr. Scott, being awake, 
 instantly jumped out of his bed, but was 
 immediately fired at : he forced his way 
 through the middle of the enemy and got 
 out of the door, but fell a few paces from 
 thence. An Indian seized Mrs. Scott, and 
 ordered her to a particular spot, and not to 
 move ; others stabbed and cut the throats of 
 the three youngest children in their bed, and 
 afterwards lifted them up and dashed them 
 down on the floor, near the mother ; the 
 eldest, a beautiful girl of eight years old, 
 awoke and escaped out of the bed, and ran 
 to her parent, and, with the most plaintive 
 accents, cried, ' Oh, mamma! mamma! save 
 me!' -The mother, in the deepest anguish of 
 spirit, and with a flood of tears, entreated the 
 savages to spare her child; but, with a brutal 
 fierceness, they tomahawked and stabbed her 
 in the mother's arms . Adj acent to Mr. Scott's 
 dwelling-house another family lived, of the 
 
147 
 
 name of Ball. The Indians also attacked 
 their house at the same instant they en- 
 tered Mr. Scott's; but, the door being 
 shut, the enemy fired through an opening 
 between two logs, and killed a young lad, 
 and then essayed to force the door open ; 
 but a surviving brother fired through the 
 door, and the enemy desisted, and went off: 
 the remaining part of the family ran out 
 of the house and escaped. In Mr. Scott's 
 house were four good rifles well loaded, 
 and a good deal of clothing and furniture> 
 part of which belonged to people that had 
 left it on their way to Kentucky. The 
 Indians loaded themselves with the plunder, 
 being thirteen in number, then speedily- 
 made off", and continued travelling all night: 
 next morning their chief allotted to each 
 man his share, and detached nine of the party 
 to steal horses from the inhabitants on 
 Clinch. The eleventh day after Mrs. Scott's 
 captivity, the four Indians that had her in 
 charge stopped, at a place fixed upon for a 
 rendezvous and to hunt, being now in great 
 L 2 
 
148 
 
 want of provisions. Three went out, and 
 the chief, being an old man, was left to 
 take care of the prisoner, who by this time 
 expressed a willingness to proceed to the 
 Indian towns, which seemed to have the 
 desired effect of lessening her keeper's vi- 
 gilance. In the day-time, as the old man 
 was graining a deer-skin, the captive pon- 
 dering on her situation, and anxiously look- 
 ing for an opportunity to make her escape^ 
 took the resolution, and went to the Indian 
 carelessly, asked liberty to go a small distance 
 to a stream of water, to wash the blood off 
 her apron, that had remained besmeared 
 since the fatal night of the murder of her 
 little daughter. He told her, in the English 
 tongue, c Go along!' She then passed by 
 him, his face being in a contrary direction 
 from that she was going, and he very busy. 
 She, after getting to the water, proceeded 
 on without delay, made to a high barren 
 mountain, and travelled until late in the 
 evening, when she came down into the 
 valley, in search of the track she had been 
 
149 
 
 taken along; hoping thereby to find the 
 way back, without the risk of being lost, 
 and perishing with hunger, in uninhabited 
 parts. On coming across the valley to the 
 river-side, supposed to be the easterly 
 branch of Kentucky river, she observed in 
 the sand, tracks of two men, that had gone 
 up the river and had just returned. She 
 concluded these to have been her pursuers, 
 which excited emotions of gratitude and 
 thankfulness to Divine Providence for so 
 fortunate a deliverance. Being without any 
 provisions, having no kind of weapon or 
 tool to assist her in getting any, and being 
 almost destitute of clothing ; also knowing 
 that a vast, tract of rugged high mountains 
 intervened between where she was and the 
 inhabitants eastwardly, and the distance of 
 the Kentucky settlements unknown, and 
 she almost as ignorant as a child of the 
 method of steering through the woods ; 
 excited painful sensations. But certain 
 death, either by hunger or wild beasts, 
 seemed preferable rather than to be in the 
 
150 
 
 power of beings who had excited in her 
 mind such horror. She addressed Heaven 
 for protection, and, taking courage, pro- 
 ceeded onward. After travelling three days, 
 she had nearly met with the Indians, as she 
 supposed, that had been sent to Clinch to 
 steal horses; but, providentially hearing 
 their approach, concealed herself among 
 the cane, until the enemy had passed. 
 This giving a fresh alarm, and her mind 
 being filled with consternation, she got 
 lost, proceeding backwards and forwards for 
 several days : at length she reached a river, 
 that seemed to come from the east ; con- 
 cluding it was Sandy river, she accordingly 
 resolved to trace it to its source, which is ad- 
 jacent to the Clinch settlement. After pro- 
 ceeding up the same several days, she came 
 to where the river runs through the great 
 Laurel mountain, where is a prodigious 
 water-fall, and numerous high craggy cliffs 
 along the water edge ; that way seemed 
 impassable the mountain steep and diffi- 
 cult: however, our mournful traveller con- 
 
eluded that the latter way was the best. 
 She therefore ascended for some time ; but, 
 coming to a range of inaccessible rocks, she 
 turned her course towards the foot of the 
 mountain and the river-side : after getting 
 into a deep gulley, and passing over several 
 high steep rocks, she reached the river-side; 
 where, to her inexpressible affliction, she 
 found that a perpendicular rock, or rather 
 one that hung over, of fifteen or twenty 
 feet high, formed the bank. Here a solemn 
 pause took place: she essayed to return, 
 but the height of the steeps and rocks she 
 had descended over prevented her. She 
 then returned to the edge of the precipice, 
 and viewed the bottom of it, as the certain 
 spot to end all her troubles, or remain on 
 the top to pine away with hunger, or be 
 devoured by wild beasts. After serious 
 meditation and devout exercises, she deter- 
 mined on leaping from the height, and 
 accordingly jumped off. Although the 
 place she had to alight on was covered with 
 uneven rocks, not a bone was broken ; but, 
 
being exceedingly stunned with the fall, she 
 remained unable to proceed for some space 
 of time. The dry season caused the river 
 to be shallow she travelled in it, and, 
 where she could, by its edge, until she got 
 through the mountain, which she concluded 
 was several miles. After this, as she was 
 travelling along the bank of the river, a 
 venomous snake bit her on the ankle : she 
 had strength to kill it, and, knowing its 
 kind, concluded that death must soon over- 
 take her. By this time Mrs. Scott was 
 reduced to a mere skeleton with fatigue, 
 hunger, and grief; probably this state of her 
 body was the means of preserving her from 
 the effects of the poison : be that as it may, 
 so it was, that very little pain succeeded the 
 bite, and what little swelling there was it 
 fell into her feet. Our wanderer now left 
 the river; and, after proceeding a good 
 distance, she came to where the valley part- 
 ed into two, each leading a different course. 
 Here a painful suspense again took place: 
 a forlorn creature, almost exhausted, and 
 
153 
 
 certain, if she was far led out of the way, 
 she would never see a human creature. 
 During this soliloquy, abeautiful bird passed 
 close by her, fluttering along the ground, 
 and went out of sight up one of the valleys. 
 This drew her attention, and (whilst con- 
 sidering what it might mean) another bird 
 of the same appearance in like manner 
 fluttered past her, and took the same valley 
 the other had done. This determined her 
 choice of the way -, and in two days, which 
 was on the 1 1 th day of August, she reach- 
 ed that settlement on Clinch called New- 
 Garden ; whereas (she is since informed 
 by woodmen) had she taken the other 
 valley, it would have led her back towards 
 the Ohio. Mrs. Scott relates, that the 
 Indians told her, that the party was com- 
 posed of four different nations, two of whom 
 she thinks they named Delawares and 
 Mingoes. 
 
 " She further relates, that during her wan- 
 dering, from the 1 oth of July to the 1 1 th of 
 August, she had no other subsistence but 
 
chewing and swallowing the juice of young 
 cane stalks, sassafras leaves, and some other 
 plants she did not know the names of: that, 
 en her journey, she saw buffaloes, elks, 
 deer, and frequently bears and wolves; not 
 one of which, although some passed very 
 near her, offered to do her the least harm. 
 One day a bear came near her, with a 
 young fawn in his mouth ; and, on disco- 
 vering her, he dropped his prey and ran off. 
 Hunger prompted her to go and take the 
 flesh and eat it: but, on reflection, she 
 desisted, thinking that the bear might return 
 and devour her ; besides, she had an aver- 
 sion to taste raw flesh. Mrs. Scott con- 
 tinues in a low state of health, and remains 
 inconsolable for the loss of her family, par- 
 ticularly bewailing the core! death of her 
 little daughter." 
 
 As an apology for having introduced the 
 foregoing narratives, it may be right to say, 
 I did it by way of proving how dangerous 
 it is for the emigrant to venture far into 
 the country. But, although the Indians 
 
commit such cruelties on their invaders, it 
 is the general opinion of the Americans 
 that they are not a bad sort of people : 
 just in their dealings, they seldom do those 
 things without a cause, and are seldom 
 known to break their word. When the 
 British governed America, they used not to 
 take the land without first treating with the 
 Indians and paying them for it, as may 
 be remarked in the LIFE OF GENERAL 
 WASHINGTON ; who was employed by 
 the British to go up into the country to 
 treat with the Indians. He observes 
 " They called the British their fathers, and 
 said they were ready to treat with him, as 
 the British never took their land without 
 paying them for it : but the French did not 
 do so -, they took their land from them and 
 called it their own, and paid them nothing 
 for it." Now the Indians think themselves 
 entitled to the land ; saying the Great 
 Man (as they call him by which they 
 mean God) planted them there, and gave 
 them the lands for their support. It is 
 
156 
 
 acknowledged by the Americans that they 
 are expert in war and a dangerous 
 enemy. It must be observed, that Ge- 
 neral Washington's hostilities with the 
 Indians were of essential use to him 
 during the American war : he fought the 
 English as the Indians had fought him 
 when he was in British service by what 
 is termed bush-fighting. 
 
 During my stay at Philadelphia I was 
 introduced to General Hambleton, near 
 Philadelphia, who has got a most elegant 
 house. As I was walking back I overtook 
 a waggon with five horses ; they appeared 
 very much fatigued. I entered into con- 
 versation with the man. He told me he 
 had come three hundred and fifty miles to 
 Philadelphia market, I asked him what he 
 had got to sell : he said, nine barrels of 
 wheat-flour, and two bucks. At that time 
 flour was sold at about seven dollars a bar- 
 rel, and the two bucks were worth seven or 
 eight dollars each ; which together amount 
 to twenty-eight pounds seventeen shillings 
 
and six pence. At thirty miles a day, the 
 length of the journey is twenty -three days ; 
 which will give twenty-four shillings and 
 nine pence for each day ; and I am of an 
 opinion, twenty miles a day is as much as a 
 team can go on these roads. He must get 
 more by his back carriage than by what he 
 brings for his produce of this land and the 
 carrying it to market ; or he has a bad 
 trade -> but I do not believe he does. 
 
 I was invited to dine with an English 
 gentleman named Davy, from Manchester. 
 At German-Town he had got a printing 
 manufactory of cottons. This gentleman 
 was a merchant, and had large concerns in 
 Philadelphia ; he had brought his people 
 from Manchester. He shewed us some 
 goods, I believe equal to those of Manches- 
 ter : but the weather was so frosty, that 
 the cottons were all frozen in the pans ; and 
 the people employed in this business, I 
 suppose, would require the same pay as if 
 they had been working, though now doing 
 nothing. I spent* a very pleasant day. 
 
158 
 
 There were some other English gentlemen: 
 and among them a Doctor Jordine (a very 
 sensible and genteel man) and a Mr. Porter. 
 These two gentlemen went from Wales : 
 they had purchased an estate somewhere 
 on the Delaware ; they called it rich lands ; 
 and they have endeavoured, I am per- 
 suaded, to make it answer, as much as the 
 power of man could do ; but I have had 
 the pleasure of the Doctor's company since ; 
 and he is very weary of farming, and wants 
 to sell the estate and come back to England. 
 There was a Doctor Logan in company. 
 I went home with this gentleman. He is a 
 member of assembly at Lancaster ; and has 
 got a good estate near German-Town, on 
 which he and his family have been settled a 
 number of years. He asked me to get him 
 an English servant. I told him an English 
 servant would be of no use to him : as was 
 the truth ; for the cultivation varies so 
 much that the English servants are quite lost 
 in America. It is generally thought by the 
 Americans that the cause of their crops 
 
being not so productive as the crops in 
 England, is want of management : but they 
 are highly mistaken ; it is their soil and 
 climate and nothing will make them so 
 productive. 
 
 After seeing the Doctor's meadows*, 
 horses, and cattle, I returned to Philadel- 
 phia : and in a few days set off for Balti- 
 more. In my way I now viewed the 
 grazing-farm of Mr. Holmes, which had 
 been the original object of my present long 
 journey -, but to my great surprise I found 
 not a green herb or plant upon it. This 
 was in the latter end of March. There was 
 some dead grass, as white as stubble ; what 
 is called crab-grass : it chiefly springs up in 
 the month of July, and August, and will 
 eat pretty well when young, but will not 
 make hay. The roots die every winter, 
 and it grows up fresh every summer from 
 the seed. About July or August they have 
 another grass, something like it, they call 
 fox-tail ; which is good for nothing at any 
 
 * They were irrigated* 
 
160 
 
 time. This farm was in a distressed state, 
 and I did not like it. 
 
 On reaching Baltimore, I engaged for the 
 farm at Orange-Hill, of three hundred 
 acres, for three hundred pounds per year 
 currency. This farm was three miles from 
 Baltimore. There were only two hundred 
 acres of cleared land ; the remainder for fire 
 and fences. I do not think that in any part 
 of England such poor land would let for 
 half the sum ; indeed, I do not suppose it 
 would let at all : but I know no such land 
 here ; for our land generally grows some- 
 thing. I then went to Mount- Vernon, and 
 told General Washington what I had seen ; 
 sold my cattle, horses, hogs, &c. (General 
 Sprigg becoming a great purchaser of cattle 
 and hogs, which he values much ;) and 
 brought rny family to Orange-Hill, when 
 1 began my farming. 
 
161 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 The regular Proceedings on the Farm for seven 
 Months. 
 
 ON the first of May 1799 I entered upon 
 my farm at Orange-Hill, three miles from 
 Baltimore. I will explain why .1 gave so 
 great a rent for this, after having had all the 
 offers which I have mentioned. 
 
 I thought nothing in the farming -line 
 likely to be profitable, except the selling of 
 milk, and what in that country is called 
 truck, which is garden produce, fruits, 
 Sec. ; finding labour so very dear, and 
 scarcely to be had at all, except by the keep- 
 ing of slaves, which I did not like. The 
 price of milk being from six pence to eight 
 pence per quart, seemed to me sure of pay- 
 ing well ; and as linseed-cake was not in 
 general use, and was to be bought cheap, 
 this too was a great advantage, I could 
 
 M 
 
buy one hundred and four cakes for fifteen 
 shillings, the cakes weighing two pounds 
 each : thus this was cheap compared with 
 other food ; and the cakes are very good in 
 quality, not being so much, pressed as they 
 are in England, but they do not keep so 
 well. My expectations so far were fully 
 answered. But I found great trouble in 
 this business ; for in the two years that I 
 followed it I could never meet with any 
 servant that would milk properly, therefore 
 we were obliged to milk the cows and sell 
 the milk ourselves, as well as feed the cows 
 and do greatest part of the farming work. 
 
 The custom in the towns is, to rise very 
 early ; the weather being so hot in summer 
 that the morning is the only time when one 
 can draw breath with pleasure. We were 
 thus compelled in summer to rise at two 
 o'clock to milk, and to be in town before 
 the sun was up ; otherwise we should find 
 the breakfast overand the milk would 
 frequently be sour by twelve o'clock in the 
 day. There were also a number of French- 
 
163 
 
 men in Baltimore, who generally boil the 
 milk before they use it ; but it would boil 
 to whey and curds if it was not delivered 
 betimes in the morning. In winter we 
 rose at four o'clock, and were in town by 
 break of day ; and by such care and assi- 
 duity, and milking our cows regularly and 
 well, we got the best of custom, and our 
 milk became esteemed more than any other. 
 This was a very good business, compared 
 with any other thing to be done in farming 
 in America. During the whole two years 
 I seldom met with a man or woman who 
 would lend any assistance to us so early in 
 the morning; nor do I think it possible to 
 hire people to do what we did ourselves. 
 
 My first work on the farm was to dress 
 the meadows; which were called fine; 
 though the greater part of them in Eng- 
 land would not have been thought worthy 
 of being called meadow at all, being over- 
 run with briars and weeds of different de- 
 scription. Their state indeed was such, 
 that when I mowed them, I sometimes in 
 M 2 
 
164 
 
 making the hay did not know whether it 
 was worth putting together, or not, expect- 
 ing that it would not be sold ; but, contrary 
 to my supposition, it was readily bought by 
 the stable-keepers at nine pounds per ton. 
 It was, however, a dry summer ; and this 
 is not the usual price : five pounds being 
 about the average, one year with another, 
 at Baltimore; at Philadelphia and New- 
 York not so much. The twenty-six acres 
 cut fourteen tons of hay, which brought me 
 one hundred and twenty-six pounds, while 
 the cakes for the cows (a much better feed) 
 eost me only seventy-eight pounds fifteen 
 shillings. They milked very well on that 
 sort of food, with the addition of Indian 
 corn, blades, stalks, corn, and cobbs, all 
 chopped up together ; but very little of this 
 mixture served with the cakes. The milk 
 was much liked ; and the greater part of the 
 cows got fat, and were sold to the butchers. 
 This was the first thing of the kind done 
 in America, and very much surprised 
 many gentlemen of my acquaintance ; and 
 
165 
 
 the linseed-cakes began to be much searched 
 after before I left that country. I have 
 been told that there have been many tons 
 of those cakes thrown away as good for no 
 purpose whatever ; and so little was their 
 use known there, that when we had them 
 in the waggon the people asked if we ate 
 them ourselves. 
 
 The next business in the farm, after 
 cleaning and dressing the meadows, was to 
 plant Indian corn. This is usually done 
 in the first week of May, but mine was so 
 late as the last week ; for I was near two 
 months getting a plough made, therefore I 
 hired for the listing (as they call it). I 
 put-in my corn in drills, and harrowed the 
 seed in and it did very well ; which so 
 much amazed all who saw me, that you 
 would imagine there was some charm in 
 their old method of setting it by the hoe. 
 I found drilling to be the best and cleanest 
 way, and my corn prospered and grew 
 very well ; beyond the expectation of any 
 farmers there, and much contrary to their 
 
166 
 
 wishes -for as I hadjpublished a Treatise on 
 Agriculture, the lower class of people seem- 
 ed to have a desire that nothing I did 
 should succeed ; and from my opinion of 
 the land I was much afraid their wishes 
 would be gratified. And having never 
 cultivated such poor land before, nor raised 
 Indian corn, I had little idea what the soil 
 would do. I had thus only one encourage- 
 ment ; which was, that other people's land 
 was as bad as mine, and some a great deal 
 worse. 
 
