- ning high up to the breast of a man, but are laid flat by the
rains and their own weight of head and leaf, producing in hay two tons per acre. It seems a highly profitable species of produce; for if depastured, it fattens all the cattle and pigs without corn, before winter. Many sheep cannot be kept in summer. Little mutton or wool is {135} wanted, and were they generally marketable, there is no winter food for sheep. Turnips do not prosper; they cannot be raised so as to attain any size, and if they could, even Swedish turnips, the most hardy of all, would not endure the frosts. All would rot, and the sheep, unless housed and fed, must perish."
26th.—With a large party of ladies and gentlemen I visited the great falls of Potowmac, 15 miles west of Washington. On my way thither I saw no good farms nor farmers, but much land in possession of people, who neither occupy nor wish in anywise to improve it. They farm on a swinish system, and raise from 10 to 15 bushels of Indian corn, and eight to ten bushels of wheat per acre. Poor, indolent farmers! Here I saw plenty of peaches wild, and planted by birds. About the rocky falls of this river all is wild, romantic, savage, and sublime, to a degree beyond my power to describe. Here are pits, or quarries of marble, an infinite supply! When polished, it is beautifully veined; a dark blue grey, red and black. The capital here finds its majestic pillars.
Mr. Birkbeck's letter to emigrants landing in the eastern ports, appeared this day in the city Gazette. It contained little new; only wishing them to examine and judge for themselves between his settlement in Illinois and those in Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.
Mr. Worsley thinks that the west is the best destination for poor industrious farmers, who will {136} there live well
