youth of gentle manners, presented me segars of his own growth and making, better than the Spanish.
"For the appropriation of land," said the judge, "I prefer the western country; but for information and education, the eastern states." He complains greatly of the choice of land made here by {320} the British. He wonders they could not better inform themselves, because when they came, there was plenty of good land to be had, if not in bodies, yet in sections, or half-sections. "The soil," said he, "is as thin as a clapboard, or a deer-skin. I would not give one of my quarter-sections for all the neighbourhood of the barrens. They must have been deceived by speculators. But all the English must herd together." He deems Birkbeck's land much better; it is good land. "If the land, settled on by the deceived British, and thus near the Ohio, had been good, it would have been entered long ago. I gave my opinion, as above, to Hornbrook, the father of the settlement, whom it offended. I did not intend it; I was only giving him a friendly opinion, the result of my long experience in this state; but I smoothed him over a little, and said, "the soil would, though thin, deepen and improve."
20th.—This day four acres of woodland, (not thickly wooded) were put out to clear in the following manner, at ten dollars an acre, half in cash, half in store goods. All the wood to be cut down and burnt, save what is wanted for fencing the land with rails in the worm fashion, which rails they are to make and plant, and to root up the small roots, which is called grubbing, so as to render the land fit for the plough; and the grubbings are to be burnt. Thus land at twelve dollars an acre is bought and made fit for the plough.
{321} I visited Mr. Canson and his agreeable wife, both