 We still remained, during all this time, 
 without any one to assist us, except the 
 hiring for the ploughing. We had the corn 
 to plant, and the cows to mind, and every 
 thing to do: and to put us in spirits, now 
 and then an Englishman would come and 
 tell us a most lamentable story of what suf- 
 ferings he had undergone, that he had been 
 cheated out of his money, and how poor 
 the land was, with all sorts of murmurings ; 
 constantly ending by asking my wife and 
 family how they liked America ? to which 
 
167 
 
 the answer " Not at all" was returned very 
 quickly. It is impossible to express what a 
 man feels in such a situation. I remember 
 one Englishman, after repeating all the 
 things that could fill a stranger's mind with 
 trouble and horror, ^said with a very heavy 
 sigh as he was going out of the house, 
 " It is the devil's own country to be sure!" 
 Among other things, he had told us of the 
 thunder and lightning, &c, ; and some few 
 days after, we had a specimen of this, for 
 such a dreadful scene I had never beheld 
 it thundered and lightened, blew and rained 
 in such a manner as to swim a great part of 
 our corn out of the drills, and to seem as if 
 there was going to be an end of the world. 
 Such behaviour is meant as friendship by 
 these Englishmen ; though it is very un- 
 comfortable to hear : and this I had to 
 suffer every day of my life, and sometimes 
 two or three times a day. Besides all this, 
 the lower sort of Americans (who dislike 
 an Englishman as much as it is possible for 
 one man to dislike .Another) continually 
 
168 
 
 contrive to insult him, by any unpleasant 
 expression they can make use of; and 
 their conduct in this respect may in some 
 measure be accounted for, from the better 
 sort of people, in common conversation, 
 always saying, if any thing is done better 
 than usual in the management of land, (as, 
 ploughing in a proper manner, &c.) or a 
 fine horse or cow is seen " It is like the 
 English :" and that such preference is con- 
 stantly given to the English, disgusts them 
 much. If a man hears himself and his 
 country abused in foreign countries, as I con- 
 tinually heard England and its inhabitants 
 abused in America, he must feel himself un- 
 comfortable ; the general character I heard 
 given to them in conversation when I was 
 not known (so that it might not be particu- 
 larly offensive to me) is, that the English are 
 a set of plunderers, who rob all nations for 
 their riches, and could not exist if they were 
 not continually at war that the nation is 
 ruined, and owes a debt it never can pay, &c. 
 After my sons, ancf myself, had hoed the 
 
169 
 
 corn, I began to look out for a piece of land 
 for sowing turnips, which appeared to me 
 likely to be very profitable; for I was told 
 that they were to be sold at one dollar per 
 bushel, and though I did not myself know 
 how many bushels an acre would produce, 
 it was generally stated in conversation at 
 one thousand bushels. I thought this must 
 be a ready way to get rich : but, like all 
 other American calculations, I have found 
 it to be erroneous ; for the last year I had 
 a very good crop, yet it only produced 
 three hundred and sixty bushels, and, the 
 average price being then three shillings a 
 bushel, it was one of the most profitable 
 crops I experienced in that country. I 
 believe, however, it would not be possible 
 for a man to sell the produce of more than 
 three acres in one season, and in one city or 
 town ; but even this is a very handsome 
 profit (o N ne hundred and sixty-two pounds) 
 for so small a spot of ground. In that case 
 he must have two men and two horses 
 employed every day for about two months 
 
170 
 
 (at an expence of about thirteen pounds 
 ten shillings) for selling them, 
 
 Now how to get my land prepared for 
 my turnips I did not know, as I could not 
 meet with any man as a servant or labour- 
 er to do any thing, especially to plough; 
 but with some difficulty I hired a man to 
 come to plough with his own horses^ at 
 three dollars a day, which was at the rate of 
 a dollar for a quarter of an acre, and I was 
 obliged to consider it as a very great favour 
 that I got it done at all. Myself and my 
 two sons had previously scraped up all the 
 dung we could, and mixed it with earth for 
 a compost for these turnips : this we had 
 done immediately after the gusts of rain, 
 which always prevented us from hoeing 
 the corn, for they make the land so soft 
 that we could not waHc across it for a day 
 or two without sinking as deep as the 
 plough had gone, or deeper. Though I 
 had not myself ploughed for some years, I 
 was compelled now to begin again to land 
 the corn ; I holding the plough, while one. 
 
171 
 
 of my sons led the horse betwixt the rows, 
 and my other son harrowed after us, with a 
 small. harrow made for that purpose. By 
 this process, though contrary to the general 
 custom of the country, we raised a very fine 
 crop of corn. . When the man had plough- 
 ed three acres of the turnip land, I had got 
 harrows made ; therefore we harrowed it 
 ourselves with our own horses. I then 
 wanted a roller ; which I was lucky enough 
 to borrow, from a gentleman of the name of 
 Bowley, who lived within one mile and a 
 half of us, and with whom I had the honour 
 of an acquaintance, and found him very 
 neighbourly on every occasion ; so we got 
 our land in such fine order as was not usual 
 in America. We then employed ourselves 
 in picking up the refuse stuff by raking the 
 land over with rakes, and burnt it; as it was 
 not yet a proper time to sow turnips : the 
 1 oth of August being the time to a day, in 
 that country ; for few men sow above an 
 acre, and many only a rood, therefore they 
 are soon sown. 
 
172 
 
 Buck- wheat being a crop very much spoken 
 of, I set off to plough three acres and a half 
 for that purpose. The weather was very 
 hot, and the land dry ; so that I found it 
 stiff work. I completed the ploughing, 
 however, and my sons harrowed it, and by 
 these means we got the buck-wheat sown. 
 As soon as this was done, it was time to sow 
 turnips. I then began with my sons to 
 drill the land, lead manure, and put in the 
 seed. We could, with very hard work, sow 
 only twenty drills a day ; which took five 
 cart-loads of manure, besides having the 
 drills to make, the seed to sow and harrow 
 in, and even all the water to draw out of a 
 well for our cows and horses* twice a day : 
 for there was no water on the farm but in 
 the well close to the house, so that we had 
 at all times between twenty and thirty head 
 of cattle to fetch out of different pastures and 
 water there. These employments brought 
 us to the time for mowing our hay. 
 
 I had forgot to mention that we had 
 cocked ten acres of clover- and leaded it, 
 
173 
 
 among other things, before ; and had the 
 good luck to meet with a man to mow it, 
 who gave me a promise (of his own accord) 
 to mow the meadow and bring a partner 
 along with him. His wages were a dollar 
 a. day, with his meat and a pint of whisky. 
 He mowed nearly an acre, on some days ; 
 on the average, about three roods. He 
 having asked for this second job as a favour, 
 and that I would not engage any one else, 
 and the time being appointed, &c. I made 
 myself easy as to getting the meadow mow- 
 ed ; but I never saw him again. When the 
 time came, I began to enquire for mowers. 
 First one set came and took it to do, and 
 then another ; and I found there were a set 
 of people who had made it their business to 
 persuade the men who undertook it, to. dis- 
 appoint me. The deuce a one ever came 
 to begin to mow ! and I began to think 
 that I must mow it myself, or else lose the 
 hay, which was the only thing of any real 
 value on the farm. At last, with a great deal 
 of trouble and vexation, I got it mowed with 
 
174 
 
 many fresh men, and my sons and myself 
 cocked the hay, and stacked it and some 
 rare sweats we had ! The turnips were ready 
 to hoe at the same time, so that we were 
 pretty full-handed ; and it was the general 
 talk that we should kill ourselves ; and I 
 really think never three people worked so 
 hard in the world for the length of time, 
 and especially in such a climate. 
 
 The turnips grew beyond any thing T 
 could expect, and particularly four rows 
 which I did with some plaster of Paris. 
 Having, at the time when I entered, sown 
 a part of the clover also with plaster of Paris, 
 according to Judge Peters' direction, and by 
 way of experiment left some lands without 
 any, the plaster answered no good purpose, 
 nor made any other difference than that this 
 part of the clover was of a much finer green, 
 so that one might perceive to an inch how 
 far it went, but I do not think I had a 
 pound of hay more where it was sown than 
 where it was not sown. On the turnips, 
 however, it amazed me* Seeing this, I 
 
175 
 
 got a bushel of plaster for some other part 
 of the turnips, and sowed it on a square 
 near to the road ; when in twenty-four 
 hours I could discern the crop to be of a 
 much deeper green, and in forty-eight 
 hours so much so that any spectator would 
 have supposed the land on which these 
 turnips growed to be of superior quality. 
 I then sowed another bushel of it on two 
 rows, and missed two rows : the turnips 
 growed to a much greater size where the 
 plaster of Paris was put, than in the rest of 
 the field, in the increased proportion of 
 about two to one in weight where the first 
 two bushels were applied, and about three 
 to two where the last bushel, besides being 
 much juicier and a better kind. 
 
 Having got our hay stacked, turnips 
 hoed, &c. the peaches began to be ripe, and 
 we wanted a purchaser for them. My sons 
 and myself set to work to pull them, and 
 we were fortunate enough to find a black 
 fellow (who had been one of my mowers) 
 to sell them this bemg an employment 
 
176 
 
 which they like, viz. riding to market iri a 
 cart, drinking whisky, and cheating you 
 out of part of the money they get for the 
 truck. He sold as many peaches for us as 
 came to seventeen pounds, at (on the ave- 
 rage) four pence per peck : there would have 
 been little profit upon them if we had hired 
 men to pull them. 
 
 As soon as this business was over, the corn 
 began to be ready to be topped and pulled, 
 and the turnips for taking to market; so we 
 kept our black fellow to be our market-man. 
 We had turnips to get ready for market, and 
 the corn to cut, the remaining part of the day. 
 I ventured to cut it up by the roots, and 
 set it up in shocks. This process, the in- 
 habitants told me, would spoil all the corn, 
 both blades and tops; but as I wanted it 
 chiefly for the cows, I was of a different 
 opinion, which proved to be right. For, 
 having invented a machine for cutting up 
 the stalks, blades, husks, and corn, altogether, 
 it thus made most excellent feed for cows 
 and not bad for horses : but it did not 
 
177 
 
 answer with the pigs, as they will not eat 
 mouldy 'corn -at all, but cows like it better. 
 Had I remained in that country, I should 
 have continued to cut corn for cattle in the 
 same manner, the cows preferring soft corn 
 to the hard; and there was besides less waste 
 in that method than any other. The ma- 
 chine for cutting is the best I ever saw, and 
 I shall endeavour to get one made on a 
 similar construction here : with the assist- 
 ance of a person to fill the box, I could cut 
 enough of that sort of food in two hours to 
 serve twenty-seven head of horses and cows 
 for twenty-four hours. 
 
 About this time, which was in September, 
 four of my family were taken with the 
 yellow fever ; so that myself and one of my 
 sons, for about fourteen days, had all the 
 work to do ; and to churn, cook our own 
 victuals, and the family to nurse besides - 
 a very distressing situation ! The sick part 
 of the family were light-headed, and I dis- 
 covered my wife to have a great desire to 
 come to England again ; and I thought tfiat 
 
 N 
 
178 
 
 (should God spare them) I would return as 
 SDon as I possibly could : but at that time 
 I had not the least notion that it was the 
 yellow fever, or I should have been more 
 alarmed. I was myself their doctor ; and 
 the remedy I chiefly used was red port, of 
 which I gave them plenty. The way in 
 which they caught the infection was by suf- 
 fering a gentleman to put a trunk in the 
 passage of our house : for the fever then 
 raging very bad at Philadelphia, the mayor 
 of Baltimore ordered all communication to 
 be stopped at the distance of three miles from 
 the city, which was just at the spot where 
 we lived: and the gentleman opening his 
 trunk in the passage, while the children stood 
 looking at him, the next day one of them was 
 taken with the disorder. It is a sleepy com- 
 plaint, so much so, that the persons afflicted 
 can scarcely be kept awake ; therefore my 
 wife desired the child, a girl about nine years 
 of age, towalkin the air: she walked towards 
 a patch of turnips, where she lay down, and 
 fell asleep among them ; and had not her 
 
179 
 
 elder brother perceived which way she 
 went, in all probability she would have lost 
 her life; for it being then in the evening, and 
 the turnip-tops very high, we should never 
 have found her, which is often the case in 
 this disorder. By God's mercy, however, 
 they all recovered in about fourteen days ; 
 but it reduced my wife so much that she 
 never got her strength again while she con- 
 tinued in the country ; which caused her to 
 have a very unhappy time of it. 
 
 Luckily an Irishman came to ask for 
 work, who had a wife ; and we got her 
 into the house : and though the drunkenest 
 woman I ever saw, she proved useful to us. 
 She would rise in the morning to help to 
 milk, and wash the clothes, and wash dishes 
 at times, when sober; but shewould be drunk 
 for a day or two together. Before that time 
 we had done every thing in ourselves ; and 
 afterwards tried several others, but never 
 could find one o any use at all, except this 
 drunken woman, therefore we kept her 
 about twelve months. The man soon 
 brought another Irishman, avery bad fellow; 
 N 2 
 
180 
 
 but having our Indian corn and the buck- 
 wheat to get -in, the turnips to send to mar- 
 ket, and the fruit of a large apple-orchard to 
 pick, &c. we were glad to keep them, bad 
 as they were. I hired a man and his son, and 
 their team of horses ; and with my own 
 waggon and horses we got our Indian corn 
 harvested, buck-wheat in, apples picked, &c. 
 We manured the buck-wheat land, and sow- 
 ed it with rye ; and tried plaster of Paris t6 
 dust it with (as lime) when wet, before sow- 
 ing, but to no effect. 
 
 About this time I bought sixteen cows : 
 thinking our black fellow would do very 
 well for selling the milk ; as we could mea- 
 sure it, and he then could not cheat us. 
 But in this I was very much disappointed : 
 for he had so many tricks in mixing water 
 with the milk, &c. that I was obliged to 
 discharge him from that employment. 
 I then- put the Irishman to sell the milk : 
 and he did this very well for fourteen 
 clays ; for having been a watchman in the 
 city, he knew every street, and house in it, 
 and proved a very useful fellow. At the end 
 
181 
 
 of fourteen days, however, he informed me 
 that it was necessary for him to receive his 
 money from the customers weekly : for his 
 trade increasing, it prevented him from sell- 
 ing so much milk as he might do ; saying, 
 once a-week he could return round during 
 the day and collect the money. I readily 
 agreed to this ; but when we came to settle 
 in fourteen days afterwards, he was nine 
 pounds in my debt, and unable to give me 
 any account of this deficiency: having seen 
 him continually drunk, I easily guessed 
 what had become of the money ; which, 
 however, he honestly worked out. By 
 this time the black fellow and the Irishman 
 nearly killed one of my horses, which had 
 almost frustrated this project of selling milk; 
 but knowing that nothing else would answer, 
 I put my youngest son to this employment, 
 and he performed it wonderfully well. The 
 cows now increased so much in their milk, 
 by eating cakes, that we had more than he 
 could easily sell ; therefore, my other son 
 joined his brother. I bought two sulkies, and 
 fixed the milk-churns behind : and then we 
 
182 
 
 didfaffiously, and had plenty of money from 
 our milk business, and increased our num- 
 ber of cows to twenty. 
 
 I bought nineteen ewes and a tup, to try 
 how sheep would answer. They were very 
 expensive in wintering ; for they wanted 
 food in the same way as horses or cows for 
 near four months, and a house to run into 
 at night. They cost me thirteen shillings 
 and six pence each : and I sold twelve of 
 the ewes at twenty-one shillings each after 
 they had reared their lambs ; the lambs 
 sold at nineteen shillings each : the remain- 
 der of the ewes at nineteen shillings each. 
 Their wool I sold at three shillings per 
 pound to more than twenty customers. 
 They paid on the whole very well. I dis- 
 covered among these sheep some of the 
 small-tailed kind, and found them to be 
 more inclined to fatten than many of the 
 others ; but at that time I had not the least 
 idea of what they descended from, not hav- 
 ing seen in England any thing like them, 
 except the Dishley sheep. These sheep 
 came from Holland. 
 
183 
 
 SECTION III. 
 The second Tour, for three Months* 
 
 I HAD now the two Irishmen the one to 
 take care of the cows and the other to chop 
 wood ; and the old woman to help my two 
 sons and daughter to milk, and my eldest 
 son to prepare the horses and sulkies, &c. 
 
 All things, therefore, being in a settled 
 state, I set off for Philadelphia, where I had 
 agreed with a printer to print one thousand 
 copies of my EXPERIENCED FARMER ; 
 and as the first volume was finished, I 
 thought I would deliver that, and gather 
 the money. 
 
 In my way to Philadelphia, I called on a 
 gentleman of the name of Doctor Tilton, at 
 Wilmington ; a very worthy and respect- 
 able man : he made me promise to stop a 
 day with him in my return. At Philadel- 
 phia I was very pleasantly received by my 
 
184 
 
 old acquaintances, and particularly by Mr. 
 Boadley, the author of the SKETCHES, with 
 whose company I was much gratified. I 
 proceeded in delivering the books, and got 
 my money cheerfully paid ; and every 
 thing went on well. 
 
 After some days I set off for New-York ; 
 and in my way stopped at Brunswick, with 
 General White, Judge Patterson, and Mr. 
 Garnett, an English gentleman. I made a 
 promise to spend a few days with them on 
 my return. I was very kindly received at 
 New- York; and delivered my books, and 
 collected the money. While there, I met a 
 gentleman named Miles Smith, who married 
 Sir Digby Ledger's sister (an English lady) ; 
 he gave me a very kind invitation to go 
 to see him at Brunswick in my return. 
 During my stay also- at New- York, Mr. 
 Garnett introduced me to General Gates ; 
 who had just imported some cattle from 
 Holland, which were very tolerable. 
 
 Having finished my business at New- 
 York, I returned to Brunswick, to see all 
 
185 
 
 my friends there. Mr. Smith had got some 
 imported rabbits of the warren kind, from 
 England, with an intention to make a war- 
 ren ; but this will not answer in any part 
 of America that I have seen, for the follow- 
 ing reasons : First, There is no sod to 
 make banks; therefore the fence must be all 
 paled to keep them in, which is an enor- 
 mous expence. Secondly, There being no 
 sod, they cannot burrow ; for if they were 
 to scratch holes as they do in England, the 
 frost in the winter and the rain in summer 
 would break down all the earth upon them. 
 As a proof of this, even the fox has no bur- 
 row in America: they get into hollow trees; 
 and the sportsmen are obliged to buy the 
 foxes at five or six dollars each, to hunt, from 
 men who catch them for that purpose, as 
 they seldom or never lie in cover as they do 
 in England. The rabbits will not answer, 
 for a further reason : there being very little 
 or no grass for them in the summer, and the 
 winter is so severe they would not pay for 
 the food they would eat. The first winter 
 
ISO 
 
 I was there, they would have wanted sup-* 
 port from the end of December to the be^ 
 ginning of April had they been in England 
 in such weather. The fur of the American 
 rabbit is of little value - y the skin is so thin 
 that you can scarcely get it off without 
 breaking or tearing it : they sell for two 
 pence each. A rabbit-warren was one of my 
 great projects when I went into America, 
 could it have been established with any pro- 
 bability of success. 
 
 I spent some agreeable time with Mr. and 
 Mrs. Smith (who is a very sensible lady). I 
 saw there some other English ladies ; parti- 
 cularly a Mrs. Vernon,whose complaints were 
 very heavy against America. I then set 
 off to Philadelphia ; and spent a few days 
 with my friends, Mr.Warder, Mr. Boadley, 
 and Mr. Whitesides, at German-Town, six 
 miles from that city. From Philadelphia I 
 went to Wilmington, on a visit to Dr. 
 Tilton ; having with me books, and a sub- 
 scription-paper. In this last I saw the 
 name of John Mills, whom Dr. Tilton said 
 
187 
 
 that he knew very well, and that when 
 breakfast was over we would have our 
 horses and ride to his house it being in the 
 way to the Doctor's farm, which he pro- 
 posed shewing me. I thought Wilmington 
 one of the prettiest situations I had seen in 
 America, and it looked like good land ; but 
 when I came to view it, it was little better 
 than the rest of the country. After seeing 
 the Doctor's farm we called on Mr. John 
 Mills ; who is a Scotchman, and a man of 
 good sense : but when I opened my busi- 
 ness to him, he said he was not the sub- 
 scriber ; it was his son who was then in the 
 West-Indies : therefore we parted, and I 
 dined with the Doctor. 
 
 Very unexpectedly, I received an invita- 
 tion to go to see Mr. Mills ; and was high- 
 ly entertained and very hospitably received 
 by him : for, being travelling in the stage- 
 coaches, I was disappointed of a conveyance, 
 and thus stayed there two days and nights. 
 During that time I viewed his farm ; which 
 was reckoned good land, but I found it 
 poorer than I expected. He told me how 
 
188 
 
 he had lost his money, and in very large 
 sums. He said that at the last meeting 
 which he attended, expecting some money 
 he had let out on interest, he grew angry, 
 and told them "They were a set of 
 
 d d rogues ! but what better could be 
 
 expected from them ? They, their fathers, 
 or grandfathers, had all been sent there by 
 the consent of twelve honest men, and the 
 king had signed their warrant." He said, 
 he formerly lived in London ; and having 
 got together a large sum of money, he and 
 another gentleman agreed to go to America 
 to purchase lands, and expected thus to be 
 equal to the Duke of Bedford in landed 
 property : however, not liking the land 
 when he got there, he lent his money out 
 on mortgage, at (as he thought) good in- 
 terest and on good security ; but he had 
 been much disappointed in these respects, 
 for there were frequently two or three 
 claimants to the land, and such dpings as had 
 run him out of a good property. Mrs. 
 Mills too had most dismal stories to tell in 
 regard to the women-servants. They had 
 
189 
 
 then begun to sell milk ; but he being 
 totally unaccustomed to cows, I knew that 
 would not answer his end. He had agreed 
 with an Englishman that had been sent 
 over by Mr. Bullock, with Punch, the famous 
 race-horse bought by the Prince of Wales of 
 Lord Egremont -(race-horsemen are sel- 
 dom proper to manage cows!) to do the 
 business of the farm, milk the cowSj and sell 
 the milk, &c. on condition of allowing him 
 half of what the milk sold for. I have seen 
 him since, and he told me this was not likely 
 to answer : the man had got in his debt, 
 and was endeavouring to cheat him. Mr. 
 Mills said, " his son Jack was such a 
 proud fool that he would not go back to 
 England; or else he was himself determined 
 to go to the country where he knew how to 
 get money and keep it ; but in America he 
 could do neither for (said he) how was 
 it possible to get money when there was 
 none ?" 
 
