Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/174

8th.—I crossed the Ohio with Mr. Edney, to view and examine his farm, on mountainous banks, down to the margin of the river. It consists of 500 acres, hill and dale, or river-bottom and mountain land, the best and richest in the state of Ohio, seven miles from Wheeling and other good markets. Two hundred acres have been cleared and cultivated twenty years. Two hundred and fifty are in wood, mountain land, too high and steep for the plough, and which, if ploughed, would all wash away. Eighty acres are in pasture, natural pasture, the richest, finest, and most luxuriant I ever saw. So thick and matted is it, with fine natural grass and white clover, that it is with difficulty I can force my foot through it to the soil, which is a sandy loam, and has been crowded with cattle all this summer, the dryest ever remembered. But all river-bottoms are cool, rich, and inexhaustible. The arable {167} land has been cropped fifteen years successively, yet still the wheat-stubble and corn-stalks are strong, thick, and rank, and the land on which the wheat grew is well laid down, or seeded with natural grass and white clover, a smothering plant of both, and all done by the hand of provident nature. So complete is it, that an English farmer would say, "What a fool have you been, thus to waste your grass seeds." It is now, two months after harvest, a complete fattening pasture, and, but for the stubble staring in it, might be mistaken for an old home-stall poisoned with manure, and too rich and rank, or sour, for use, and therefore to be broken up. This bottom land, however, may well be rich, for it has been robbing the mountains from time immemorial. Amongst the corn still standing, although well horse-hoed six weeks ago, are seen rank weeds, tall as the tall corn. The sun makes every inch a hot-bed. Ploughing seems shamefully per-