Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 9).djvu/260

 road law can exist long without being modified, as popular opinion regulates every thing of the kind here.

On the 29th of June, wheat harvest was commenced on several farms to the west of Madison. Oats, at that time, were headed out and luxuriant; but the heat of the climate is uniformly unfavourable to the ripening of this kind of crop. Its weight, relative to measure, is usually about half of that of good grain in the better parts of Britain. The growth of Indian corn is this season luxuriant. The only injury it has suffered arises from squirrels that gathered a considerable quantity of the seed in many fields. Squirrels are not so excessively numerous in the uninhabited woods as in the vicinity of cultivated fields. Potatoes are small and of a bad {228} quality. At Jeffersonville, so early as the 29th of May last, new potatoes were in the market. Turnips (so far as I have observed) do not grow to a large size, nor are they raised in large quantities. Flax, in every field that I have seen, was a short crop, with strong stems, and tops too much forked. Probably thicker sowing would improve its quality. Hemp grows with great luxuriance. The orchards are abundantly productive, and yield apples of the largest size; but little care is taken in selecting or ingrafting from varieties of the best flavour. Small crab apples are the most acid, and produce the finest cider. Pears are scarcely to be seen. Peaches of the best and worst qualities are to be met with. The trees bear on the third summer after the seed is sown, and although no attention is paid to the rearing them, the fruit is excessively plentiful, and is sometimes sold at twenty-five cents (1s. 1-1/2d. English) per bushel. Last year I weighed a peach, and found its weight to be eleven ounces, and I observed in a newspaper about the same time, an account of one of