 Having spent two days with Mr. Mills, 
 I got a place in the coach, and returned to 
 Orange-Hill. 
 
190 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 The regular Proceedings on the Farm. 
 
 I FOUND the cows much improved, and 
 my stock increased: the ewes having lamb- 
 ed; and the imported sow I bought, pigged: 
 and all was very well in the farm. The 
 cows had grown what is considered fat in 
 America, on the oil-cakes. It was time to 
 sow oats, timothy-seed, plant early potatoes^ 
 &c. ; so I set to work again. 
 
 I set half an acre of early potatoes, in drills 
 eighteen inches asunder, with some com- 
 post made from the last year's manure ; and 
 a very good crop they proved, at the rate of 
 three hundred and sixty bushels per acre 
 when full-grown. 
 
 Having ploughed the land that was in 
 corn the year befftre, I next sowed seven- 
 teen acres of oats and six acres of barley. 
 It is usual to sow one bushel of barley, oats, 
 
191 
 
 &c. per acre ; and I was told by an Irish- 
 man, my neighbour, that if I sowed more I 
 should reap neither straw nor corn, for 
 he had tried it repeatedly. It therefore 
 required no experiment on that head ; nor 
 was I inclined to make one, knowing that 
 poor land requires little seed : but as I am 
 fond of experiments, and I must be doing 
 something new, I got five bushels of bar- 
 ley, and sowed it with one bushel per acre 
 on five acres of the field which had borne 
 the year before as fine Indian corn as I ever 
 saw in the country though I expected not 
 to be paid for my trouble ; but I had never 
 experienced one bushel of barley per acre, 
 nor had I the least thought how land could 
 be regularly covered to bear so small a pro* 
 duce. The land appeared in as fine order as 
 could be, for barley ; and I chose, in dif- 
 ferent parts of the field, tlie very best of it. 
 It proved, too, a very fine time for sowing 
 the oats and barley, with rains proper for its 
 coming out of the ground ; nor did I ever 
 see barley look better when-it came up ; and 
 
the land being sown with timothy, it alto- 
 gether made a most beautiful appearance. 
 
 One acre also of the land which I had 
 manured, and had turnips on, the year 
 before, I now sowed with barley and timo- 
 thy, to see the difference, and to try what 
 the manure would do. This looked as well 
 as the other. Mr. Bowley, my neighbour, 
 came to view the process ; and acknow- 
 ledged he never saw so good farming in the 
 country: "But that," he said, " availed 
 nothing : the land was so poor, that with- 
 out dung its produce was not worth the cul- 
 tivation, and dung and labour It would not 
 pay for." This proved very true. I asked 
 him how many oats I might expect an acre : 
 he said he never had more than six bushels, 
 and often not so many ; but probably I might 
 have more. As I cut them for the cows, 
 (the straw and corn together,) I cannot 
 tell what was the produce : I estimate it at 
 four bushels per acre ; which is nearly the 
 average crop of the oats grown about 
 Baltimore. 
 
195 
 
 My barley I thrashed out ; and on the 
 five acres where rib manure had been put, 
 I found that I had one bushel per acre, and 
 of a much worse quality thari the seed had 
 been ; so that j when all expences were paid, 
 I lost about six dollars per acrfc: and the rent 
 being also about six dollars per acre, the 
 total loss upon these five acres would be sixty 
 dollars, or twenty-two pounds ten shillings 
 currency. Now by this crop it may be seen, 
 how, when the English farmer strikes large- 
 ly into farming in America, he may lose his 
 money. The other acre of barley, which had 
 been manured with compost, produced four- 
 teenbushels, and of a much superior quality; 
 being rather better than what I sowed. The 
 land where the oats and bad barley growed 
 was by much the best field in the farm, and 
 was counted excellent land in that Country* 
 
 The timothy, though it came up very 
 fine, did not prosper equally with that sown 
 in the fall of the year ; but whether this 
 was the nature of the climate or of the 
 plant, I cannot say. The rye we harvest- 
 er 
 
194 
 
 cd ; and when thrashed out, the produce 
 was four bushels per acre, and in appear- 
 ance as good a crop as any in the country. 
 After we had sown the oats, I prepared 
 four acres and a half for winter potatoes in 
 as correct a manner as was possible, and 
 dunged with twelve thousand bushels of 
 good dung of the cows and horses, made 
 from linseed-cake, and Indian corn-stalks 
 blades and tops all chopped up together. 
 This, however, I found to be of too hot a 
 nature for that soil ; so much so, as to cause 
 some of the potatoe-tops to burn up and die* 
 Had three loads of mould been put to each 
 load of dung, I am of an opinion forty-eight 
 thousand bushels of compost might have 
 been made, which would have produced a 
 much better crop of potatoes or any thing 
 else, bushel for bushel, than the dung in the 
 raw state. This quantity of compost would 
 have covered eighteen acres of land ; and I 
 am certain that there, or in any other coun- 
 try, manure prepared in a proper manner by 
 adding mould in the above proportion,/^. 
 
193 
 
 three loads of good earth to one load of 
 dung,) thus bringing the whole to a sort of 
 rich garden earth, would always produce 
 better crops of any kind. This will be the 
 case especially with turnips ; which will thus 
 pay more for labour than any thing I know 
 of, and be of very great utility to the com- 
 munity at large ; and if so, it is desirable 
 that it should be made generally known. 
 
 The produce of the potatoe crops was 
 one hundred bushels to the acre, which 
 sold at about three shillings and six pence 
 per bushel. They were good in quality 
 for America; but there are no potatoes 
 equal in flavour in that country to the Eng- 
 lish, nor so mealy : and though some pota- 
 toes are sold there at seven shillings and six 
 pence per bushel, I do not think a crop 
 of potatoes in any market I saw in America 
 will average more than three shillingsand 
 six pence per bushel, nor even so much 
 in Philadelphia or New- York. I heard a 
 Scotchman, who was selling potatoes in 
 Philadelphia market, say, that they did not 
 O 2 
 
196 
 
 sell for so much as they cost getting out of 
 the ground. No money, therefore, will be 
 got by that crop. I know a gentleman who, 
 from correct accounts, lost two hundred 
 and sixty dollars (which is seventy- seven 
 pounds ten shillings currency) by eleven 
 acres, short of paying for the planting and 
 taking out of the ground : they were sold in 
 Philadelphia market, and the produce had 
 been great 
 
 I forgot to mention that I planted, in the 
 first week in May, about seventy acres of 
 Indian corn in drills, and one acre of Indian 
 corn Jn drills on the land which had borne 
 turnips the year before, and which was very 
 fine ; at different distances, from three to six 
 feet : but a better crop of Indian corn may 
 be raised by planting at six feet asunder and 
 eighteen inches in the drills, than by any 
 other mode I ever tried, if the land be rich. 
 Upon very poor land I do not doubt that 
 the hills may be superior; as by hoeing 
 and ploughing there is rather more of the 
 best earth added to the roots of the corn. 
 
137 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 The third Tour to mew the Wheat Crops and 
 other Things, in June and July, in some well- 
 cultivated Parts of America. Containing 
 several Remarks on Fruit ; on the Manage- 
 ment of Soil ; on reaping and harvesting of 
 Wheat by the Cradle and Sickle, 8$c f 
 
 HAVING got the sorn planted, the potatoes 
 set, &c. I took a tour of about three hundred 
 miles into what is termed the Eastern shore, 
 which lies by the bay side, called the penin- 
 sula of Chesapeak, to view the crops of 
 wheat ; as that is a great wheat country* 
 I had been told this is the best farming 
 country in America : and I think it the best 
 large tract of land I ever saw there ; it 
 being not so broken, or guuied, as all other 
 p^irts are, though not quite free from that 
 condition. 
 
 I went by way of Anapolis : where I saw 
 some very beautiful Indian corn, intended 
 
198 
 
 for roasting ears ; and, under it, cymlings, 
 cucumbers, melons, &c. which made a most 
 beautiful and luxurious appearance. This 
 was in the month of June. In my way I 
 visited Colonel Mercer, with whom I spent 
 Some very pleasant days. He was cradling 
 and reaping his wheat ; which he thought 
 very fine, and in the best parts calculated to 
 have fifteen bushels on an acre. It being 
 the time at which the wheat is all nearly 
 ripe, I had a very proper view of those 
 crops, so as to form a very good idea of the 
 produce ; and I think there might be from 
 four to five bushels per acre on an average. 
 I rode out every day about the fields. 
 
 This country is called the West- River, 
 being the opposite side of the bay. The 
 first asparagus I ever saw grow by nature, 
 was on the banks of that river, where it 
 grows very fine ; but pasture - grass is 
 scarcely to be seen in any part of that 
 country, and very little or no artificial grass 
 is raised. I do not recollect seeing a mea- 
 dow in all my ride j the tops and the 
 
199 
 
 blades of the Indian corn being the chief 
 support of their cattle, horses, sheep, &c. 
 during the winter, with the assistance of the 
 wheat-straw. Indeed Indian corn is the 
 great dependence of every part of America, 
 for both man and beast. It is a wonderful 
 plant; and the produce of four hills (which is 
 four thousand eight hundred corns, and yet 
 not two quarts) will plant an acre the next 
 season. It is the most beautiful crop when 
 properly managed, that I ever saw ; and 
 will grow to a greater burthen on the poor- 
 est land, I am of opinion, than any other 
 plant in the world. They talk of growing 
 one hundred bushels per acre on the back- 
 wood lands ; but that I do not believe, and 
 it may easily be known. I shall give a de- 
 scription of it in some part of this work, and 
 state the greatest produce that can be raised. 
 Having satisfied my curiosity at the West 
 River, I set off to the Eastern shore j where 
 I met with a most agreeable reception from 
 Mr. John Singleton (an Englishman), a 
 very well-informed man, and who has 
 
. 200 
 
 tried many experiments. He took great 
 pains to inform me of every thing that 
 could be useful ; as I intended to publish a 
 supplement tp the work I had printed at 
 that time, He introduced me to many 
 very respectable farmers : for that part of 
 America is cultivated in a farming style ; 
 and if it was not so unhealthy, I would 
 rather live there than any where else in 
 America, at least of all that I saw. They 
 are in general what may be termed real 
 farmers ; many of them growing from one 
 tp two hundred acres of wheat, and the like 
 quantity of Indian corn. Their system of 
 cultivation is this : If the farm consists of 
 four hundred acres, there are always two 
 hundred lying to what they call resting 
 (that is, without a crop) for two years ; 
 then they plant it with Indian corn, which 
 is a preparation for wheat ; and then it lies 
 again two years tp rest. Mr. Singleton 
 had three farms. On his home-farm he 
 had above one hundred acres of wheat, 
 from which, he informed me, he did not 
 
201 
 
 expect more than one bushel per acre* 
 from one of the others he expected about 
 five bushels per acre. The third was chiefly 
 rye : he said the soil was poor, and it would 
 not bring wheat, 
 
 I here had a very good opportunity to 
 see the Hessian fly, there being at that time 
 hundreds of acres infected with that insect. 
 This fly is said to destroy all the wheat in 
 several parts of America ; but I believe the 
 poverty of the soil and the nature of the 
 climate to be the greatest misfortunes. A 
 great deal is said about the Americans not 
 manuring their land. To be sure that is a 
 cause of its poverty ; but it is one which 
 cannot be remedied. I suppose there is 
 land in that country that has been sown 
 v/ith wheat every fourth year since it was 
 cleared from timber, and never had any 
 dung put upon it. There are no dunghills 
 lying wasting, as in many parts of Eng- 
 land ; consequently the farmer must not 
 bear the blame : the dung must have been 
 applied to some part of the farm, and I ap- 
 prehend the gardens to have had a greater 
 
202 
 
 proportion of it than the fields. All the 
 farmers there have large gardens; which did 
 not seem very rich, but generally the con- 
 trary. I know, by the appearance of the 
 soil, that the land when first cleared, never 
 brought either much burthen or produce. 
 From the information I had of Mr. Single- 
 ton, in the best parts it brought not more 
 than fifteen bushels per acre : and the calcu- 
 lation is fifty pounds weight of straw to the 
 bushel ; that is, six hundred weight of straw 
 to the acre of a good crop, on a bad crop 
 only fifty pounds weight -, therefore the 
 average will not be more than three hun- 
 dred weight per acre. When the Hessian 
 fly did not destroy the wheat, and every 
 thing was what they term prospering, from, 
 five to ten bushels per acre was the produce 
 in the parts I am speaking of. The bulk 
 of straw was always very small, compared 
 with the straw produced on the lands in 
 England : indeed, during all my riding in 
 that country, I saw no wastes of any kind, 
 like those in many parts of England : and 
 
203 
 
 for a good reason ; the crops are so light, 
 both of straw and grain, that they have 
 not much to waste. 
 
 The manner of reaping is cradling by 
 the scythe : and I have heard a great deal 
 said of the dexterity of that process ; and 
 the accounts are really astonishing. But 
 the cause is that the crops are so thin and 
 short, that many could not be reaped at all 
 by any other means, except at more ex- 
 pence than they are worth. But where 
 there is any thing like our crops in England, 
 they cannot cradle at all, but are compelled 
 to reap in the same manner as we do. 
 There are always reapers as well as cradlers 
 at the same time : and where there is any 
 a little stronger wheat, it is cut with the 
 sickle ; and some whole fields are thus 
 reaped : and the men are in general as good 
 reapers as in most parts of England, and 
 mowers too. It is said that a man will 
 cradle five acres per day (I believe three 
 acres are reckoned a day's work for a man): 
 but the cause is not the dexterity of the 
 
204 
 
 man, but the scanty crop he has to cradle, 
 I mowed my oats and barley, having no 
 cradles : they would not make a swath ; 
 therefore, in the straggled manner they fell, 
 they cost as much time and labour in ga- 
 thering as they were worth. I am of an 
 opinion that many of the English waggons 
 and waggoners would carry the produce of 
 ten acres upon one waggon : and the reader 
 may easily conceive this to be true ; fey: 
 where there is but one bushel per acre, it is 
 only ten bushels of wheat on the waggon. 
 
 Now, from this sort of cropping, accord- 
 ing to my calculation of making manure, it 
 will take ten acres or more to make two 
 loads of it: therefore one hundred acres give 
 only twenty loads, which will only manure 
 two acres of the hundred ; so that, from 
 such produce, it will be fifty years before 
 the whole field could be got dunged. Then 
 the Indian corn crop being much more bulky 
 and we will state one load of dung for 
 one acre of corn there would be more 
 manure, supposing the corn-stalks were cut 
 
up and used in the fold for manure, which 
 is not generally done, but left in the field ; 
 which may be one cause of the Hessian fly: 
 therefore, supposing the wheat crop to 
 make twenty loads of dung, (which is more 
 than any man's one hundred acres of wheat 
 would do in the whole country,) and the 
 hundred acres of Indian corn to yield one 
 Jbundred loads, that is only one hundred 
 and twenty loads of dung from the most 
 correct process in each year : and I am of 
 an opinion that many of them use fifty loads 
 regularly in the garden ; nor would the 
 garden be worth any thing without such 
 manuring ; therefore there remain only 
 seventy loads. Then they generally raise 
 a few turnips, and some pumpkins, for 
 which we may allow forty of those seventy 
 loads : and there are but thirty loads of 
 dung left to be applied to the four hundred 
 acres of land per yean To allow ten loads 
 to the acre, as we do in England all over 
 the soil, the proportion of land manured 
 would be three acres per year ; so that it 
 would be more than one hundred and 
 
206 
 
 thirty-three years before the last part of the 
 four hundred acres would receive any dung; 
 and any man, who knows any thing of farm- 
 ing, must allow that, during so long a time, 
 the crops will, on almost any land, become 
 scanty. 
 
 I look upon this calculation to be as near- 
 ly correct as possible, and what has been 
 done, and the only thing that it was in the 
 power of man to do : and I have every rea- 
 son to believe there is not any other part of 
 America, by nature, of so good a quality as 
 this land. Now it is to be observed that 
 the Indian corn crop is very advantageous, 
 as two hundred bushels of dung, or rather 
 good compost (which is much better for 
 corn than dung), would make an acre of very 
 rich fine Indian corn, which is net more thairi 
 four English cart-loads to each acre, as there 
 can be but twelve hundred hills on an acre, 
 and generally only one thousand hills; the 
 hills being six feet asunder in general : and 
 this management will raise a very good crop 
 of corn : but that will not do for wheat, as 
 there is but a very small proportion of the 
 
207 
 
 field manured by that process only here 
 and there a bunch, which is very generally 
 to be seen in the wheat crop in a very good 
 farmer's field. Nor did I see any fault in 
 the farming or the people : on the contrary, 
 they are industrious and very attentive, 
 indeed more so than in many other parts 
 of the world where I have been. The 
 fault is in the land, not in the people : and 
 any man, who goes there to farm, will find 
 that to be the case, and to his sorrow. I 
 look upon the farmer in America to be like 
 a man placed in a deep cistern, with water 
 flowing in upon him, and a, pump to work 
 it out : he must either pump or be drown- 
 ed : and they must either work or famish. 
 It is observed by the Americans, that, if a 
 man gets a plantation and six working 
 negroes, he may maintain himself and a 
 femily : but, to say nothing of the disa- 
 greeableness of the climate, he cannot live 
 comfortably from such means : for it does 
 not appear to me, that, on such soil, a man 
 can raise more than will maintain himself. 
 
