Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/154

 *sipi, to New Orleans and the eastern parts, as cheaply as I can get mine to Washington, Baltimore, or Philadelphia, for I have to pay half a dollar a barrel for 80 miles only, and the farmers of the west can send it 2,000 miles for six dollars." Mr. Marlow gains nothing by cultivation merely, but by making improvements, and by the encreased value of land, one-third of which he always keeps in wood, or rather uncleared, and deems that part the most valuable.

7th.—I visited and spent the night with Mr. Worsley, a first-rate practical farmer and grazier, late of Lincolnshire. He owns a fine farm, in a Maryland valley, of 350 acres, which 13 years ago he bought at 20 dollars an acre, but which is now worth 60 dollars. It has averaged yearly, exclusive of a good living, a net gain of 600 dollars by cultivation only. He finds 40 miles from a market of no importance, as the carrying is done when men and horses have nothing else to do. He is also paid for the carriage, and brings in return plaster, for which he must otherwise have gone empty; or if he preferred it, he might sell his grain to a neighbouring miller at a city price, only allowing the miller for the carriage to the city:—"My expenses," says {143} he, "on an acre of wheat, amount to 12 dollars, and it has always averaged 22 dollars, or 23 dollars at market, so netting near 100 per cent. I have always 150 acres in grain and corn, 100 in clover, and 100 in wood, the latter of which is worth, to sell, 150 dollars an acre, but that must remain as indispensable to a farm without any green hedges. I consider green clover crops in value equal to grain, when fattening beasts and pigs pays well. This dry year, the four-years old beasts, which cost in, as stores, 35 dollars a-head, will sell out only for the same money; a sad loss. All my time, keep, and labour are