western parts of the country (when not too moist) of wheat and all other kinds of grain, and of every kind of fruit suited to the climate. Maize, or Indian corn, grows well, even on the wet grounds, where this soil exists.

Clayey soils are more rarely found, and are also very productive, especially when manured. A rich loam, varying towords clay, begins at Guilford and Branford, in Connecticut, and spreads through the whole breadth of that state, terminating in West Springfield. The same soil prevails also in Salisbury and Sharon, and covers about one quarter of the western half of Connecticut. This soil, wherever it exists, is favourable to every kind of cultivation, and is surpassed in goodness by no land in this country.

Sand prevails very commonly on the plains, and abounds in the south eastern part of Massachusetts, in the old colony of Plymouth. The yellow pine plains are commonly a mixture of sand and gravel; are light and warm, and friendly to every production which does not demand a richer soil. The white pine plains are usually covered with loam, as are some of the yellow pine plains, and are not unfrequently fertile. The vallies, almost without exception, are a rich mould, and friendly to every growth of the climate.

The intervals, which border the various streams, are usually lands formed by earth deposited by the floods, (or, as they are called, freshets) in the spring, and are of the richest quality. Marshes, except of trifling extent, are rare. The most considerable are around New Haven, and along the eastern coast of Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

The principal rivers of New England are the Schoduc, Penobscot, Kennebec, Amariscoggin, Saco, Piscataqua, Merrimack, Parkers, Charles, Taunton, Providence, Thames, Connecticut, Hooestonnuc, or Stratford, Onion, La Moille, and Missiscoui. Penobscot, Kennebec, Merrimack and Connec ticut are the largest.

Innumerable smaller rivers divide the country in every direction, enrich the soil, adorn the landscape, and furnish mill seats to almost every village. Windmills are erected in very few places. The principal rivers will be described under their proper heads.

The principal lakes are Champlain and Memphremagog, lying partly in Vermont and partly in New York; Winni piseogee and Umbagog, in New Hampshire; Sebago, Moosehead, Willeguenguagun, and Chilmacook, or Grand Lake,

in Maine. Small lakes, commonly called ponds, of every size, are scattered throughout the country. Springs and small brooks water almost every farm.

Harbours abound in Maine and Massachusetts. The most useful ones, at present, are those of Machias, Frenchman's Bay, Wiscasset, Portland, and Wells, in Maine; Piscataqua, in New Hampshire; Newburyport, Salem, Marblehead, Boston, Province Town, and New Bedford, in Massachusetts proper; Newport, Bristol, and Providence, in Rhode Island; and New London, New Haven, and Black Rock in Fairfield, in Connecticut. Burlington Bay is the most considerable harbour in Lake Champlain, on the Vermont shore.

The produce of the fields in New England is of every kind suited to the climate. In the western half, and in various parts of the eastern, wheat, before the ravages of the Hessian fly, grew abundantly; but that insect has not a little discouraged the culture of this grain. Indian corn is a most abundant and useful grain, furnishing a very healthful and pleasing food to the inhabitants, and yielding also the best means of fattening their numerous herds of cattle and swine. The kind, frequently called sweet corn, is perhaps the most delicious of all culinary vegetables, if eaten young, and one of the most salubrious. The juice of the corn stalk yields a rich molasses, and a spirit not inferior to that of the sugar cane. No cultivated vegetable makes so noble an appearance in the field. Fruits of every kind, which suit a temperate climate, abound, or may be easily made to abound here. The heat of the summer brings to high perfection the peach, apricot, and nectarine. The orchards of apple trees cover a considerable part of the whole country, except the new settlements. Cider is the common drink of the inhabitants of ever class, and may often be obtained in the interior country by paying for the labour of gathering the apples, and making the cider. Pears, plums, cherries, currants, gooseberries, whortleberries, blackberries, &c. abound. Perry is made in some parts of the country, but not in great quantities. Butternuts, shagbarks, and various other fruits of the different species of the hickory and hazle nuts, are plentifully furnish ed by the southern half of New England. Madeira nuts and black walnuts are rarely cultivated, although the last grow very easily and rapidly. Hortuline productions are also abundant, of every kind found in this climate, and grow with very little care or culture. Gardening is much improved, and still

advancing; many good gardens are seen in almost every quarter of New England. But the most important production of New England is grass. This not only adorns the face of the country, with a beauty unrivalled in the new world, but also furnishes more wealth and property to its inhabitants, than any other kind of vegetation. A farm of two hundred acres of the best grazing land, is worth, to the occupier, as much as a farm of three hundred acres of the best tillage land. The reason is obvious. Far less labour is necessary to gather the produce and convey it to market.