208 
 
 to live as Englishmen do. A negro hat 
 generally a numerous family : and as all 
 men live from the ground, the negro's 
 family must be maintained as well as the 
 white man's family, although not at so 
 great an expence. There are many reasons 
 why no white man can do so much to- 
 wards raising produce from the earth in a 
 climate like that of America, as he could in 
 England, or as a black man can in America ; 
 the black man being able to bear the heat 
 much better than the white man. Besides, 
 there are generally three months in a year, 
 during which little can be done by any man, 
 except feeding cattle and cutting wood ; 
 the frost being so very severe, as to prevent 
 both plough and spade from penetrating into 
 the soil ; and there being no spring and 
 autumn, but all winter and summer. 
 When the summer sets in, the spring crop 
 must be got-in in a few days, or he had 
 better never sow it at all. When I was 
 with General Washington, he surprised me 
 much by saying he should lose his oat 
 
209 
 
 crop, by being so late with it; for it did 
 not appear that there had been a space of 
 more than six days from the breaking up of 
 the frost to the time when I was with him. 
 But I found that to be the case : for the 
 hot weather comes on so quickly, that, if 
 the spring grain do not get fairly out before 
 the heat sets in, it will come to no good ; 
 and, at the best, the produce will be small ; 
 so that the cultivation of a farm in America 
 is much more expensive than in England : 
 and a man must have great force to do the 
 business in so short a time. The case is the 
 same with the harvest : for, when the grain 
 begins to ripen, the sun is so intensely hot 
 and the winds so much higher than gene- 
 rally in England, that, if it was not expe- 
 ditiously harvested, they would shake it all 
 out : and if a farmer has not people under 
 his own immediate command to reap his 
 harvest, he would be liable to lose some 
 part of the crop ; it not being possible to 
 find men whom he can hire to do it. This 
 is one cause why the American flour is 
 
 p 
 
, 210 
 
 fairer than the English flour. The Ameri- 
 cans harvest the wheat in a much better 
 manner than in England : they cut it 
 greener, and put it up in general in large 
 shocks about a cart-load in each ; and it 
 gets no sun after it is cut. The reason 
 why they do this, is, that some of them 
 have not barns ; and the general practice 
 is to tread out the grain by horses ; there- 
 fore these shocks stand until a convenient 
 time to tread it out, and will receive no 
 damage from the rains. Their method is 
 to set many sheaves at the bottom, and 
 keep working them up to a small point at 
 the top ; and, from the shortness of the 
 straw, the sheaves are very small : and 
 some of them put a piece of rail in the 
 middle, so that the last sheaf is stuck upon 
 that, and lapped round the pole with a band 
 made of hay or grass, in such a manner that 
 no rain can penetrate into it, nor can the 
 wind blow it from the top ; and with a 
 hand-rake they comb the cock of sheaves 
 carefully down. This is by far the best 
 
method of securing wheat in the field that I 
 ever saw, and causes the wheat to be hea- 
 vier, and the flour fairer. Many of them, 
 rake their stubbles with a horse-rake ; which 
 is a very good way in those thin shaffled 
 crops. Indeed I see no great error in any 
 of their proceedings : and were the knds 
 in England managed by the plough, every 
 part that is capable of bearing crops, as 
 nearly to the greatest advantage as in the 
 inhabited parts of America, there would 
 probably be more than ten times as much 
 grain brought to market as there is at pre- 
 sent. It is easy to perceive why the Ameri- 
 can farmers do not vie with the farmers in 
 England, in their crops on the fine lands so 
 called in America : there are proofs of that 
 every day ; there have been English farmers 
 enough gone over to try the experiment, 
 and Scotch also. In all this ride, I did not 
 see any grass-field of any value. There are 
 on this land, which lies to rest for two years, 
 some few weeds, and in the moist parts 
 something they call grass ; but it is of the 
 P 2 
 
SI2 
 
 nature of a rush, and very tough like wirer 
 
 it grows about two or three inches long (ths 
 
 longest in a thin spiring manner, with the 
 
 upper end like a small darning-needle, from 
 
 five to six inches asunder), and of a very 
 
 poor nature. It never grows long enough 
 
 or has sufficient substance for mowing. But 
 
 it would astonish a stranger to see the 
 
 quantity of fruit in these parts, which makes 
 
 the country to look beautiful twice a- year 
 
 when the trees are in blossom, and when the 
 
 fruit is on the trees ripe. But the fruit is 
 
 chiefly for the use of hogs, and can be 
 
 applied to no better purpose. 
 
 On my farm at Orange-Hill, only three 
 miles from Baltimore, the last year I was 
 there, I sold all my peaches to two men at 
 four pence per peck, and let them have a 
 cart and a horse to take them into the city 
 to sell, knowing I had only made four 
 pence per peck on the average the year be- 
 fore, and gathered them myself. These men 
 agreed to pick them, and feed the horse in? 
 town- at their expence. It was the opinion o 
 
every one that they had got a great bargain, 
 and many others wished they had had it. 
 They picked about one-half of them, and 
 carried them to Baltimore : but, alas ! they 
 gave up the business, saying they could not 
 make wages, although they at first had said 
 that they would certainly take every peach, 
 intending, if the market should not suit, to 
 carry them to the stills, &c. I was in hopes 
 all this exertion would make this bargain 
 successful, as four pence per peck would 
 pay much better than to give them to hogs, 
 as I have no knowledge of what number a 
 hog will eat. Seeing this scheme frustrat- 
 ed, and thinking it a sin and a shame to 
 see such a number of fine peaches rot on 
 the ground, I mounted my horse, and rode 
 to the stills, as there were many small ones 
 within three or four miles of me in the 
 country. They have been erected for this 
 use ; but many of them are never used 
 after the first year; and I am of an opinion 
 .that they probably will not pay expenccs. 
 The m$n at the stills were civil enough : 
 
214 
 
 they offered to lend me the still, and let me 
 find a man to work it, &c. or they would 
 work it for me ; but, from every informa- 
 tion I could obtain, I found that my peaches 
 would not more than pay the carriage to the 
 stills, and hardly that : and as to selling 
 them to the owners of the stills, they would 
 not give me so much for my fruit, as would 
 pay me for my trouble : nor will peaches 
 pay the farmer, to be given to hogs, if they 
 be not so situated that the hogs can run 
 where they are ; and that happened not to 
 be my case. 
 
 As a striking instance of the little profit 
 of stills, Mr. O'Donnel, at Canton, had 
 planted an orchard, of great extent, of red 
 peaches, for the purpose of making peach- 
 brandy. The red peach is reckoned much 
 superior to any other for brandy. Although 
 Mr. O'Donnel's orchard had grown to bear 
 in great perfection, and he had a still and the 
 other necessary apparatus, the profit proved 
 so small, that he suffered the whole go to 
 waste, and his pigs to consume the produce ; 
 
215 
 
 and, in the winter, rooted up all those fine 
 peach trees, and planted the ground with 
 Indian corn, having previously manured the 
 land with dung from Baltimore for the pur- 
 pose of an orchard. Now this gentleman 
 had some hundreds of acres of woodlands 
 unimproved in this plantation; therefore, 
 the cause could not be for want of land. 
 
 My fine turnips, Indian corn, potatoes, 
 &c. were in the field by the orchard with- 
 out any fence. Indeed hogs are not allow- 
 ed to run at large within five miles of Balti- 
 more, by an act of assembly ; and mine 
 were too valuable to risk such a misfortune ; 
 and especially as I was a great hog-shooter 
 myself, it would have been fine diversion 
 for any of my neighbours to have shot one 
 of my fifty-dollar pigs. Seeing that these 
 plans would not succeed, all that remained 
 was to fatten my own hogs with them. I 
 had but seven hogs ; and they would have 
 employed a man with horse and cart half 
 a day to feed them ; for, after a short time, 
 they will only eat the best peaches, and 
 
216 
 
 refuse the others as a man would. I found 
 this plan would not answer ; and the con- 
 sequence was, that, after every trial and 
 exertion, they rotted on the ground. Now 
 my farm was so situated that the great 
 road through the heart of the country went 
 through it, five or six stager-coaches, and 
 great numbers of other carriages of all kinds. 
 In all probability some of my own country- 
 men as merchants (for there begin to be 
 many of these gentlemen to settle their ac- 
 counts with the American merchants, and I 
 suppose they will increase) seeing this waste 
 committed, would, on returning to England, 
 relate their story in this way That when 
 at the tavern at Baltimore on the same day, 
 the fruit-people were asking eleven pence a*- 
 piece for peaches. An Englishman says to 
 himself, " What idle fcols those Americans 
 are ! and I think all the English, when they 
 get to America, are as bad : but, when I get 
 there, I- will set them the example." But 
 when there, he finds himself much disap- 
 pointed, and does net know how it is that 
 
217 
 
 lie does not increase in riches, while neither 
 himself nor his family enjoys any comfort. 
 He at last finds out that the Americans arq 
 not a set of fools as he once thought : and, 
 as he must have a name for them, per-* 
 haps he calls them rogues ; which, if Lord 
 Chesterfield was right in his observation, 
 pleases a man the best of the two. 
 
 When I took this farm, I had not a doubt, 
 that, by some extraordinary exertion, I 
 should be able to make something hand- 
 some from peaches, and so near Baltimore, 
 Before I took the farm, when I enquired 
 how peaches sold in the market, perhaps 
 they would tell me eleven pence apiece, 
 and eleven pence a peck on the same day. 
 That used to stagger me very much : but 
 it is so : and the man who offers you a fine 
 Newington peach for eleven pence or a five- 
 penny bit, sells but few each day ; and 
 lives, although very poorly, at a very great 
 expence : consequently his profit must be 
 -great on each article. The man who sells 
 the peaches at eleven pence each, will not 
 
tia 
 
 grow rich by his business, any more than 
 the grower. Then we come to the calcu- 
 lation of my profit at four pence per peck, 
 which is the best arrd greatest price. Could 
 the scheme be put in execution, it will, 
 generally speaking, require two men and 
 one horse and cart each day, to pick thirty 
 pecks and carry them to market ; and thirty 
 pecks are more than any white man can sell 
 one day with another. A black man is 
 much better for this business than a white 
 man; although they are in general ignorant, 
 they are impudent : thirty pecks of peaches, 
 at four pence per peck, is just ten shillings 
 per day for peaches ; and the two men's 
 wages are worth, at that season of the year, 
 one dollar per day each, and one pint of 
 whiskey, which will be sixteen shillings for 
 the men : the cart and horse are worth one 
 dollar and a half per day ; but you could 
 not hire it for less than two dollars. Now 
 the expences on this business are one pound 
 seven shillings and three pence per day, 
 and the produce is ten shillings, But as 
 
219 
 
 I sold them, I made profit each day on thirty 
 pecks of peaches two shillings and nine 
 pence : the reader may plainly see that 
 there could not be any thing done better. 
 This shews in this part of the work where 
 I am on the Eastern Shore, one hundred 
 miles and upwards from market, that the 
 reader will be convinced the cherries and 
 peaches pay the best for hogs. Now we 
 will come to the apples for the winter; as to 
 the summer fruit, pears, plums, &c. they 
 raise all those things here ; but pear or 
 plum trees will not produce fruit at all in 
 many parts of America, nor are they worthy 
 of bearing the name here, and are only fit 
 for hogs, as they have no flavour of the fruit 
 in England, although of the same kind: 
 raspberries are very inferior, but currants 
 equally good as in England : as to ripe 
 gooseberries, nectarines, or apricots, there 
 can be no such thing, for they all dwindle 
 away before they grow ripe. Now the 
 \vinterapplessellverywell. I have sold 
 two bushels and a half of apples after 
 
Christmas, \vhich is called a barrel, at five 
 dollars, which is one pound seventeen 
 shillings and six pence. But, to make this 
 barrel, it would require at least ten barrels 
 to preserve one to this time ; which will 
 reduce the price to three shillings and 
 nine pence per barrel. Then the sorting 
 will be six pence for two bushels and 
 a half, which leaves one shilling and three 
 pence halfpenny the bushel, or not quite 
 four pence a peck. Now to cure them 
 properly in that country, the process is this 
 * First pick them, and put them in a cham- 
 ber, letting them lie there for some time to 
 sweat ; then put them in a barrel, and place 
 them in a cellar, or they will freeze in any 
 other situation,, But the price in general is 
 three dollars and a half a barrel ; and when 
 that is the case, there would be a loss on 
 them. This shews that the making of 
 cyder is a better business, which sells at 
 two dollars the barrel of thirty gallons. 
 Although the apples are said to be fine, great 
 numbers are decayed at the core, 
 
become mouldy before they are ripe; which 
 causes them to rot much. 
 
 As grass does not grow by nature as in 
 England, if it were not for fruit, and the 
 nuts, roots, &c. in the woods,, the hogs 
 raised must be kept on corn the whole of 
 the year ; and bacon is one of the princi- 
 pal necessaries of life in these parts as to 
 flesh meat : for, during the summer, fresh 
 meat is of little value, because if it be not 
 cooked as soon as killed, it grows putrid 
 and stinks ; and, at best, when dressed in 
 that hot state, it is very inferior to the 
 shambles meat in England, that has time 
 to cool and set before it is dressed. The 
 greater number of people in America live 
 on salt fish and smoked bacon : and the 
 reason why they smoke their bacon and fish, 
 is, that there are many sorts of reptiles 
 that would absolutely destroy it, were it 
 not for the smoke, particularly what is 
 called the skippers, or salt-worm, which is 
 pne great reason why cheese can never 
 
become a general article in America ; for 
 the heat of the sun causes the outer coat to 
 crack and smell ; and the flies strike it, and, 
 notwithstanding the most watchful atten- 
 tion, will destroy a great many, and damage 
 others. As to butter, the milk can only be 
 kept in spring-houses, (a building with a 
 stream of water running through it for the 
 milk-pans to stand in,) and then not a 
 proper time to make all the cream rise, as it 
 does in England ; therefore there will be a 
 great loss in the proportion of milk taken 
 from the cows ; and when the butter is 
 churned, except with those that have ice- 
 houses, the sun renders it so soft, and so 
 disagreeable, as to be scarcely worth any 
 thing. Such as have it to carry to market 
 must go in the night : it is usual in the 
 towns and cities for the market to begin by 
 two o'clock in the morning. A farmer's 
 waggon in America, when she comes into 
 market, is something like a pedlar's pack: 
 it consists of butter, eggs, fruits, potatoes, 
 
223 
 
 turnips, cucumbers, chickens, ducks, geese, 
 turkeys, wheat-flour, Indian- flour, buck- 
 wheat-flour, rye-flour, chopped straw, 
 &c. 
 
 As the keeping of horses is much more 
 expensive (as I have observed before) in 
 these climates than in England, having 
 little or no grass to grow by nature, they 
 are to feed on corn the whole year or 
 nearly, or be unfit for use ; and some days 
 are so hot that the horse cannot work, but 
 is compelled to stand to rest to get breath; 
 and in the summer they are so pestered 
 with flies, as none but those who have 
 seen the country can believe. It is com- 
 mon for gentlemen, as in England, to give 
 their horses a run in summer to soil them, 
 to cure their feet and limbs, &c. : but if a 
 horse be fat when he goes to grass, he is 
 sure to come up poor. There is one fly, 
 which, after it has remained on the horse a 
 little time, has, I think, near a tea- spoonful 
 of blood in it, when you kill it ; and it 
 makes such an incision into the outer skin. 
 
224 
 
 that, when it has taken its fill frcm the 
 animal, the place bleeds a moderate quan- 
 tity after, which must reduce him very 
 much. Then, in the winter, it is so cold, 
 that a horse requires high feeding to sup- 
 port him. From these natural causes, the 
 reader may be easily led to believe there are 
 great inconveniences. Mules are the best 
 for use in these countries : General Wash- 
 ington worked nothing else. The reason 
 why I have explained so much in this part, 
 is, that these farmers are not tobacco-growers 
 on the Eastern Shore ; and the only pro- 
 duce is Indian corn, grain, and pork : very 
 little fat cattle produced here, or sheep. It 
 may be worthy of remark, that the grain 
 raised in those parts of America passes 
 through a number of hands before it comes 
 to the consumer, which must lessen the 
 grower's gains. He first sends it one or 
 two hundred miles, and from that to eight 
 hundred miles, to market, and commissions 
 a man to sell it : then the miller gets hold 
 of it : there is a cask to put the flour ia. 
 
225 
 
 \vhich is nearly a waste : there is an in- 
 spector to examine the flour: then there is 
 frequently another commission to buy the 
 flour to ship it : then there is the ship's 
 freight to pay, and another commission, 
 warehouse-room in England, &c. All these 
 certainly are great disadvantages : they 
 shackle the commercial interests of those 
 parts called the Eastern Shore, and lessen 
 the profits of the land's produce. 
 
 To return to my pursuits of the tour. 
 Mr. Singleton introduced me to a great 
 number of very respectable men, and men 
 of business. The chief of them are their 
 own overseers ; which is not usually the 
 case in America; for most of them, as 
 planters or farmers, keep a white man 
 to whip the blacks. Among the rest of 
 these farmers, I was introduced to a Mr. 
 Samuel Chamberlaine, who shewed the best 
 crop of wheat I saw. The land where this 
 grew was where there had been an Indian 
 town ; for, seeing the crop superior to any 
 other, I particularly enquired what the land 
 
226 
 
 had been. I supposed there to be twenty 
 bushels per acre : but Mr. Singleton said 
 there would not be more than twelve 
 bushels on that field. 
 
 , This gentleman reaped his wheat in a 
 manner different from any other I ever saw, 
 either in England or America by cutting 
 the heads off: there was one man to 
 two reapers, who held a bag, and put the 
 ears into it ; and he had carts with high 
 boards at the sides, and carried them home, 
 and left all the straw in the field. This I 
 think the worst and most wasteful method 
 of reaping I ever saw, although done with 
 a very industrious intention. By cutting 
 the wheat so high, many ears were left un- 
 cut; many dropped out of the hand, before 
 it reached the bag ; and some dropped on 
 the ground, in tossing into the cart. 
 
 This gentleman looked upon this as a 
 cheap method of manuring land. At the 
 time of treading, he has a large roller drawn 
 by horses, to shed the grain out of the ears. 
 
 I then was introduced to Ed. Loyd, 
 
Esq. at Why-House, a man of very exten- 
 sive possessions I have heard say, thirteen 
 plantations, of one thousand acres each. His 
 house and gardens are what may be termed 
 elegant : and the land appeared the best I 
 ever saw in any one spot in America. He 
 had a deer-park, which is a very rare thing 
 there : I saw but two in the country ; 
 this, and another belonging to Colonel 
 Mercer. These parks are but small not 
 above fifty acres each. I could scarcely tell 
 what the deer lived on. There were only 
 some of those small rushes growing in this 
 park which bear the name of grass, and 
 leaves of trees. 
 
 Mr. Singleton and Mr. Loyd had each a 
 field of clover, and all the clover I saw in 
 my ride. If clover were as productive as 
 some authors tell us, there would be more 
 of it grown: but, like mine, it will not pay 
 for mowing. Mr. Loyd had a small field 
 of timothy, I suppose intended for his 
 saddle and carriage horses, and the only 
 one I saw in all my ride, of any intended 
 
$38 
 
 for hay. Mr. Loyd had the finest field 
 of Indian corn I ever beheld so neat, not 
 a weed that I saw in one hundred acres all 
 in one field ; and the corn then going into 
 silk, and in general as high as a man on 
 horseback. He had the best crop of buck- 
 xvheat I ever saw, intended to be ploughed 
 in for vegetable manure. He had about 
 five acres of pumpkins in good condition, 
 All his crops were better than any other I 
 saw :a any part of America, and every 
 thing in the greatest order. He has some 
 very good sheep, fine cattle, and very good 
 horses. Mr. Loyd's father had some years 
 before imported a bull and two cows from 
 Mr. Bakewcll : and from the offspring he 
 had some of the fattest cattle that could be 
 imagined, for the food they had to live 
 upon. He estimated some of his wheat at 
 fifteen bushels per acre ; and it was said 
 the produce from eighteen hundred acres 
 of land was eighteen thousand bushels of 
 wheat ; which was one of the greatest 
 crops in America. 
 
Having spent some very agreeable days 
 with him, he introduced me to Colonel 
 Niclos, a very pleasant and genteel man. 
 He was remarkable for fine fruits : he 
 gave me some of the best cyder, of his own 
 making, I ever drank very little inferior 
 to Champagne ; it was delightful. From 
 his cyder I discovered the possibility of 
 making a very great improvement in that 
 beverage : the cyder in America is chiefly 
 made of decayed apples. 
 
 After spending a day with him, I was 
 introduced to a Mr. Tilford, , an English- 
 man ; whose lady and himself repeated a 
 number of grievances to me respecting 
 America. He had a farm in good order, 
 and a great deal of wheat and Indian corn, 
 very little inferior to Mr. Loyd's ; but he 
 confessed the farming to be a very bad 
 business. I then returned to Mr. Single- 
 ton's, where I remained a day or two 
 before my arrival at Orange-Hill 
 
230 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 TJie regular Proceedings on the Farm, 
 
 HAVING left orders, and men proper to 
 do what was necessary, to plough and hoe 
 the corn, harrow the potatoes, &c. at my 
 return we began to prepare a piece of land 
 for turnips, which we did in a very correct 
 manner, by mowing the weeds first ; which 
 may stagger the reader : but the weeds 
 kept the sun from the land, and the soil is 
 of so loose and light a nature that it is soon 
 pulverised. Having some compost, which 
 was of more than a year's standing, a 
 most beautiful crop I raised ; and as I had 
 (experienced so much value in the plaster of 
 Paris the year before, when the turnips got 
 into three leaves I applied some plaster 
 diamondwise in squares, to see the effects 
 pf it, so as not to be partial to either the 
 
231 
 
 best or the worst land : though I had tried 
 the plaster, in the spring, on rye, oats, 
 barley, peas, Indian corn, early potatoes, 
 and winter potatoes ; from thirty two, six- 
 teen, eight, four, to two bushels per acre ; 
 and I could discern no sort of difference 
 betwixt the spots where I used no plaster, 
 and those where the several quantities were 
 put. But on the turnips it was wonderful ; 
 so much as to attract the eye of every 
 beholder. Judge Peters's brother was a 
 brewer, at Baltimore, has a small farm, and 
 is a great gardener ; and he had made use of 
 plaster in different ways, and endeavoured 
 to prove plaster was of no use to any crop 
 in that part of the country : I fetched him 
 to see the effects of plaster on the turnips, 
 which convinced him of his error. 
 
