Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/145

 increase the great superabundant heat which is {131} here felt; for the soil reflects and retains the sun's heat, which rises all night, and makes the common air like the breath of an oven; hence the thermometer falls not, but is stationary night and day in the shade; these things are not so where the earth can be saturated with rain. The plaster of Paris so much talked of does not enrich the soil; it only kills a destructive species of animalcula, and insects which prey on the roots of clover and grain.

The States of New York and Pennsylvania are best for an English farmer of any condition, who cannot live in England; but, if he can by any honest means make both ends meet, he ought to stay at home, or if he will emigrate, let it not be to the western wilderness of this country, nor to any of the southern states.

23rd.—In a long conversation with several emigrants, we decided that farms, whether small or great, near cities and good towns in the eastern states, are always to be preferred in point of interest to any in the wilderness or elsewhere. For in them, society is comparatively good, and markets for produce sure in all years, for all that can be raised; whereas in the west there is no market, except when England and Europe, (generally at peace with America,) are short of grain. No home market can be expected until they become thickly populated. The west is only fit for emigrants of very small means, and large working {132} families; all workers. Those who, like Dr. Dawes, come here to know that their evils at home were comparatively imaginary and unreal, cannot return too soon.

I visited and inspected the Doctor's farm, five miles from the city, consisting of 400 acres all in a wild, neglected, exhausted, and abandoned condition, but suscep