The beef and pork of New England are abundant and excellent, and feed the inhabitants of many other countries. The mutton is also exquisite, when well fed, and of the proper age; but it must be confessed, that, except in a part of the eastern half of this country, it is very often brought to market too young and indifferently fed, to the injury of both the farmer and the consumer. The lamb is universally fine, but is most excellent in the states of New Hampshire and Vermont; and particularly in the parts of these states which border on Connecticut river. A great discouragement to the raising of sheep, exists in a kind of enclosure which is extensive, the stone wall: over this wall sheep pass with great ease, and cannot, without much difficulty and labour, be prevented from intruding into all the parts of a farm, wherever this kind of fence is in use. This evil, which is not a small one, will, however, be probably removed by increasing the new breed of sheep, called the Otter breed. These sheep, which, it is said, began in an extraordinary manner, at Mendon, in Massachusetts (of which a sufficiently correct account to be inserted here has not been received,) have legs somewhat resembling those of a hare; and while they are not inferior to the common breed, in flesh or wool, are unable to climb any fence; a circumstance which, in New England, confers on them a peculiar value. The wool of the New England sheep is of a good staple, and may be improved, (as it often has been by attentive farmers) to a high, but indefinite degree. The best wool, and the best mutton also are furnished by short and sweet pastures, and in dry seasons.

The veal of New England is extremely rich and fine when well fed, as it is to a great extent.

Butter and cheese, in this country, are made in vast quantities, and of various goodness. The butter is very generally excellent, but is still very commonly rendered sensibly worse

in the firkin by the imperfect manner in which it is prepared. A great quantity of ordinary cheese is shipped yearly, to the disadvantage of both the maker and the merchant. There is also a great quantity of cheese of a superior quality made throughout the country. The dairies in Pomfret and Brooklyn, and a few of the neighbouring towns in the eastern part of Connecticut, are probably more generally of the first class than in any other quarter.

Of the forests of New England, and not improbably of the world, the white pine is the first ornament; the greatest diameter of this extraordinary tree does not exceed six feet, but its height, in some instances, exceeds two hundred and sixty. This vast stem is cften exactly straight, and tapering, and without a limb, to the height of more than one hundred and fifty feet. The colour and form of the foliage are exquisite; and the whole crown is noble beyond any thing of this kind, and perfectly suited to the stem which it adorns. The murmurs of the wind in a grove of white pines, is one of the first poetical objects in the field of nature. This tree is of vast

importance for building. The white oak of New England is a noble and most useful tree. It is less enduring than the live or the English oak; but the early decay of ships, built of the white oak, so generally complained of, is less owing to the nature of the tree, than to the haste and carelessness of the builders. When the timber has been well selected and seasoned, ships formed of this material, have come near to the age of those built of the English oak. The chesnut is also of incalculable importance as a material in the construction of buildings, and for fencing. A fence composed of good rails of this tree, will endure seventy or eighty years. The chesnut is very common throughout the southern half of New England, and is of no small value, on account of the nourishit affords to swine during their growth.

The country likewise abounds in a very great variety of flowering shrubs and plants, many of which are not only beautiful but highly useful.

Population, Character, Amusements, Learning, Religion.

NEW ENGLAND is the most populous part of the United States. It contained, in 1790, 1,009,522 souls, and in 1800, 1,233,011. The great body of these are land-holders and cultivators of the soil. As they possess, in fee simple, the farms which they cultivate, they are naturally all attached to their country; the cultivation of the soil makes them robust and healthy, and enables them to defend it.

New England may, with propriety, be called a nursery of men, whence are annually transplanted into other parts of the United States, thousands of its natives. Vast numbers of them, since the war, have emigrated into the northern parts of New York, into Canada, Kentucky, the Western territory, and Georgia; and indeed into every state, and every town of note in the Union.

The inhabitants of New England are almost universally of English descent; and it is owing to this circunstance, and to the great and general attention that has been paid to education, that the English language has been preserved among them so free from corruption.

The New Englanders are generally tall, stout, and well built. Their education, laws, and situation serve to inspire them with high notions of liberty. Their jealousy is awakened at the first motion toward an invasion of their rights. They are indeed often jealous to excess; a circumstance which is a fruitful source of imaginary grievances, and of groundless suspicions and complaints against government. But these ebullitious of jealousy, though censurable, and productive of some political evils, shew that the essence of true liberty exists in New England; for watchfulness is a guardian of liberty, and a characteristic of freemen.

A chief foundation of freedom in the New England States, is a law by which intestate estates descend to all the children, or other heirs, in equal proportions. In consequence of these laws, the people of New England enjoy an equality of condition unknown in any other part of the world; and it is in this way that the people have preserved that happy mediocrity among themselves, which, by inducing ecopomy and industry, removes from them temptations to lux