 After I had found it so useful on the 
 turnips, I procured as much as covered the 
 whole of the patch, or piece ; and, in about 
 seven days, it was impossible to distinguish 
 where I had applied the plaster on the first 
 part : but I could discern that the turnips 
 
232 
 
 were the best which I had done first ; they 
 were somewhat larger at the time of pull- 
 ing ; they were allowed to be the best crop 
 ever seen in America, and of as good a 
 quality. New land turnips are allowed to 
 be the best for the table : but these were 
 equal to any new land turnip : and from 
 this I discovered that if turnips grow quick, 
 they will be sweet. Their tops being large, 
 I gave them to my cows, and some turnips 
 amongst them : nor did the milk taste at all 
 disagreeable from the turnip feed. Then 
 we made butter from the cream of that milk, 
 and found the butter equally good as from 
 any other food. I kept some of it four 
 weeks, to see if any turnip taste would come 
 on ; but I never could discover any : and, 
 should the same process remove the un- 
 pleasant taste that butter usually has in 
 England, when cows are fed on turnips, 
 it would prove of great value to the public 
 in general, especially in Norfolk, and other 
 turnip counties. I do not imagine it arises 
 from the plaster, but from a very simple 
 
233 
 
 thing given to the cows when they are fed 
 on turnips. 
 
 During this summer, I raised some gar- 
 den peas in the fields, in the manner de- 
 scribed in my former work, by the plough 
 and harrows. I intended to have sown 
 three acres of garden peas : but I could get 
 only three quarts of seed ; which I sowed 
 after the rate of three bushels to the acre : 
 and we got, when green, to eat twenty-one 
 times for seven in family, and had two pecks 
 of seed peas, all from those three quarts. 
 They were not rpdded ; but, the year 
 before, I set three quarts in the garden, and 
 managed them in the gardeners' style, and 
 only got five times for seven people, and one 
 quart of seed peas from them : and it has 
 strengthened my opinion, that peas thrive 
 better not rodded, where they can get air, 
 and they will produce more, and especially 
 in hot dry soils. The year before, there was 
 compost applied in the rows, equally as 
 much if not more. There was plaster of 
 Paris applied both years ; but I found no 
 
234 
 
 benefit from it either year : the only differ- 
 ence was, that those which had plaster were 
 later fit to pluck. I tried French plaster 
 and Nova-Scotia plaster on the turnips, but 
 could see no difference : both were equally 
 good. This being August, and the time of 
 mowing the timothy, I let eleven acres to 
 two Dutch men, at one dollar and a quarter 
 per acre, and eleven pints of whiskey. I 
 expected it to have been mown in five days; 
 but it was twenty-one days before they 
 finished it. I mention this circumstance 
 only as shewing how unpleasant it is to have 
 business to do in such a country. The 
 second day they were mowing, one man 
 mowed very ill: I mentioned it to him: he 
 threw down his hat and scythe, stamped 
 upon his hat, d d me and all English- 
 men, and went his way: and the other 
 man, - although he was a neat mower, 
 never missed a day, and frequently lay in the 
 meadow at night under a tree, was twen- 
 ty-one days before he had finished. 
 
 It being now September, it was time to 
 
235 
 
 blade and top the corn, which was an indif- 
 ferent crop, and set more for the support of 
 the cows than any other use : it was not 
 managed properly on account of my inten- 
 tion to leave the country, and rinding it 
 would not pay for good management. We 
 began this work; and I should have been very 
 hard set to get it harvested at all, the turnips 
 sold, or the potatoes got out of the ground, 
 &c. although I had then four men and a 
 boy on the farm : but this is the time of the 
 intermittent fever coming on, which is so 
 frequent, that, on a fair calculation, you 
 must not reckon on more than one-half of 
 your people to be able to work at this season 
 of the year, at one time. But it happened 
 that those were five Englishmen landed at 
 Baltimore, and the yellow fever raged so in 
 that city that they could not get any work 
 there, nor did they choose it : otherwise I 
 must have lost some part of the crops raised, 
 if I had not met with them : for it was with 
 some difficulty that I got all in before the 
 
236 
 
 frost set, with all the force I could raise. 
 A frost and snow came on in November ; 
 and, on the road betwixt Baltimore and 
 Philadelphia, there were some scores of acres 
 of Indian corn, both tops and blades, lost, 
 for want of hands to get them in: and, 
 except you have men at your own command 
 to get in your crops, there is great danger 
 of losing them. 
 
237 
 
 SECTION VII. 
 
 Another Tour, and some Instructions given in 
 Baltimore and Philadelphia. 
 
 THE crops being put in, the potatoes got 
 up, and all prepared for the winter, I was 
 engaged with a new brewery at Baltimore. 
 I had that to attend to, to teach them the 
 business. By this I learned to know the 
 weight of the American barley, in Vir- 
 ginia especially, which weighed about forty 
 pounds per bushel, forty-five pounds the 
 highest, with such quantities of garlic 
 in it as astonished me much. In steeping 
 two hundred bushels, there was as much 
 as fifteen bushels of garlic, which the land 
 produces all over America. This barley 
 came out of Virginia, as there is very little 
 raised near Baltimore, or wheat either, and 
 very little barley on the Eastern Shore. 
 There was a very great quantity of garlic on 
 
238 
 
 the Eastern Shore amongst the wheat, and 
 the like in Pennsylvania. It is very extra- 
 ordinary that enriching the land destroys 
 even the garlic. 
 
 Having finished my business at Baltimore 
 with the brewer, I had engaged with a 
 brewer at Philadelphia, where I had an 
 opportunity of knowing the weight of the 
 barleys in that state, and likewise Long 
 Island, which was about forty-five pounds 
 the bushel, and the best sort fifty pounds. 
 
 During my stay in Philadelphia, I saw 
 some seed called herd-grass, in the seed- 
 man's list. I made myself acquainted with 
 the nature of that plant, which is the best 
 hay raised in America, and brought some of 
 the seed into this country. 
 
 The brewery business in America is 
 one of the best, and the only one I know 
 likely to come to any thing worth no- 
 tice. The determinate saccharine quali- 
 ties of the best barleys grown in America 
 compared with those of England, by 
 Mr. Richardson's instrument, which I had 
 
239 
 
 with me,- is in the proportion of thirty 
 of the former to eighty of the latter ; and 
 the profit arising about the same as when 
 English barley sells from thirty shillings to 
 thirty- five shillings per quarter, and porter 
 is sold at thirty shillings per barrel ; or the 
 American barleys at forty- eight to fifty-six 
 shillings per quarter, and the barrel of ale 
 (thirty gallons) sold at seven dollars. The 
 greatest inconvenience arising in this busi- 
 ness is not having barley to be bought in 
 many parts, even to make it worth atten- 
 tion ; and the consumption of ale and beer 
 being the same, malt liquor not being the 
 customary liquor of the lower class of peo- 
 ple, but spirits of different kinds, grains are 
 very good to sell. 
 
 To shew the price of beer, I will here 
 insert my brewer's bill. 
 
240 
 
 CM 
 
 ^ 
 
 O ' -O 
 
 p^tfTtfT 
 
 PS 
 
 o < 
 
 OJ O 
 
 
 000 
 
 ~ 2 5 &' 
 Ill-i 2 2 2 2 
 
 (N^^|H-t - 1 ' ~ -* - 
 
 O o O O O O O O O O 
 
 ts'S 
 
 01 
 
 I 
 
 1 1 
 
 g ~ 
 
 O ev 
 
 T3 J2 
 (U "S 
 
 > O 
 
241 
 
 Thereader will observe that the first three 
 articles are table-beer : the charge is fif- 
 teen shillings for twenty gallons of small- 
 beer, at nine pence per gallon. Then, to 
 shew either the irregularity of these men, 
 or their desire to grow rich, I had paid the 
 amount of another bill, and taken a receipt, 
 to the date of April the Qth ; afterwards all 
 was brought over again ; and two partners, 
 and two clerks in the office, were ready to 
 swear to the account* Being in habits of 
 great friendship with one of the brewers, I 
 let this business lie open for some time, by 
 paying ready money for what I took. 
 When I called, as they supposed to pay 
 the whole of the bill, having all parties 
 present, I tendered the former receipt for 
 twelve dollars fifty cents as cash, which 
 made some small alteration in their coun- 
 tenances, as they imagined that I had lost 
 my account. These sort of friendly mat- 
 ters frequently happen in America. 
 
 A miller is said to have a good business : 
 but then two millers will not say so, 
 
 R 
 
Amongst the many unpleasant things that 
 happen to the English emigrants, I met 
 withx>ne equal to any I ever heard of, a 
 few days before I left the country, I was 
 at Baltimore one day with Mr. Stump, a 
 gentleman who employs a merchant-mill 
 near Baltimore. While I was in the office^ 
 there came in a young man in decent, or 
 rather genteel, apparel, to ask for work. 
 Mr. Stump replied to the young man 
 " You do not look like a man of that 
 kind !" and showed, by his answer, that he 
 wished to get rid of him. The young man 
 was very pressing for employ, and said he 
 had been brought up in a mill, at Long- 
 Sutton, in the county of Lincoln. I, know- 
 ing the place, -asked him if he knew some 
 respectable people in and about that coun- 
 try - y which he did. From my knowing 
 the country whence he had come, Mr. 
 Stump gave some encouragement to the 
 young man ; and he related his case, which 
 was as follows : That his elder brother 
 and his wife and two children, and him- 
 
2A3 
 
 self and a wife, fixed to come into Ameri- 
 ca, to purchase some of those cheap and 
 fertile lands. They had been encouraged to 
 this by a letter from a brother-in-law, who 
 lived at Norfolk, telling them how well they 
 might do in America. Accordingly, they 
 raised a property of about seventeen hundred 
 pounds between them, went to London, 
 there agreed for their passage in a ship bound 
 to Norfolk, and paid two hundred guineas. 
 Just before they were ready to sail, they 
 received a letter, informing them that their 
 father was dead, perhaps broken-hearted: 
 and the mill he enjoyed was his own, 
 which would then descend to them. But, 
 in preference to returning to that situation, 
 having paid their passage, &c. and such 
 fine things being held out by the brother- 
 in-law, they set off to America, and landed 
 at Norfolk, When they got there, they 
 found no land that they liked, nor had this 
 friend at Norfolk any situation for them. 
 He had got hold of the property : the chief 
 part of it was in goods ; he was to sell them, 
 
 R 2 
 
244 
 
 &c. which undoubtedly was his first inten- 
 tion. After spending some time, and a 
 great deal of money, at Norfolk, (having 
 agreed that this friend should sell the goods, 
 and remit money as they wanted it ; but it is 
 likely they would never see many shillings 
 of it, which is very generally the case ; they 
 had already discovered a neglect of remit- 
 tance, and found some difficulty to get 
 the money that they were in want of,) 
 they and their families set off to Alexandria, 
 after making some searches to buy lands 
 about that country : but finding nothing 
 they could see at all proper or advantageous, 
 his brother set off to Fredericksburg ; was 
 some few days away ; and at his return, 
 they found he was quite deranged, and so 
 much out of temper with him, and the rest 
 of the family, that this young man left him 
 at Alexandria, brought his w r ife to George - 
 Town, took lodgings for her there, and had 
 come to Baltimore to seek work, finding 
 that their money went fast, and nothing 
 was likely to come in $ and now this young 
 
245 
 
 man offered to work for his meat, to avoid 
 expences. From this pitiful tale, Mr. Stump 
 told him he might go to the mill : he would 
 give him a line to the foreman at the mill, 
 to take him in : Mr. Stump told him his men 
 lived on plain food, but wholesome, which 
 was salt fish, smoked beef and smoked bacon, 
 tea or coffee, with water for their drink, and 
 he was to work as a labourer for little or no 
 wages. In all probability, this half-brother 
 of theirs was in such embarrassed circum- 
 stances thatthey wouldneverget their money 
 again; which is frequently the case when 
 any one in th^t country writes to his friends 
 in England to come to them. Now, to enu- 
 merate the misfortunes of this family : The 
 father is dead, and his affairs neglected ; the 
 elder brother mad ; a poor woman, his 
 wife, with two children, at very high ex- 
 pences, without any friend near her, to 
 give her either assistance or comfort ; this 
 young man, thfrty miles from his pregnant 
 wife, without any home, himself working 
 
246 
 
 for little or nothing, and in all probability 
 the money entirely gone. 
 
 I know two instances of men of fa<- 
 mily, from England, nearly in the same 
 situation. The father of one of them was 
 said to be as much a gentleman as any man 
 in England : the father of the other was a 
 justice of the peace. The one lives in a 
 small log-house, in the most distressed cir- 
 cumstances ; the other in a small farm, in 
 a very remote part. 
 
 To enumerate all the different distresses 
 that I have discovered in the two years I 
 have been in America would employ my 
 pen for months. 
 
 The young man whom I mentioned in 
 the former part of this work, who had been 
 deprived of six thousand pounds by his elder 
 brother, is now insane : and the father of 
 those gentlemen was in one of the first firms 
 in London, a large tobacco manufactory, 
 and Jiad many good estates in England. I 
 have learned all this from the young man 
 
247 
 
 himself j who, when alone, is as reasonable, 
 pleasant, good young man as any I know, 
 and will talk as reasonably, but cannot bear 
 company : and, by his industry as a super- 
 cargo to the West-Indies, it is said that he 
 had gained something handsome. Never- 
 theless, from one distress or other, he is 
 incapable of settling his affairs ; and there- 
 fore, in all probability, must remain in 
 America in as unpleasant a state as a man 
 can be in. No man in the world could 
 dislike any thing worse than he does Ame- 
 rica. The young man threatens them, 
 when in his insanity, to let Mr. Pitt know 
 of all their tricks ; and says all the fevers 
 are a calamity the Almighty afflicts them 
 with for their wickedness. 
 
 The tanner's business is said to be a good 
 one : but, from some cause, they make very 
 bad leather; and as a proof, there is an Irish- 
 man at Baltimore who imports his leather 
 from England ; and by so doing, he has 
 gained what is termed a fortune. He 
 keeps his carriage and country-house. This 
 
248 
 
 shews that imported leather yields a good 
 profit. 
 
 A hatter's is reckoned a good business ; 
 but I do not think so ; for, to my own know- 
 ledge, a hat, bought at five shillings and six 
 pence wholesale in Liverpool, sells in Balti- 
 more at five dollars, which is twenty-five 
 shillings sterling at the price of the dollar at 
 the present : and I have heard say in Ame- 
 rica, that hats could be imported from Eng- 
 land, and sold by retail at a greater profit, 
 than is gained by those made in America. 
 
249 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 The several Kinds of Horses in generalUse; some 
 Remarks on Stage Coaches, and Anecdotes 
 that occurred to the Author in travelling, de- 
 scribing the Coaches, and the Customs at 
 Taverns, fyc. and the Polifics of the Ame- 
 ricans in general. 
 
 THE horses that are generally used in 
 America, are about fourteen hands, and 
 from that to fifteen hands high, and up- 
 wards. In colour they vary much, as the 
 English horses of the road kind. The 
 chief part of them amble and canter, are 
 very easy to ride, and hardy ; and are able, 
 either from use or nature, to bear the worst 
 of treatment, They have no sort of horses 
 equal to the best in England. They are 
 very fond of race-horses, and breed a great 
 many. In running races, they ride, 
 sailor-like, generally as quick as the horse 
 can go. All that I saw were, in general, 
 smaller than the racers in England ; and, 
 
2,50 
 
 if large, they are very much out of form. 
 I never saw a black dray-horse, all the 
 time I was in the country : neither do I 
 think our heavy dray-horses could exist in 
 the hot weather of that climate. Even if 
 that were not the case, they would di- 
 minish in size, from the poverty of the 
 soil, as large animals of no kind will keep 
 their size long on very barren soils, but 
 at very heavy expences. They have 
 very few poneys, and not many of 
 the coach -horse kind. The Dutch 
 farmers make use of a sort of ill-shaped 
 large clumsey horse, although they bear 
 the name of fine horses there. They in 
 general have them very fat ; which, to in- 
 different judges, covers many faults. This 
 is one reason why I so much approve the 
 practice of feeding horses with rye flour 
 and chopped straw, which is the Dutch- 
 man's manner of feeding his horses. The 
 best food I ever saw or tried, is rye flour, 
 carefully mixed with straw chopped about 
 one inch long. The straw must be made 
 
very wet all over, and some care taken that 
 every part of it may get a proper moisture, 
 that the rye flour may cling to it. If this 
 be done, the horse will not leave a single 
 inch of the straw ; and he will chew it 
 much ; for rye flour is of such a nature^ 
 that it will stick to the straw like glue. 
 This in many parts will be found very 
 valuable food. Horses for the waggon, and 
 plough, are said to feed upon it with more 
 avidity than upon any other kind of food, 
 and to work with more strength ; but it is 
 reckoned too fattening for a road or coach 
 horse. When the Americans feed their 
 horses with Indian corn, they allow it to be 
 best broken in small pieces, not ground 
 into flour. They mix almost all kinds of 
 corn food with chopped straw, and fre- 
 quently bran. These horses travel slow ; 
 but the real American horse travels quick. 
 It is not at all uncommon to see a waggon 
 with two or four horses pass the mail coach. 
 1 never was overturned in a coach but 
 once ; and it was by a waggoner with two 
 
horses racing against four horses in the 
 coach I was in : in a narrow place, the 
 \vaggoner came up to the coach with his 
 horses and waggon, and drove the horses 
 that drawed the coach off the road ; and the 
 wheels ran upon the side of a bank, and up- 
 set the coach. The waggoner rode laughing 
 away : but there is not that respect paid by 
 waggoners to the public coaches in America, 
 as there- is in England. The mail coach is 
 generally compelled to give way to the 
 waggon, although I knew no business con*, 
 ducted with greater propriety in America 
 than the stage coaches ; and the horses in 
 general are the best in the country, and in 
 very great condition travel from four to 
 five miles an hour, when the roads are what 
 is termed good ; in the winter, in some 
 parts, not more than one mile an hour ; and an 
 English coachman would not attempt to 
 drive a coach on such roads, in great snows, 
 through woods, to escape bad holes in the 
 roads, stumps of trees, &c. which cannot be 
 seen on account of the snow covering them. 
 The coach is a sort of waggon on springs. 
 
an open carriage, with a top to it made of 
 boards ; and, on each side, and at the ends, 
 curtains, to let down, baize in the inside, 
 and a sort of canvas on the outside, tied 
 with leather ties, to the supporters of the 
 top, on the sides, and at thebottom, catching 
 on a sort of stud, like that of a single horse 
 chaise apron . The coach has three seats with- 
 in the carriage, and one the coachman sits on 
 before. Thus it carries twelve people, three 
 on each seat, as two passengers ride by the 
 side of the coachman : but the mail coach 
 carries only nine passengers, the mail lying in 
 theinside of the coach. The coachman joins 
 in the conversation with the passengers, 
 and, generally speaking, is a man of the 
 greatest information in the coach ; for, by 
 daily passing on the road in the coach, and 
 riding with the passengers, he knows 
 every thing on the road, and learns the 
 news from all quarters. He is always a 
 great politician, and generally names his 
 horses after the president and vice-president : 
 and if he has a horse that wants the whip. 
 
254 
 
 he generally names him after some man he 
 dislikes, that he may keep flogging him. 
 The drivers of coaches are in general sober 
 men, and it is not usual for the passengers 
 to give the coachman money at the end of 
 the stage, as in England : indeed he con- 
 siders himself equal to any one : and, seem- 
 ingly, it would be an offence to offer him 
 money. He will drink a glass with you 
 as a companion, but in no other way. 
 The coachmen drive but one stage, from 
 fourteen to twenty miles, and take care 
 of their own horses, which is one cause 
 of their good appearance. At the taverns, 
 as you go along, there are your appointed 
 places to breakfast, dine, sup, and sleep at, 
 as the coaches generally stop somewhere 
 about four hours in the night, the nights 
 being in general much darker than in Eng- 
 land. The breakfast is half a dollar, the 
 dinner one dollar, and supper half a dollar, 
 and beds a quarter of a dollar a night. It 
 is not usual to give servants any thing at 
 taverns : but there are some Englishmen 
 
who do it, and it is a growing evil, and of 
 disagreeable consequences to travellers. If 
 you drink wine or porter, you pay for it se- 
 parately : but brandy or rum is generally set 
 on the table, and given in at the dollar. There 
 is rarely any tea drinking, as the supper is 
 tea and coffee, the same as breakfast, with 
 fish, beefstakes, mutton chops, sausages, 
 eggs, &c. several kinds of bread and butter, 
 cakes of buck-wheat, &c. There are no 
 post-chaises : but there are horses to hire, 
 and coaches of accommodation, at about 
 half a dollar a mile with four horses. 
 
