Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/242

 from the bottom of the stalk begin to wither, and successively those from the top. In proportion as they dry up they are carried away carefully, and reserved as a winter sustenance for horses, which prefer that kind of forage to the best hay.

In estates of the first class, that yield annually, Indian corn grows from ten to twelve feet high, and produces, in a common year, forty to fifty English bushels per acre, and sixty to seventy-five in abundant years. Some have been known, the second and third year after the land has been cleared, to yield a hundred. The bushel, weighing about fifty to fifty-five pounds, never sells for more than a {180} quarter of a dollar, and sometimes does not bring half the money.

The species of corn that they cultivate is long and flat in point of shape, and generally of a deep yellow. The time of harvest is toward the end of September. A single individual may cultivate eight or ten acres of it. The culture of corn is one of the most important of the country; much more, however, with regard to exportation than as an object of consumption. The county of Fayette, of which Lexinton is the chief town, and the surrounding counties, are those that supply the most. Good estates produce from twenty-five to thirty bushels per acre, weighing about sixty pounds, although they never manure the ground, nor till it more than once.

The harvest is made in the commencement of July. The corn is cut with a sickle, and threshed the same as in other parts of Europe. The corn is of a beautiful colour, and I am convinced, through the excellence of the soil, that the flour will be of a superior quality to that of Philadelphia, which, as it is well known, surpasses in whiteness the best that grows in France.