- formed, not half the land is turned over or downwards.
It seems, (as we say at Somersham) as though it was ploughed with a ram's horn, or the snout of a hog, hungry after grubs and roots.
The mountain land is good, and well stored, and enriched with huge sugar trees, which are tapped every spring, and many cwts. made therefrom; but much of this land is too steep for cattle to climb up it, and the timber is of little or no worth save for the uses of the farm and fire. Mr. {168} Edney has this estate, on lease of 14 years, from Squire Zain, the head man of Wheeling.[43] The rent for the first three years, is 400 dollars; the next three years, 500 dollars; the remaining eight years, 600 dollars. Three years' notice to be given if he wishes, or is wished to leave before the expiration of the lease. The cost of necessary farm-buildings to be deducted from the rent. This land was, this year, bought by Mr. Zain, at 18 dollars an acre, but thought to be worth not above 12 dollars, because received in lieu of a debt. Mr. Edney is, it is thought, cheated; the good opinion of the neighbourhood is against his bargain. "What he will thus expend would have bought a better farm.—The landlord would have been glad of him rent free." The farm, however, is very good, and susceptible of great improvement. Nature has here done all she can, and art little or nothing.
9th.—A miserably wet (and as sailors say) dirty day. I fell sick of Wheeling, imprisoned by a high and almost inaccessible mountain, to the top of which I climbed yesterday. I revisited Mr. Edney, who has wrangled and parted with his father-in-law, once my hospitable host at the Isle of Wight. He with his family have settled down