 Politics being very frequently the even- 
 ing's conversation in all taverns and pub- 
 lick houses in most parts of the world I have 
 been in, it is very much the same in Ame- 
 rica : and the downfal of England seem& 
 to be the wish of the greatest number of the 
 company at those taverns in America; 
 and the parties do all they can on both 
 sides to raise one country and knock down 
 the other. Being at Mr. Cameron's at the 
 Golden Swan in Philadelphia, one even- 
 
ing, there were present a great many Eng- 
 lishmen (as the landlord is a Scotchman, 
 they resort to him) ; and many American 
 merchants were there ; and the politics 
 that evening ran very high, being the time 
 of the election of the president ; and the 
 chief competitors were a Mr. Collins, and 
 a Mr. Watson, an American merchant. 
 Mr. Collins, being an old Englishman, and 
 having been many years in America, has 
 been, I should imagine, regularly trained to 
 defend old England, and has his words 
 very much at will, and has a good memory 
 and speaks loud, which is much in his 
 favour. Mr. Watson is very able, and in 
 full practice on the other side, and has not 
 to seek to make reply. I used to go to hear 
 this conversation very commonly in an 
 evening, which lasted from one to two hours 
 regularly. Mr. Collins went away at eight 
 o'clock, or nearly ; Mr. Watson generally 
 staying until nine o'clock ; so that, what- 
 ever appeared to be the sense of the 
 company present at eight o'clock, Mr. 
 
237 
 
 Watson always went away conqueror. 
 One evening, Mr. Collins being gone, I got 
 up and was going likewise. Mr. Watson 
 accosted me, saying, " What is your opi- 
 nion of England, Mr. Parkinson ? It never 
 will be able to pay the national debt/' In 
 reply, I paid Mr. Watson the compliment of 
 saying 4< I as an Englishman felt myself 
 much obliged to him during the even- 
 ing, and at several other times, for the 
 tenderness and fine feelings he had for the 
 honour, and sufferings he seemingly bore 
 for the sake of England ; but probably he 
 might be interested in the business ; he 
 might have some money funded in Eng- 
 land." " No," he said, " he had not." 
 I told him if he had, he might readily sell it 
 at the Stock Exchange ; and in answer to 
 his remark, that England could never pay 
 her debt, " whom will it injure if she never 
 does ? she borrows the money of her own 
 subjects ; therefore it will not injure you 
 gentlemen in America, or any other power. 
 The simile is this- It is the same as a man 
 
 s < 
 
25S 
 
 having a wife, and a number of children 
 grown up, who all live in the same house, 
 but during the day have every one a differ- 
 ent trade or calling, and industriously em- 
 ploy their time, and by such industry 
 amass certain sums of money* which these 
 children, sons and daughters, can conve- 
 niently spare from their different trades. 
 The father, having all the affairs of the family 
 to conduct, taxes and all national mat- 
 ters to attend to, for the protection of his 
 property, to prevent foreign invaders and 
 plunderers, and to promote th.e happi- 
 ness and comfort that the family enjoy 
 in that house, has greater occasion for 
 money than the rest of the family : and his 
 own trade or calling does not bring him in 
 money to supply his necessary wants ; 
 therefore he borrows money of the family 
 round his own fire side, of his wife, his 
 sons, and daughters, &c. and pays interest 
 for it. Now, if it so happen when he is 
 called upon by them, that he cannot pay, 
 there is no other family injured, nor are 
 
thy much injured. They have the same 
 resources as they had before, and the 
 same opportunity to get money, by each 
 of their separate trades, and they have only 
 lent the surplus money, they could spare. 
 Just so would it be with the national debt ; 
 the chief part of the lenders of the money 
 funded can live equally as well without it. 
 Then again you frequently observe in your 
 conversation that England dare not be at 
 peace ; that the nation could not subsist at 
 all, if they were not at war with some 
 foreign power ; for that it is by plundering 
 and robbing on the seas, that they find 
 money to carry on their national affairs, 
 agriculture, manufactures, &c. In reply 
 to you, Mr. Watson If England be poor, 
 pray what nation is rich ? It appears very 
 plainly, in this and every other evening's 
 conversation, that England gives credit to 
 all the nations that take her manufactures, 
 and pays either in goods or cash for all she 
 buys. Then the immense riches she holds 
 in London, and the manufacturing towns, 
 S 2 
 
260 
 
 I suppose are scarcely to be computed, and 
 what no other nation enjoys. Then the 
 landed property, from its climate and soil, 
 is superior to what any other nation or 
 power can boast of. Again, the immense 
 value of the horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, &c. 
 that are fed upon the land, is beyond all 
 calculation. I beg to mention to you, Mr. 
 Watson, one circumstance, of the value of 
 the sheep and cattle grazing on one hundred 
 and six acres of land in Gidney marshes in 
 the months of May and June, 1797, which 
 cost Mr.-, John Everson of Holbeach 
 three thousand one hundred and fifty 
 nine pounds fifteen shillings and nine 
 pence, without any horses. The account 
 was taken from his books by myself, and 
 these sheep and cattle were all intended for 
 the knife during the year. Now how many 
 miles and acres of land will it take in any 
 inhabited part of America to raise the 
 like sum ? I am clear that ten miles 
 square would not do it, in any part of 
 America I have been in ; nor would twenty 
 
261 
 
 miles without horses, Then again, the 
 influx of paper you mention, certainly is 
 the cause why the cattle, horses, and every 
 other article, bear so high prices in England ; 
 but the paper currency is extended equally 
 as much, according to quantity of coin, or 
 more so, in America, and probably in all 
 other countries. And whom does that in- 
 jure ? The poor, as in all other cases, the 
 lower sort of people the most, which causes 
 great numbers to emigrate, as they cannot 
 turn their small sums into paper : and it is 
 the policy of a nation to keep two sorts of 
 people, rich and poor; although it may 
 seem impolitic to say so, it is for the good 
 of a nation ; for were all rich, or all poor, 
 this equality of condition would not pro- 
 mote the happiness and comfort of the people : 
 and it is not in the power of things to make 
 a better provision for the poor, such part as 
 are unable to work from infirmity, or youth, 
 as fatherless children, &c. than is made by 
 the present poor laws in England. It is n 
 real charity, distributed by a set of gentle- 
 
262 
 
 men who .are not benefited by either party, 
 as the magistrates in England sit for the 
 sake of justice. It is an actual arbitration 
 betwixt the parish and the pauper. There 
 cannot be a real suffering subject in Eng- 
 land ; he is protected by law, and the price 
 of labour must rise according to the price 
 of provision: how this may affect manufac- 
 tories I do not know. There are not those 
 things in America." (From this conversa- 
 tion, as I am told by an English merchant 
 who was in the room, I got some credit with 
 the company present, when I was gone. I 
 had not the pleasure of knowing the gentle- 
 man at that time ; nor do I know that I 
 should have remembered the circumstance if 
 he had not repeated it to me since I returned 
 to Liverpool.) "Then again, Mr. Watson, 
 on Mr. Collins's mentioning the immense 
 debt due from the American merchants to 
 the British merchants, you observed in reply 
 they owe them nothing ; that England has 
 paid herself by taking yours and other 
 merchants' ships, which have been con-*- 
 
263 
 
 demned as lawful prizes, though they were 
 not legally so. Mr. Collins made it plainly 
 appear that those ships so condemned, were 
 condemned through your own fault, by 
 endeavouring to carry on an unlawful trade, 
 by carrying contraband goods, to defraud 
 the government of England of what they 
 are entitled to according to the treaty made 
 between Britain and America at the con- 
 clusion of the war. But were that the 
 case, it is a strange way of settling accounts 
 for the American merchants to say there is a 
 general balance struck bet ween the two coun- 
 tries from the property taken from them, 
 to give a balance to a merchant's account, 
 who has been good enough to give credit for 
 a part of that account several years, and all 
 of it so long a time as to give bread to the 
 American and his family ; which has been 
 very often the case. You said that the 
 Bank of England's inability to pay their 
 paper was the cause why Mr Pitt made an 
 act for the Bank of England's notes to be 
 $ legal payment. Mr. Pitt might have 
 
264 
 
 many reasons that individuals knew 
 nothing of. I knew none at that time : 
 but I know a very substantial one now. 
 The gold coin in England requires that 
 great care should be taken of it : I have 
 observed, since I came into this country, 
 that the English guinea has a small piece cut 
 from it: that is, I suppose, with an intention 
 to keep it in this country, and never let 
 it go to England again. There are un- 
 doubtedly two arts in that : the one, that 
 there are one or two shillings cut from 
 every English guinea ; and another is, that 
 the part remaining pays for twenty-one 
 shillings sterling." That this is a common 
 practice appears certain from the following 
 fact : Wanting cash to bring me to Eng- 
 land, and being in habits of great friendship 
 with the cashier of the Baltimore Bank, I 
 applied to him for English money for their 
 own bills ; he said he would give me all 
 the gold he had, which was nine guineas, 
 every one of which had a small piece 
 cut off. Therefore by that means every 
 
265 
 
 Englisii guinea that is taken by an Ame- 
 rican in England, and carried to Ame- 
 rica, is immediately worth twenty- three 
 shillings sterling : and I have taken notice, 
 since I landed at Liverpool, and havebeen 
 detained there, that the American captains 
 are very pressing for gold, on every occa- 
 sion ; to take, I suppose, into America 
 and deface : but their general plea is, 
 that they want it to buy butter, eggs, 
 fowls, &c. These politicians frequently 
 argue, thatt hey can do without England. 
 They can manufacture for themselves, 
 and then what will become of i ngland ? 
 They have once whipped the British j and 
 they will do it again (the term whipping 
 arises from their whipping the negroes). 
 Those threats arise from the condemnation 
 of American ships. I in reply say, " No, 
 you never will be able to manufacture 
 at the present you cannot manufacture 
 even a gun-flint but that England will 
 do it both cheaper and better than you 
 can yourselves. Your country will never 
 
266 
 
 enable you to do it : yours is not a wool 
 country ; the soil will not support sheep in 
 anynumber. From the produce, the English 
 soil first made the trade ; and now trade is 
 repaying the sod. Within my own know- 
 ledge, it was a customary thing with my 
 father, as a Lincolnshire grazier, to sell his 
 wool (from about one thousand sheep) to a 
 wool-stapler in Yorkshire in the month of 
 July, and to take a note for the money to 
 the amount of three hundred and fifty 
 pounds sterling, payable by a bill to be- 
 come due the April following. When this 
 bill came down from Halifax to him, he 
 regularly gave it to a shopkeeper to pay his 
 tradesmen in London or elsewhere ; and 
 my father received the money from that 
 shopkeeper, when the bill became due. 
 Now it may be worthy observation, that 
 there were nine months' use of three hundred 
 and fifty pounds without interest : this 
 wool was raised on about six hundred acres 
 of land ; and this being a customary way of 
 doing business at that time, if three hundred 
 
267 
 
 and fifty pounds were lent from every six 
 hundred acres of grazing land in the county 
 of Lincoln only, what an immense sum the 
 whole of the grazing land lent to the trade in 
 those days ! All this was independent of the 
 fat cattle, horses, &c. raised on this grazing 
 land : and I have known my father have 
 the like sum in the jobbers' hands in the 
 month of November for the fat sheep, and 
 cattle, he had sold to go into Yorkshire 
 during the summer. This money was of 
 great assistance to the trade ; but there 
 are none of these sort of advantages in 
 America to give the like assistance to raise 
 the manufactures ; nor can there be ; the 
 soil is of too barren a nature ; and the cli- 
 mate is against the health of the people, 
 and the fattening of both sheep and cattle. 
 These sheep were fed in England on the 
 marsh soils during the winter, on grass; 
 xvithout any further expence, than one 
 man to look after five thousand of them : 
 nor would it have been any advan- 
 tage to the graziers to have had the 
 
268 
 
 money sooner in those days, as those 
 grazing lands kept from one to two sheep 
 on an acre during the winter, and in the 
 summer from four to ten sheep on an acre ; 
 therefore, the month of May was the 
 time the additional number of sheep and 
 cattle was required ; and the money came 
 when it was wanted." When this is told 
 in America, I suppose they think it untrue ; 
 nor have the most sensible of them the 
 least idea what kind of land this may be, 
 The old gentleman, Mr. Boadley of Phila- 
 delphia, whom 1 have so frequently men- 
 tioned in this work, hearing this sort of 
 conversation from me, said, when I parted 
 vtith him, that he had never felt such a de- 
 sire to be young again as at the present 
 moment, to come along with me to England 
 to see all those things ; for although he had 
 read all the authors on the subject of agri- 
 culture, it had either escaped his attention, 
 or they had never mentioned the advan- 
 tages that I had pointed out to him. Nor 
 was General Washington any more in- 
 
269 
 
 formed of what England is, than if he had 
 never heard of it. It is understood by all 
 the American gentlemen, that England 
 was formerly a continued wood, as Ame~ 
 rica is and has been, and that the 
 land the sea has left, was covered with 
 rushes and flags, and all the land in 
 England has been improved by the 
 plough and dunghill. When I told them 
 that we had thousands of acres which 
 never had been tilled or dunged, nor did 
 the ingenuity of man know what to do to 
 a great part of it to make it more useful 
 than it is, rny account staggered them much, 
 as the English authors on agriculture have 
 chiefly written some great improvements 
 on certain waste lands in England, which 
 has filled the American's ideas that no 
 English farmer has more than forty acres 
 in his farm, and he ploughs the land him- 
 self, he and his family reaping the produce. 
 They have no more idea of the comforts 
 which the farmer in England enjoys, than 
 as if he was not a man ; and when I 
 
told them one farmer had six hundred acres 
 of wheat the year I came there, which pro- 
 duced thirty-two bushels per acre and 
 that there was one piece of land of six thou- 
 dred acres in a rabbit warren at Brand in 
 Norfolk and that Mr. Barker in Norfolk 
 entered one hundred and twenty-four horses 
 to plough with, when the tax was laid on 
 horses for husbandry, they were astonished 
 (and well they might, since England takes 
 up so small a space in the map of Europe) ; 
 and probably great part of them thought it 
 untrue. But those who knew me were 
 curious enough to wish to see those things. 
 Those Americans who have been in Eng- 
 land know little or nothing about it : they 
 are brought in a ship to some sea-port, 
 made drunk, put into a mail coach, and 
 driven from one manufacturing town to 
 another, and carried about like a bagged 
 fox; they go to London, are taken to the 
 plays, and other evening amusements fre- 
 quented in town : and when one of these 
 travellers returns to Americahis friends meet 
 
ti 
 
 him, and say, " How are you ? how have 
 you been ?" "Very well." " What have 
 you seen ?" <c Liverpool, Sheffield, Bir- 
 mingham, Wakefield, Halifax, and Lon- 
 don." " What did you see in London ?" 
 " I went to the play, and saw the king." 
 " Oh, d n the king!" " Are they not all 
 starving in England ?" " Yes, the poorer 
 sort of people are very much distressed ; 
 they are very heavily taxed, many dying in 
 the streets for want of food." " Do not 
 they talk of a revolution ?" "Yes, they are 
 ready if Bonaparte eould get over. There 
 are some few riots." Then it is generally 
 said, " Well, you look very well." "Oh, 
 I lived very well." Then there is a laugh ; 
 and the company will say, " A man may 
 always live well for his money," with the 
 allusion of the greatest part of the English 
 being so poor from the great oppression of 
 government, that they are starving for want. 
 Then in some part of his conversation he 
 
 will mention a duke " Oh, d n your 
 
 titles! thank God, we are not troubled with 
 
272 
 
 them." Now, of the company then present, 
 there will not be one out of ten who is not 
 either Esquire. General, Colonel, Captain, or 
 Doctor. Now this young hero has so spent 
 his time, that it is more than ten to one if 
 he knows the name of the play-house, 
 whether Covent- garden or Drury-lane ; 
 yet when he gets a glass of Madeira into 
 him, he will know the laws, the soil, and 
 produce, better than any Englishman pre- 
 eent I was at General Ridgely's one day, 
 and an American, one of the assembly 
 men, in company : some debate arose be- 
 twixt him and me respecting the punish- 
 ments for felony in England. He said the 
 laws were cruel ; and contended that he 
 knew England better then I did. I 
 then told him, I would ask him a question 
 of a very public nature : I was of an opi- 
 nion he would not be able to answer it. I 
 asked him what was the produce of York- 
 shire ? He answered wool. I told him it 
 was coals ; the wool was grown in other 
 
273 
 
 countries, and brought to Yorkshire to be 
 manufactured. 
 
 This gentleman, of the assembly, and a 
 pleader or counsellor, had read some Eng- 
 lish publication wherein had been mentioned 
 that a building containing private or lonely 
 cells for felons was erecting in England. 
 The opinion of some part of the Americans 
 is, that they have so well made their code 
 of laws as fit them to be an example to 
 the globe; and they particularly wish it 
 to be understood, that they think the laws 
 of England too strict on the liberty and 
 the rights of the subject, arbitrary in tax- 
 ation, severe in the punishments of crimes, 
 &c. This gentleman and I frequently met 
 at General Ridgley's table, and used to argue 
 upon those subjects, in such a manner, that 
 the General several times observed he 
 thought I was sent by Mr. Pitt to pull them 
 to pieces. But my opinion is, that the 
 laws of England are not more severe than 
 they ought to be, as I do not know of any 
 act in force to deprive a man of any right 
 
 T 
 
2/4 
 
 or liberty, or that is the least injurious td 
 his trade or calling, so far as he acts with 
 honest principles ; and so soon as a man 
 acts dishonestly, it is better for himself and 
 all around him, that he should have proper 
 correction for his offence* As to felony, 
 it will admit of no excuse, and the sooner 
 the offender is punished the better ; for if 
 the crime be of such a nature that the 
 wisdom of the legislator thought it deserv- 
 ing death, in all probability if this man 
 should escape justice, he would in a little 
 time bring another man as a companion to 
 the gallows with him. To this purport 
 was my argument. My antagonist con- 
 tended that it was wrong to put any man 
 to death ; and when he had read of our 
 adopting solitary confinement as a punish- 
 ment, he observed, " Now you see, Mr. 
 Parkinson, your countrymen for whom 
 you argue so much are going to be less 
 severe ; instead of hanging offenders, they 
 will put them into those lonely cells." I, 
 in answer, said " No, I do not understand 
 
that ; it is done with a much better intention 
 -to keep those bad men from associating 
 together, that they may not improve in 
 roguery during the time of confinement ; as 
 it is doubtful whether there be a better 
 school for any language or science, than a 
 prison for a young man unfortunately in- 
 clined to be dishonest, nor could he by any 
 other means get so regularly and perfectly 
 instructed as a highwayman, housebreaker, 
 horse-stealer, &c : and it is the opinion 
 of many sensible men, that there have been 
 young persons put in prisons for slight 
 offences, and after their confinement they 
 have, by hearing the hardened conversation 
 of others, come out completely finished to 
 rob and plunder, with a knowledge of every 
 device to enable them to avoid being appre- 
 hended when they have committed those 
 offences. The General frequently agreed 
 with me in opinion respecting the necessity 
 of punishment for crimes, which used much 
 to irritate a great part of the company, par- 
 ticularly those men who are merely book- 
 12 
 
276' 
 
 learnt on the subject in question ; and 
 even those young merchants who come to 
 transact business in towns, and can tell a 
 very plausable tale to their own country- 
 men that know nothing about it, when a 
 man of real experience contradicts them it 
 breaks their temper ; probably having told 
 those stories as facts amongst their com- 
 panions, the refutation of them is very un- 
 pleasant. 
 
