Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/251

 able to sell them at more than four dollars a cwt.; he could not afford to make pork at that price. No pigs fat this year at mast, only passable pork; but when quite fat they must have corn for two or three weeks to harden them, though they get no fatter, or else the bacon would drip all summer, and when boiled, the fat become oil and run out into the water. He has seventeen acres of corn; a bad crop, not enough for his own use. Few farmers are ever able to hire labourers, though he thinks it would answer if they could; still it is best to do all the work by one's-self or family.

I went to turn the grindstone for J. Ingle's carpenter, at Mr. Maidlow's, one mile and a half {260} off. Went over his fine farm, that is to be. I think it is the best I have seen in this settlement. On it I saw a lick of singular size, extending over nearly half an acre of land, all excavated three feet, that is to say, licked away, and eaten, by buffaloes, deer, and other wild animals. It has the appearance of a large pond dried. The earth is soft, salt, and sulphurous, and they still resort to it. Mr. Maidlow thinks that Cobbett is much nearer the truth than Birkbeck, in his account of the west. Had he now the chance of choosing, he would purchase, in the east, improvements at eighteen dollars an acre, like the farm of Mr. Long, as he finds that making improvements in the west costs much money. He believes Birkbeck is spending money fast. He does not think that capital employed in farming here will answer, or that cultivation will pay, if done by hired labour. Out of 900 acres, (all he intends buying) he means to cultivate and graze only about 100 acres; no more than they can manage of themselves. He does not expect to increase his capital, but by the increase in value of land. He means to build a mill, and plant a