Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century Ameri by J. Hecor St. John de Crèvecoeur

Author:J. Hecor St. John de Crèvecoeur [St. John de Crèvecoeur, J. Hecor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 1981-12-16T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER IV

THOUGHTS OF AN AMERICAN FARMER ON VARIOUS RURAL SUBJECTS

I. FARM LIFE

I am perfectly sensible of the superiority of your agriculture. England surpasses all the world for the perfection of mechanism and the peculiar excellence with which all its tools and implements are finished. We are but children and they [the English] our parents. The immense difference, therefore, ought not to make us blush. We have the same blood in our veins. In time we shall arrive likewise at perfection. All the praises we at present deserve ought to be bestowed on that strength, fortitude, and perseverance which have been requisite to clear so many fields, to drain so many swamps. Great parts of the colony of Massachusetts and Connecticut have cost more in clearing than the land was worth. The native industry of the English is nowhere more manifest than in the settlement and cultivation of those two provinces. They had every species of difficulty to struggle with: climate, stubbornness of soil, amazing trees, stones, etc. And yet, now some parts of these countries, I am informed, are not inferior to the best cultivated spots in Europe, considering the short space of time in which these great works have been accomplished.

However inferior in all these rural respects we are to England, yet you seem to confess with pleasure the surprise you felt in travelling from New Hampshire to this place. Everywhere, you saw good houses, well-fenced fields, ample barns, large orchards. Everywhere, you saw the people busy either at home or on their farms. Everywhere they seemed contented and happy. You no sooner quitted the sight of an orchard but another presented itself to your view. Everywhere tolerable roads, pretty towns, good bridges forced you to ask yourself: When is it that these people have had time and abilities to perform so many labours? Everywhere you inform me that you met with the most cordial hospitality. Tell me in what part of Europe you could have travelled three hundred and sixty miles for four dollars? I feel proud and happy that the various accounts I gave you of this part of America did not fall short of what you have experienced. The people of New England had been represented to you in a strange light, yet I know no province which is so justly entitled to the respect of the world on many accounts. They are the true and unmixed descendants of Englishmen, and surely there is no country in America where an Englishman ought to travel with more pleasure. Here he may find the names of almost all the towns in his country and those of many families with which he is acquainted.

Some people, without knowing why, look with disdain on their democratic government. They do not consider that this was the very rule which prevailed in England when they left it and that nothing more than the blessings it confers could possibly have animated these people and urged them on to undertake such labours. Slaves may cultivate the smooth and fertile plains of the South.

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