 A great object with the defenders of 
 American politics is to persuade the sub- 
 jects of England that America is free from 
 taxes, and considering the burthens Lid on the 
 people in England, how much better chance 
 a man has to get money in America, where, 
 they say, there is little or no taxation. I 
 had been but a short time in America, 
 however, before I discovered taxes to be 
 very high. The day I landed my race- 
 horses, I wanted some horse rugs to cover 
 them, the ship having been very hot; and 
 the stables being built on wood and boarded 
 at the sides, they were very cold : there was 
 
'277 
 
 scarcely straw to be got at any price for 
 litter, as it is the chief of the winter food 
 they have for their cattle. When I en- 
 quired for those rugs, the landlord of the 
 tavern at Alexandria told me I must go to 
 a store to buy them ; but when I cams 
 there they had no such thing, nor were 
 there any in the city ; they offered me 
 blankets, and told me they were used for that 
 purpose in that country ; but the price was 
 a guinea for a small one, which I could have 
 bought in the streets in Doncaster for five or 
 six shillings. I could not but consider this 
 as a tax, and I soon learnt that all other ma- 
 nufactured goods bore an equal proportion. 
 Mr. Gadsby, the landlord, being an English- 
 man, and from London, readily informed 
 me of the misery I had to undergo ; and 
 he frequently told me what had happened 
 to him. Mr. Gadsley was a builder by pro- 
 fession, but that had not answered. 
 
 Finding the land so wretchedly barren, 
 I turned my mind to think on trade, sup- 
 posing from the price the profit to be very 
 
278 
 
 great. I had become acquainted with 
 many Englishmen who had come over 
 with an intention to farm, but who had 
 given the preference to trade, and particu- 
 larly the eldest son of Mr. Allenby, of 
 Maidenwell, in the county of Lincoln, 
 who was born and brought up a farmer 
 as well as myself, and a neighbour, and 
 of a family that has never shewn an in^ 
 stance of want of spirit or judgment. 
 While debating with myself how to act, I 
 met with a merchant from Wakefield in 
 Yorkshire, whom I invited to dine with me, 
 and discovered to him my disappointment 
 of the American land, and asked his opinion 
 whether trade might not be better, as I was 
 very certain there was only a very miser- 
 able living to be had by farming. He very 
 soon convinced me of the great hazard of 
 that answering; at best a bad business. This 
 put all thoughts of that kind out of my head. 
 This merchant having a brother who kept 
 9. store at Boston, in New England, I 
 made no further enquiry on that subject. 
 

 279 
 
 Now the reader will please to observe, I 
 call every extraordinary charge on the ne- 
 cessaries of life that he cannot manufacture 
 himself, a tax. And although there are 
 Dutchmen who live in America, and are 
 said to prosper by having one son a weaver, 
 another a shoemaker, another a taylor, 
 and tan their own leather, &c. this is a 
 miserable way of living : and it may be 
 observed in England, a man that follows 
 many trades seldom enriches himself, or 
 ^ives comfort to his family. And as it will 
 appear in this work a man with a family is 
 very highly taxed in America to live in the 
 same comfort as people of equal distinction 
 do in England, when he has to buy all the 
 necessaries of life that are wanting for a 
 family, he will require no greater tax, the 
 whole of his labours will be consumed. 
 Now to a farmer, or a man who is a judge 
 of stock, there is not the same opportunity 
 as in England to make use of either his 
 money or judgment, as there are no public 
 fairs, consequently he cannot exchange his 
 
 - 
 
280 
 
 cattle in the same manner to equal advan- 
 tage. For instance, in horse- dealing, al- 
 though the Americans are very fond of 
 horses, there is a Mr. Hardy, in Philadel- 
 phia, formerly a horse-dealer in England, 
 and then kept the first tavern in the place, 
 who is likewise a livery-stable-keeper and 
 jobman ; he buys horses, and breaks them 
 into coaches, crops and nicks them, and is 
 in all appearance carrying on a great busi- 
 ness. I have known a gentleman go three 
 kundred miles to buy a pair of coach horses 
 of him. I was one day sitting in his bar, 
 and he was making many observations 
 what a miserable country America was, and 
 how many inconveniences a man laboured 
 under compared with England : I said, 
 " Mr. Hardy, you must be doing very 
 well ;" he shook his head, and said, " No, 
 I am doing nothing : I have sold more 
 horses in one day at Horncastle fair, than 
 ever I sold in a 'year here :" and he further 
 said, it was his opinion there was more 
 money returned at Horncastle fair in 
 
281 
 
 month of August, for horses, than in the 
 whole of the United States. The reader 
 will observe the many instances mentioned 
 in this work of men of all denominations, 
 who have been equally as much disappoint- 
 ed as myself, which will greatly soften any 
 prejudice that I may have received in the 
 country ; and my judgment cannot be 
 very wrong, for Englishmen there are all 
 in one mind. I used frequently to say, 
 " Why do you not leave it ; I shall leave 
 it :" " Iwish I could! was generally the 
 answer. And though it is easy to say go 
 back, when a man has got his family in 
 that country, returning to England is at- 
 tended with a very heavy expence. There 
 is one thing I am much astonished at : I 
 meet with many persons who have been in 
 America, and speak well of it. When I was 
 there I do not recollect meeting with more 
 than one man from the old country who 
 liked it, and he was an Irishman, driving 
 a stage coach betwixt Philadelphia and 
 Baltimore : nor can I otherwise account for 
 
the conduct of those who so wonderfully 
 change their tone, but from their unwilling- 
 ness to acknowledge their folly. 
 
 To mention the number of disappointed 
 Englishmen I met with in America, would 
 enlarge this volume enormously, but it may 
 be proper to mention one in particular of each 
 denomination. I met, at Mr. Jerry War- 
 der's, a quaker the most respectable mer- 
 chant in Philadelphia, and who prided 
 himself on being one of the best of masters, 
 and remarkably fond of Englishmen and 
 farming an Englishman who was his 
 ploughman, and received one hundred dol- 
 lars per year, and his board : he had brought 
 over with him one hundred guineas sterling; 
 and he declared to me he had wasted a great 
 part of his cash, and it was his intention to 
 return to England^ while he had money to 
 pay for his passage. This case astonished 
 me more than many others, as the charac- 
 ter given him by Jerry Warder and Dr. 
 Logan, whom he had served, was that of 
 a sober steady servant. The reason why I 
 

 
 283 
 
 particularly inquired after this man's charac- 
 ter was, he had offered himself to me at one 
 hundred and twenty dollars per year, as he 
 declared he could not find himself proper 
 necessaries for the wages he had received 
 from his former masters : his dislike to their 
 manner of living I did not wonder at, 
 having intermixed servants, negroes, &c. 
 I thought this man of all others I had met 
 with had least reason to complain of his 
 supplies. 
 
 As to the American farmer, he knows 
 nothing of England, and but little of his 
 own country; for many of the American, 
 farmers are so situated as to see nobody 
 but their own family for several months 
 together : except he be near a town or 
 city, and deal in truck, he has little occa- 
 sion to leave his home more than once a 
 year, to sell his produce, and bring back the 
 necessaries for his family. 
 
 
84 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 
 The several Kinds of Cattle and Hogs ; with an 
 Account of some remarkably fat Calves; 
 some fat Cattle, $c. : the Met hod of feeding; 
 the Price of Beef and Veal> $c. 
 
 THE cattle in America are a mixed kind; 
 very few of any distinct breed : but they are 
 in general, according to the soil and usage, 
 equally good as in any part of Great -Bri- 
 tain. They are from England, Scotland, 
 Holland, and France. The oxen are very 
 good in the yoke, and more tractable than I 
 ever saw them in England. They chiefly 
 draw without horses ; and they will run 
 them a trot for miles : they are generally 
 worked to very advanced ages, ten or 
 twelve years old : some draw by the fore- 
 part of the head. When made fat, they 
 weigh from fifty to sixty stone, fourteen 
 pounds to the stone : some are smaller. 
 
285 
 
 I have seen a heifer at four years old, killed 
 in Philadelphia, weigh eighty stone. 
 There was aft ox shewn at Baltimore, as a 
 sight, that stood seventeen hands high and 
 upwards, supposed to weigh one hundred 
 and twenty stone. These two animals 
 were bred in the Jerseys. 
 
 I saw six calves, killed in Philadelphia, 
 that weighed, on the average, sixty pounds 
 per quarter, and cost the butcher one hun- 
 dred and ninety dollars from the breeder. 
 Some of the hind-quarters weighed seven- 
 ty-two pounds. These six calves had 
 sucked twenty-three cows, and eaten as 
 much Indian corn and timothy hay as they 
 chose to take. The winter-fed cattle are all 
 fed on Indian corn and blades, or hay. 
 The calves were reared by two Englishmen, 
 brothers, from Essex. 
 
 A good cow, properly fed, will give six- 
 teen quarts of milk in twenty-four hours : 
 but that is not common. For want of care 
 in feeding and milking, they frequently 
 give only one quart in twenty-four hours. 
 It is not uncommon for a cow to go un- 
 
286 
 
 milked for two or three days, it being some- 
 times difficult to find them, owing to their 
 pasturing in woods : though it is usual to 
 have a bell hung to them, and the owner 
 knows the tone of the bell : but there are 
 some people who milk them only when they 
 want milk, even when the cattle can be found. 
 Perhaps they have not proper vessels to put 
 the milk in, or they may think it keeps 
 better in the cow's udder : for milk is hard 
 to keep from the frost in winter - 9 and the 
 heat in summer very soon turns it sour ; 
 and so they milk it as they want it : which 
 is frequently done. As I was a milker of 
 cows, I tried the experiment for two or 
 three days, of milking but once a day. 
 This was in winter, when we wanted to go 
 to town only once a day with milk ; but 
 the milking so seldom caused the cows to 
 decline in their milk very much. 
 
 The method of feeding cows in America 
 is in every instance the same as that of 
 feeding hogs in England: broth, dish- 
 washings, and any filthy stuff, with bran 
 or meal of any kind. The fat cattle are 
 
 
287 
 
 fed on Indian corn, broken in the same 
 manner as we break beans for horses, mixed 
 with bran, chopped straw, or chaff, clover, 
 or timothy hay, blades, &c. and salt regu- 
 larly given once a week, a large handful to 
 each beast of every kind, whether for fat- 
 tening or not. 
 
 The price of a cow and calf is from 
 twelve to forty dollars : but the general run 
 of cows are sold from eighteen to twenty- 
 six dollars: what are termed fat calves, from 
 four to eight dollars, to kill at six or eight 
 weeks old ; a drape cow from six to sixteen 
 dollars ; a pair of working oxen from 
 seventy to one hundred dollars ; beef from 
 four pence to ten pence per pound ; veal 
 the same. 
 
 There is one gentleman, of the name of 
 Gough, at Perry-Hall, who has procured 
 some imported cattle from near York, in 
 England, something of the Tees-water kind, 
 which he sold very high at the first, -from 
 one hundred to one hundred and twenty 
 dollars for a bull-calf, and seventy to eighty 
 
 I 
 
288 
 
 dollars for heifers, at year-olds: but they 
 not at all liked. The butchers will not buy 
 a calf of that kind, if they know it: they 
 complain of the flesh being coarse and black. 
 They were not of the best sort when first 
 imported ; nor do I believe they would 
 answer in that hot climate, and poor soil. 
 I think them an improper animal for Ame- 
 rica. I went to a show of Mr. Cough's, 
 of cattle, and horses of the blood kind ; and 
 he had some hogs of the Chinese breed. 
 This was at Perry-Hall, fourteen miles from 
 Baltimore. He has great conveniences for 
 cattle in the winter, only improperly con- 
 structed. He has a very large tract of land 
 under cultivation, chiefly Indian corn and 
 rye, with some clover. He has paid great 
 attention to cultivation, and to his cattle and 
 horses : but he is said to be very poor in 
 money, like all cultivators of soil in Ameri- 
 ca, although this gentleman had an uncle 
 who died in England, and left him sixty 
 thousand pounds sterling to realise this 
 property in the beginning, I do not know 
 
 
 
289 
 
 a more satisfactory proof of its being im- 
 possible for a man to enrich himself by 
 cultivating land in America, than this, as 
 Mr. Gough is in every respect calculated to 
 gef money, and keep it ; and no man can 
 have paid greater attention ; and he has all 
 his work done by negroes. Mr. Gough 
 had made a present to General Washington 
 of a bull-calf. The animal was shown to 
 me when I first landed at Mount- Vernon, 
 and was the first bull I saw in the country. 
 He was large, and very strong- featured ; 
 the largest part was his head, the next his 
 legs. The General's steward was a Scotch- 
 man, and no judge of animals a better 
 judge of distilling whiskey. Mr. Gough 
 had very great quantities of fruit, particu- 
 cularly apples, which he sold at three dollars 
 and a half the barrel, viz. two bushels and a 
 half. He likewise made cyder, which he 
 sold at two dollars per barrel. He kept 
 sheep, of the sort from the Cape of Good- 
 Hope. He had rams of that kind for sale; 
 but they are much disliked. He told rne 
 
 u 
 
290 
 
 he thought of being a Mr. Bakewell : but it 
 would not do in America. He put me in 
 mind of the quaker m England, who, being 
 asked in court by a counsellor what he 
 meant by saying likewise and also? replied 
 " Lord Kenyon is a great lawyer ; thou art 
 a/so, but not like-wise" Thus Mr. Gough 
 was also, but not like- wise , as Mr. Bakewell. 
 With all Mr. Cough's attention, he is far 
 from being a good judge of animals. He 
 raised a*great quantity of potatoes for the 
 use of his cattle and other animals, and 
 every thing seemed to be done in a very 
 proper manner ; but, in the choice of his 
 animals, he has acted as many other persons 
 before him he has thought the largest best. 
 There are great numbers of hogs, in 
 general of a very inferior kind. The real 
 American hog* is what is termed the wood- 
 hog : they are long in the leg, narrow on 
 the back, short in the body, flat on the sides, 
 with a long snout, very rough in their hair, 
 in make more like the fish called a perch than 
 any thing I can describe. You may as well 
 
291 
 
 think of stopping a crow as those hogs. 
 They will go to a distance from a fence, 
 take a run, and leap through the rails, three 
 or four feet from the ground, turning them- 
 selves sidewise. These hogs suffer such 
 hardships as no other animal could endure. 
 It is customary to keep them in the woods 
 all winter, as there is no thrashing or fokU 
 yards - y and they must live on the roots of 
 trees, or something of that sort ; but they 
 are poor beyond any creature that I ever 
 saw. That is. probably the cause why the 
 American -pork is so fine. They are some- 
 thing like the forest-sheep. I am not cer- 
 tain, with American keeping and treatment, 
 if they be not the best: for I never saw any 
 animal live without food, except this ; and 
 I am pretty sure they nearly do that. When 
 tney are fed, the flesh may well be sweet : 
 it is all young, though the pig be ten years 
 old ; and, like pigs in general, they only 
 act as a conveyance, to carry corn to market. 
 The sort of hogs I left in America pay the 
 most for food I ever saw. I fed some half- 
 bred ones, at six months old, that weighed 
 
292 
 
 ten stone each fourteen pounds to the 
 stone. With very little food and care, they 
 kept fat in their growing state. 
 
 I had a sow that yielded me one hundred 
 and twenty-five pounds fifteen shillings in 
 eleven months. I sold three hogs to Ge- 
 neral Ridgely for fifty-six pounds five 
 shillings currency. The pigs were all 
 sold from the sow at seven weeks old, 
 except one. At two litters, she had only 
 twelve, to make the sum. 
 
 I will here take the liberty to insert my 
 butcher's bill, as a specimen from the 
 shambles. 
 
 Mr; Parkinson Dr. to J..:. S, ...... 
 
 1799. . s. d. 
 
 Sept. 7. To 31/3. beef, at Sd. per Ib. 108 
 
 28. To 91/3. ditto, at \l$d. 092 
 
 To 1 beef's head, 1 10 
 
 Oct. 2. To 20/3. ditto, at 9d. 15 
 
 12. To 171/6. ditto, at lOrf. 0147 
 
 19. To 25/3. ditto, at lOd. 1 10 
 To 1 beef's head, 1 10 
 
 28. To 23/3. ditto, at lOd. 19 2 
 
 Nov. 13. To 12523. ditto, at 4d. 218 
 
 20. To 228/3. ditto, at 6d. & 14 
 Dec. 21. To 216/3. ditto, at 6d. J> 8 O 
 
 .u Jflo" 
 
 By turnips and cattle kept, _6 6 
 
 .12 
 
293 
 
 SECTION X. 
 The several Sorts of Sheep. 
 
 To my great astonishment, I found sheep 
 of various kinds. There are black- faced 
 sheep, which seem to thrive better, and 
 apparently endure greater hardships, than 
 other sorts. Some of them appear to be 
 from Holland. The sheep from that coun- 
 try are distinguishable by their having no 
 wool at the end of their tails, and bear the 
 name of rat- tailed sheep, or small-tailed 
 sheep. 
 
 The American wool, in general, is soft 
 and fine : the housing of their sheep in 
 winter is probably one cause, and the cli- 
 mate and soil may be another, The length 
 of the wool is from four to six inches ; the 
 weight from three to four pounds each 
 fleece. There is no regular wool-market. 
 The price is from two shillings to three 
 
shillings per pound, and that only in small 
 quantities, from two to ten pounds each 
 person : they will not take the belly or tail 
 wool, consequently there is a deal of cast 
 wool, which is of little or no use ; of the 
 coarsest wool in England listing is made. 
 
 It is not at all uncommon there to see the 
 sheep with only the best parts of the \vool 
 off, while the head, belly, and tail, remain 
 undipped ; perhaps because it is worth 
 little or nothing. Sheep will not thrive 
 without salt once or twice a week, about a 
 handful to ten sheep at each time ; and so 
 fond are they of it, that, if you go into the 
 pasture, they will follow you for salt, as a 
 horse would for corn. I do not know what 
 effect salt would have on the sheep in Eng- 
 land ; but I doubt not of its being of use if 
 they would eat it, and the expence did nof 
 over-run the profit. The heat of the sun in 
 summer has such an effect on them as to 
 occasion a discharge at the nose, and they 
 make so great a noise when they draw their 
 breath, that you may hear them at a consider- 
 
able distance. It is by the Americans called 
 the rot, as the matter is like pus, although I 
 do not think they have a rotten sheep in the 
 country : for I have in their shambles taken 
 great notice of sheep livers, but never saw 
 such a thing as a fluke, or the least appear- 
 ance of a bad liver. 
 
 -The Americans have Spanish sheep, and 
 sheep that have been in the West-Indies : 
 these sheep resemble a goat, are of a red and 
 white colour, and have no wool on them. 
 I saw two sheep in Liverpool, that had been 
 two years in the West-Indies : they had 
 no wool on them ; but hair like a grey- 
 hound, quite smooth. 
 
 In America, I make no doubt, from 
 the food and climate, sheep might dip very 
 fine clothing-wool, as much so as in most 
 parts of the world, were the sheep properly 
 chosen, and caution taken with the rams, 
 for the best with fine wool. The necessary 
 care taken to keep them alive during win- 
 ter, by housing them every night, and fre- 
 quently on a severe day, causes the wool to 
 
296 
 
 be very soft and fine at the present : but, 
 from the wild manner in which they are 
 managed, at this time the wool is of all sorts, 
 yet soft and inclined to be fine. It is 
 customary to let the rams and ewes go 
 together the whole year; and from that 
 cause they have lambs very early, and in 
 such weather as astonished me to think how 
 they could exist. Were the rams kept 
 from the ewes until a proper time, the lambs 
 would be better supported by the ewes, and 
 loss of them when young less frequent. 
 The fodder-house is commonly the place 
 where they are put, and fed on the corn- 
 blades, as at that time there is not the least 
 appearance of grass. The time of lambing 
 being chiefly in February and March, the 
 ewes seldom produce twins : I suppose that 
 is from their poverty. 
 
 The lamb which is called fat lamb, is 
 rarely to be seen on the shambles in Eng- 
 land ; nor would the most indigent person 
 touch such poor, lean meat, of any descrip- 
 tion. 
 
297 
 
 The method adopted with the sheep by 
 breeders is this : the butcher picks all that 
 he likes out of the flock ; and the remain- 
 der are kept to breed from ; so that, instead 
 of improving, the breed is more likely to 
 degenerate. It is likewise usual to see 
 many rams with the ewes ; and, however 
 large a man's flock maybe, they all run 
 together. They have no shepherd ; nor 
 is there much occasion : for they are never 
 struck by the flies, if they be ever so foul 
 with dirt ; which is very extraordinary to 
 me, as there is a greater number of maggot 
 flies in the butchers' shambles, &c. there 
 than in England : nor did I see a scabbed 
 sheep during the whole time I was in Ame- 
 rica ; of which I made a particular obser- 
 vation. They are subject to the foot-rot 
 and the vertigo, the same as in England. 
 
