Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/155

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wasted on them." I saw his herd of swine, 100 in number; some fat, others only half fat, all fed in clover only, and generally fat enough for market in the autumn, but never fit for his own use; corn being necessary to make them firm and fit for smoking into hams. This herd seems now just fat enough for London porkers; the citizens not desiring it thoroughly fat. Viewed and examined the threshing floor, where 50 bushels a day of wheat are trodden out by five or six oxen, and a horse amongst them, and three or four men to brush them up and shake off the straw, and keep on a supply of fresh grain. The men drink, and "muzzle not the ox which treadeth out the corn."

Both man and beast seem to know and do their {144} business well. Mr. Worsley keeps five male negroes all the year round, and in harvest five extra hands, a fortnight only. Clover sown in wheat or rye in March, is frequently mown in great abundance after the grain is off: such is the richness of the soil and climate, that two tons an acre are often thus gotten. It runs up high as the waist of a man, and pigs are fattened on it besides; thus are two crops, one of wheat, and the other of clover, both gathered from the same field in the same year. Mr. Worsley says, "I would not have Dr. Dawes's land as a gift, if I must be confined to live on and out of it. Mr. Simpson has saved but little money, not half so much as he ought; on good land, with his industry and skill, he must have been worth ten times as much money as he is." But he is hospitable, and keeps open house to all, and he is never without visitors. When the British burned the city, the ladies fled to him.

Mr. Worsley began with 100l.—borrowed 900l., had some with his wife, and is now worth 30,000 dollars. He was always a working, economical man, spending nothing,