 As an English farmer, I have no idea 
 of the mode of treatment, or feeding of 
 sheep, adopted in Spain, to occasion the 
 superior fineness of their fleeces, nor how 
 
298 
 
 they rnanage to pay for it: yet I suppose 
 that there might be very fine wool pro- 
 duced in America, if the profit was ade- 
 quate to the care and trouble. My present 
 opinion, however, is, that this is not now 
 the case : but that may be from my being 
 accustomed to raise sheep in England at 
 much less expence. I understand the sheep 
 in Spain have salt given to them, nor 
 will those of America thrive without it. 
 
299 
 
 SECTION XI. 
 
 A descriptive Account of the Fowls, tame and 
 wild. 
 
 THERE are great numbers of fowls raised 
 in America with little care. The warmth 
 of the climate causes them to grow quickly. 
 There is a very large kind from the East- 
 Indies, which is much esteemed for the 
 table ; another small kind which is remark- 
 able for laying eggs. There are multitudes 
 of every kind that we have in England, par- 
 ticularly of the game breed : the severity of 
 the weather during the winter seems to have 
 no effect on their laying. In summer they 
 require very little feeding, and live chiefly 
 on insects. Fowls ought to be kept, for the 
 purpose of destroying flies and other insects. 
 There are great numbers of turkeys reared ; 
 and very fine they are. There are like- 
 wise wild turkeys, which are something 
 
300 
 
 larger than the tame ones, but so like them, 
 that I should be unable to distinguish the 
 one from the other. They are black, or 
 rather brown, called copper colour. 
 
 Fowls sell very high ; from one shilling 
 and six pence to three shillings and nine 
 pence, according to the size : turkeys from 
 seven shillings and six pence to fifteen shil- 
 lings each : eggs from fifteen pence to three 
 shillings and nine pence per dozen. There 
 are geese, the same as in England : they sell 
 from five shillings to seven shillings and six 
 pence, according to the size and fatness. 
 Wild geese are bigger than those of Eng- 
 land, and sell for seven shillings and six 
 pence each. 
 
 The American ducks are similar to our 
 English ones, but the climate does not suit 
 them so well. In hot weather they appear 
 troubled ; and, though continually in the 
 water, seem not revived by it. Wild ducks 
 are plentiful, of different kinds. The sort 
 called canvas-backs is the most delicious 
 I ever tasted : it is rather remarkable, not- 
 
301 
 
 withstanding there are thousands of them, 
 they are only to be found in the Potowmac 
 and Susquehanna rivers; they do not gb into 
 any other part of America, nor are they ever 
 seen in other waters. 
 
 There is a bird which they call an owl, 
 but not at all like ours in England. That 
 bird will seize a grown fowl, and fly away 
 with it, just in the same manner as the 
 hawks arid gledes do with chickens in our 
 own country. The bird which they call a 
 Turkey buzzard, is beautiful in shape, 
 something larger than the glede, and in 
 colour like the English buzzard : in some 
 of the states there is a fine of five pounds 
 for shooting a single one of them: they will 
 eat carrion and garbage of every kind ; and 
 it is for that reason that people wish to pre- 
 serve them. These two last-mentioned 
 birds are esteemed fine eating, although 
 they live entirely on stinking flesh and 
 offals. 
 
 There are great numbers of Guinea-birds 
 
302 
 
 raised, and they thrive well. There are 
 some pigeons, chiefly in boxes, by the sides 
 of houses. From some unknown cause, 
 they do not fly into the fields, like our 
 pigeons. It is said that they came chiefly 
 from France. There appears to be a mix- 
 ture of tame ones amongst them, as they are 
 usually larger than the British pigeon : the 
 price is eleven pence each. 
 
 There are no cuckoos, magpies, or rooks, 
 which would be of universal service to pick 
 up the insects. There is a bird somewhat 
 betwixt a crow and a jackdaw ; and there 
 is another, called a blackbird, not much un- 
 like our starling. 
 
S03 
 
 SECTION XII. 
 
 On several Kinds of Game. Diversions : Fox- 
 
 hunting, 
 
 THE amusement of shooting (which is 
 called gunning) will give but little pleasure 
 to an English sportsman, as there is very 
 little of what is termed game to be found 
 in any part of America I visited. 
 
 The partridge is a small bird, about the 
 size of the quail in England; and is common- 
 ly brought alive to market, as young chick- 
 ens are in England, which in flavour 'it re- 
 sembles more than any other thing. Par- 
 tridges are chiefly taken by negroes, who 
 have a device for snaring whole coveys to- 
 gether, in a box. 
 
 The pheasant is about the size of the 
 English partridge, and tastes more like 
 game than the American partridge. Their 
 woodcocks are smaller than ours ; the snipe. 
 
304 
 
 is nearly the same : and the two last- 
 mentioned kinds afford the only amuse- 
 ment worth noticing as a diversion. It is 
 the custom to shoot at every bird that flies, 
 and eat them all. There is not so great a 
 number of birds in America as in England : 
 a hedgeful of sparrows there would make 
 a most excellent day's sport. There are 
 many woodpeckers of different sorts. 
 
 Their doves are about the size of turtle- 
 doves, and are good eating. They are 
 taken, in large quantities, in nets or boxes. 
 The contrivance is, to catch four, put out 
 the eyes of two, and tie them to a stake with 
 a piece of string to the leg : the other two 
 they then also tie by the leg, with a string 
 sufficiently long to allow them to fly to some 
 distance ; and when the bird-catcher sees a 
 flight of these doves, as they fly in very 
 great numbers, he lets these two doves fly 
 to meet them, having previously blackened 
 a sufficient space of ground for the execu- 
 tion of their project, by grubbing up the 
 earth, and strewing it with some sort of 
 
305 
 
 food which they like : then the two blind 
 doves are made to keep fluttering so that 
 the large drove can see them. The 
 man, being first secreted in some bushes, 
 draws the two doves down to the black 
 place where the two blind ones are ; in 
 consequence of which the whole of the 
 doves light on the part blackened. The 
 man then draws a net over them : and I 
 have been told that in this manner as many 
 as one hundred are taken at a time. 
 
 As to hares, they have none. There is 
 a small rabbit, which is sometimes called a 
 hare ; it runs into the hollow trees or 
 stumps, and requires rather the axe than 
 the gun to take him. Squirrel-shooting is 
 a favourite diversion : these animals are 
 found in trees, and are sold in the markets 
 to eat, as hares and rabbits are in England. 
 There are many kinds of squirrels (the 
 ground, little grey, great grey, red, black, 
 fox, and flying squirrel) and foxes (the 
 flying fox, black, red, great grey, and little 
 grey fox). Opossums and racoons are ajn- 
 
 X 
 
506 
 
 other kind of animal, similar in taste to the 
 squirrels. 
 
 The Americans shoot and eat most of 
 these animals as game, except the foxes. 
 They are taken by men who hunt all night 
 with dogs and guns. The better sort of 
 people enjoy no other diversion on horse- 
 back than fox-hunting, which by an Eng- 
 lish sportsman would be deemed very in- 
 different pastime. The fox which these 
 night-hunters take, and sell for five or six 
 dollars, is put into a bag, and turned off in 
 some open place, which is never half a mile 
 from a wood ; therefore there is only wood- 
 hunting : and, although the woods do not 
 abound with under-wood, yet they con- 
 tain enough of it to prevent the horsemen 
 from galloping. At Baltimore is an Eng- 
 lish huntsman, who is well acquainted with 
 the management of hounds. Considering, 
 however, the great irregularities of the hunt- 
 ers, in hallooing and cracking their whips, 
 &c. the hounds perform wonders. Appa- 
 rently the highest enjoyment of the horse- 
 
307 
 
 men is liberty and equality in making an 
 extraordinary noise. The foxes do not 
 break away, as with us, but dodge about, 
 somewhat like our hare* Of the red and 
 grey foxes, the only kinds I saw, the red is 
 the best for diversion, and most commonly 
 hunted. They both run very slow, com- 
 pared with the English fox. The fences, 
 which are usually five or six feet high, are 
 such as are extremely inconvenient to 
 horsemen. 
 
 The horses in America generally leap 
 well ; they are accustomed to leap from the 
 time of foaling : as it is not at all uncom- 
 mon, if the mare foal in the night, for some 
 part of the family to ride the mare, with 
 the foal following her, from eighteen to 
 twenty miles the next day, it not being 
 customary to walk much. I think that is the 
 cause of the American horse having a sort 
 of amble : the foal, from its weak state, 
 goes pacing after the dam, and retains that 
 motion all its life. The same is the case 
 with respect to leaping : there being in ma- 
 X2 
 
30$ 
 
 fly places no gates, the snake or worm- fence 
 (which is one rail laid on the end of an- 
 other) is taken down to let the mare pass 
 through, and the foal follow ; but, as it is 
 usual to leave two or three rails untaken 
 down, which the mare leaps over, the foal, 
 unwilling to be left behind, follows her ; so 
 that, by the time it is one week old, it has 
 learned to leap three feet high ; and pro- 
 gressively, as it grows older, it leaps higher, 
 till, at a year old, it will leap its own 
 height. There are part of the horses raised 
 by a description of men having only orie 
 mare, which the owner or his wife rides to 
 market once or twice a week to sell truck: 
 therefore the foal is a traveller from its first 
 existence. 
 
 To return to hunting. The season for 
 this diversion is short ; it being a y con- 
 tinued frost from December to April : 
 but the hounds hunt in such weather as 
 would deter an Englishman from even 
 making the attempt. Probably on account of 
 the woods preventing the effects of the frost. 
 
309 
 
 There are deer in the back woods, but 
 none near Baltimore, which they shoot as 
 game ; and I have heard the venison praised. 
 I ate of it several times ; but it was very in- 
 different, compared with the venison in 
 England. It was exceedingly poor; and I 
 think no venison good, except it be fat : nor 
 do I believe any other animal in perfection, 
 except it be fat. These wild deer are of 
 various kinds ; the moose, elk, round- 
 horned, caribou, red, croft, roe, and fallow. 
 The moose is so scarce and difficult to take, 
 that Mr, Jefferson told me, when he was* in 
 France, and desirous of having one, it cost 
 him seventy guineas to procure the skin, 
 stuffed. There are few or no deer in any 
 of the inhabited parts. 
 
 Venison is brought to market in wag- 
 gons, and sold at the price of beef : it is 
 shocking stuff. It is commonly salted, 
 smoked, and served up raw at breakfast. 
 When dressed in the fresh state, it is usual 
 to cut it into a saddle, by chopping the 
 shanks off about the pope's eye, and just 
 warm it at the fire : every gentleman has a 
 
310 
 
 chafing-dish, and may truly be said to be 
 his own cook ; for, what with the wood- 
 embers and the stew of the venison, the 
 room is like the kitchen of Dolly's chop- 
 house in London. About eight gentlemen 
 will eat all the flesh off the hind-quarters, 
 and nearly pick the bones. The season 
 when the venison comes to market is from 
 September to March ; sometimes with the 
 ekin on, sometimes without it. 
 
 There is a bird they call a robin, 
 something like our fieldfare, which they 
 shoot. There is another bird, named a 
 whip- poor-Will, which makes such a noise 
 that it is impossible to sleep after three 
 o'clock in the summer's morning ; for it 
 comes near to the houses, perhaps in search 
 of food. 
 
 In regard to the amusement of fishing, 
 there are very few waters where the angler 
 can make use of the hook and line > the 
 rivers being more like seas, and generally 
 shallow for some distance from the banks, 
 which renders a boat necessary. 
 
Jill 
 
 SECTION XIII. 
 The several Kinds of Fish sold in the Markets. 
 
 SOME fish are very numerous in America. 
 Those brought to most of the markets arc 
 chiefly fresh-water fish. The American 
 fish-markets are, therefore, not so well sup- 
 plied as those in England. The Baltimore 
 market consists of rock ; perch, white and 
 yellow (the white perch very fine, and 
 superior to any I ever saw in this country) ; 
 eels similar to ours, but not equal in flavour; 
 but, from the number of snakes which are 
 found in the rivers, some people do not 
 like to eat the eels. The rock is large; 
 sometimes weighing sixty pounds, but gene- 
 rally from three to ten pounds. The shad is 
 a good fish. Herrings are taken in great 
 abundance. The last two sorts are a consi- 
 derable support to the country : they are 
 $alted and kept in barrels j from which they 
 
are afterwards progressively taken to be 
 hung in the smoke-house, or the chimney- 
 corner, for a few days before they are used. 
 The herring-fishery lasts only about 
 fourteen days, at the time when they come 
 to spawn, at the latter end of April and 
 May: and they are so numerous at that 
 time, at the Potowmac and Susquehanna, 
 which are the chief rivers for herrings and 
 shads, that while I was dining with 
 Colonel Lyles, of Broad- Creek, near Alex- 
 andria, at his fish-house, where they were 
 fishing with their nets, or seine, they 
 took about ten thousand at a draught. I 
 thought that a prodigious quantity : but he 
 told me, that, the season before, he took 
 one hundred and fifty thousand at a draught, 
 and that he covered twenty acres of land 
 with herrings the year before. There are 
 great numbers of waggons from many 
 distant parts, to buy the herrings and shads. 
 The price of herrings is from seven shillings 
 and six pence to eleven shillings per thou- 
 sand, and of shads thirty shillings per thou- 
 
313 
 
 sand: when cured, the herrings sell for thir* 
 ty, and shads for forty, shillings per barrel. 
 Herrings are the principal food for thou- 
 sands of the inhabitants, with Indian corn 
 differently prepared : their drink being at 
 dinner as well as all other times tea, coffee, 
 or water. The Colonel told me that fish- 
 ing, although I thought it so productive, 
 was frequently a losing business ; as the 
 expence of nets, and the number of men 
 employed, if they were not successful, 
 caused great loss. The tide prevents them 
 drawing the nets some part of the day. 
 
 There is a fish called sheep's head, reck- 
 oned very fine. I never saw any of them, 
 and therefore conclude that they are scarce ; 
 as I was in the habits of dining at the best 
 public and private tables, and repeatedly en- 
 quired for it in the market. 
 
 There is the terrapin (or land-tortoise), 
 weighing about one pound and a half, which 
 is eaten generally at suppers, in taverns, &c. 
 When dressed, the charge is two shillings. 
 I was tempted to taste of it twice : I thought 
 
3U 
 
 k good. The appearance is as disagreeable 
 as that of an English toad : and as there are 
 no toads in America, it may be considered 
 as the toad. These creatures are found on 
 land. What makes me allude to the toad is, 
 that I put a terrapin in a dunghill, and it re- 
 mained there three months ; and when the 
 dung was moved, it was just in the same 
 state as when put in. There is a small tor- 
 toise that lives either on land or in the wa- 
 ter : it lays many eggs on the sands, which 
 are hatched by the heat of the sun. 
 Whether it proceeds from necessity or 
 curiosity that the Americans pay so little 
 regard to the quality of their food, I cannot 
 tell j but I scarcely know any creature, ex- 
 cept snakes and foxes, that is not eaten when 
 caught. The terrapin is sold in Philadel- 
 phia, in the same manner as oysters, in 
 wheel-barrows. 
 
 There are great numbers of oysters, 
 which are in general very large, and hang 
 together from two to six. They are not 
 salt, but watery 3 therefore to me extreme- 
 
ly disagreeable. This sort is generally 
 brought into the tavern-yards by cart-loads, 
 and thrown down like dung. The shell is 
 very thick, and is burnt for lime. One 
 sort, which they call Blue-Point oysters, is 
 very good, and esteemed by some English- 
 men superior to any they ever tasted. 
 These are chiefly to be had at New York 
 and Philadelphia : at the latter place, there 
 are two taverns, which, I am told, buy all 
 the oysters that come there, therefore they 
 are scarce. I never saw any cockles. 
 
 There are soft crabs, which are reckoned 
 great dainties. Some have a hard shell ; 
 and I think them good, though rather 
 watery, and of smaller size than the crabs 
 in England. This fish is found near 
 Annapolis, and is not so plentiful or good 
 in any other part I ever heard of. 
 
 There are many small fishes in those 
 markets, not worth noticing cat-fish, cro- 
 cus-fish, &c. Those above mentioned arc 
 what may be termed neither salt nor fresh- 
 water fish, being a little of both. 
 
316 
 
 At New- York, there are salmon, cod-fish, 
 lobsters, clams (by some called cockles), &c. 
 but not in plenty. Cod when brought to 
 Baltimore, generally sold at half a dollar per 
 pound. I am told there are shrimps and 
 prawns. These, which must be termed salt- 
 water fish, extend, in general, not further to 
 the south of America than Philadelphia: and 
 so scarce are they there, except the cod, that 
 I have heard two of the inhabitants disagree 
 about the shape and size of them : the peo- 
 ple of New-York, too, are so far from hav- 
 ing a great plenty of them, that they are not 
 able to give any account of the flavour of a 
 shrimp or prawn. I am of opinion that few 
 Americans ever saw either : for I have been 
 in company when two gentlemen have dis- 
 puted, whether they were really the one or 
 the other. Some say they resemble our 
 cray-fish, or the river-lobster. Those who 
 maintain that opinion have been in England, 
 and have seen our shrimps and prawns. In 
 the number of fishes, I would wish the 
 reader to observe that I never saw the 
 
317 
 
 Sneep's-head fish, the salmon, the shrimp, 
 or the prawn. 
 
 I had forgotten the mackarel, which I 
 have eaten ; they are larger than ours, and 
 equally good. There are also pike, very 
 much like those of England. 
 
 The lobsters that I saw resemble those 
 in England, both in flavour and size : but 
 I am told they have them much larger, so 
 as to weigh from thirty to sixty pounds. 
 
 The fish I ate in America were in general 
 of a loose watery quality : and, as it is not 
 customary there to have fish-sauce, I did not 
 think them at all comparable to our English 
 fish. Those which are fried are eaten with- 
 out any thing but the grease they are fried 
 in, generally bacon : the boiled fish is 
 commonly eaten with drawn butter. 
 
 There are no fish-ponds, nor do I appre- 
 hend that fish would live In stagnant water 
 in America : it would be so hot in the 
 summer months ; and in winter, the ice 
 would be so thick, that they would want air. 
 I made a pond for my horses and cattle to 
 
318 
 
 drink at ; but in the hot weather they 
 would not touch it. 
 
 From the different authors I read before I 
 went to America, I thought the country- 
 abounded with the comforts of life in every 
 part : but, on the contrary, I found they are 
 much dispersed, and not to be had even for 
 money. You cannot command them, were 
 they more plentiful than they really are : 
 because, from the great extent of country, 
 they could not be procured in the same 
 convenient manner experienced in most 
 parts of England ; where every old woman, 
 if she has the money, can have a penny- 
 worth of shrimps ; but this advantage it is 
 not possible to enjoy in America. The 
 climate is in the extreme (hot for eight 
 or nine months, and frost during the re- 
 mainder) ; in the hot months, fish cannot 
 be conveyed to any great distance, except 
 in ice ; which increases the expence, and 
 renders the carriage heavy. The ice-house 
 is the least part of the business : the getting 
 the ice, and storing thirteen hundred cubic 
 
319 
 
 feet of it, is very expensive. A fanner 
 may lead a great deal of dung in an equal 
 portion of time, and to more advantage. 
 It is to be observed, that a man who lives 
 at New- York, or Philadelphia, never sees a 
 crab-fish ; while an inhabitant of Annapolis 
 remains equally unacquainted with a sal- 
 mon, or perhaps a cod-fish. I firmly believe 
 for the reasons I have just given that, 
 where there is a single person in those parts 
 who has seen one of those species of fish, 
 there are thousands who never saw either: 
 but salt herrings and some few shads are 
 extended over the whole country. 
 
 END OF PART I, 
 
 X 15 
 
: 
 

- 
 
 
 > \ N \ N N \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ 
 
 \\ \\ \ \ \ \ OO 
 
 \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \\ 
 \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \\\ N 
 
 \\\\y$o^ 
 
 cSo^WQW 
 
 N\\\\\\\\\ 
 
 QVVS ' \\V \^\ 
 
 \ \ \ \ KXXX < \ 
 vxVvvvs < \\\\\N 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 \ >V X 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 , 
 
 / / 
 
 - x 
 
 
 
 ' 
 / / / / / 
 
 
 
 
 ' / / / / / / / / /