A CRITICAL VISITOR AT MOUNT VERNON
About thirty miles down the river Potomac, a gentleman, of the name of
Grimes, came up to us in his own boat[8]. He had some little time
before shot a man who was going across his plantation; and had been
tried for so doing, but not punished. He came aboard, and behaved very
politely to me: and it being near dinner time, he would have me go
ashore and dine with him: which I did. He gave me some grape-juice to
drink, which he called Port wine, and entertained me with saying he made
it himself: it was not to my taste equal to our Port in England, nor
even strong beer; but a hearty welcome makes everything pleasant, and
this he most cheerfully gave me. He showed me his garden; the produce of
which, he told me, he sold at Alexandria, a distance of thirty miles.
His garden was in disorder: and so was everything else I saw about the
place; except a favourite stallion, which was in very good condition--a
pretty figure of a horse, and of proper size for the road, about fifteen
hands high. He likewise showed me some other horses, brood-mares and
foals, young colts, &c. of rather an useful kind. His cattle were small,
but all much better than the land.
[8] This chapter is taken from _A Tour of America in 1798, 1799, and
1800_, by Richard Parkinson, who has already been several times quoted.
Parkinson had won something of a name in England as a scientific
agriculturist and had published a book called the _Experienced Farmer_.
He negotiated by letter with Washington for the rental of one of the
Mount Vernon farms, and in 1798, without having made any definite
engagement, sailed for the Potomac with a cargo of good horses, cattle
and hogs. His plan for renting Washington's farm fell through, by his
account because it was so poor, and ultimately he settled for a time
near Baltimore, where he underwent such experiences as an opinionated
Englishman with new methods would be likely to meet. Soured by failure,
he returned to England, and published an account of his travels, partly
with the avowed purpose of discouraging emigration to America. His
opinion of the country he summed up thus: "If a man should be so
unfortunate as to have married a wife of a capricious disposition, let
him take her to America, and keep her there three or four years in a
country-place at some distance from a town, and afterwards bring her
back to England; if she do not act with propriety, he may be sure there
is no remedy." I have rearranged his account in such a way as to make it
consecutive, but otherwise it stands as originally published.
He praised the soil very highly. I asked him if he was acquainted with
the land at Mount Vernon. He said he was; and represented it to be rich
land, but not so rich as his. Yet his I thought very poor indeed; for
it was (as is termed in America) _gullied_; which I call broken land.
This effect is produced by the winter's frost and summer's rain, which
cut the land into cavities of from ten feet wide and ten feet deep (and
upwards) in many places; and, added to this, here and there a hole,
which makes it look altogether like marlpits, or stone-quarries, that
have been carried away by those hasty showers in the summer, which no
man who has not seen them in this climate could form any idea of or
believe possible....
In two days after we left this place, we came in sight of Mount Vernon;
but in all the way up the river, I did not see any green fields. The
country had to me a most barren appearance. There were none but
snake-fences; which are rails laid with the ends of one upon another,
from eight to sixteen in number in one length. The surface of the earth
looked like a yellow-washed wall; for it had been a very dry summer; and
there was not any thing that I could see green, except the pine trees in
the woods, and the cedars, which made a truly picturesque view as we
sailed up the Potomac. It is indeed a most beautiful river.
When we arrived at Mount Vernon, I found that General Washington was at
Philadelphia; but his steward[9] had orders from the General to receive
me and my family, with all the horses, cattle, &c. which I had on board.
A boat was, therefore, got ready for landing them; but that could not be
done, as the ship must be cleared out at some port before anything was
moved: so, after looking about a few minutes at Mount Vernon, I returned
to the ship, and we began to make way for Alexandria....
[9] No doubt Anderson, Washington's last manager.
When I had been about seven days at Alexandria, I hired a horse and went
to Mount Vernon, to view my intended farm; of which General Washington
had given me a plan, and a report along with it--the rent being fixed at
eighteen hundred bushels of wheat for twelve hundred acres, or money
according to the price of that grain. I must confess that if he would
have given me the inheritance of the land for that sum, I durst not have
accepted it, especially with the incumbrances upon it; viz. one hundred
seventy slaves young and old, and out of that number only
twenty-seven[10] in a condition to work, as the steward represented to
me. I viewed the whole of the cultivated estate--about three thousand
acres; and afterward dined with Mrs. Washington and the family. Here I
met a Doctor Thornton, who is a very pleasant agreeable man, and his
lady; with a Mr. Peters and his lady, who was a grand-daughter of Mrs.
Washington. Doctor Thornton living at the city of Washington, he gave me
an invitation to visit him there: he was one of the commissioners of
the city.
[10] Most certainly a mistake.
I slept at Mount Vernon, and experienced a very kind and comfortable
reception; but did not like the land at all. I saw no green grass there,
except in the garden: and this was some English grass, appearing to me
to be a sort of couch-grass; it was in drills. There were also six
saintfoin plants, which I found the General valued highly. I viewed the
oats which were not thrashed, and counted the grains upon each head; but
found no stem with more than four grains, and these a very light and bad
quality, such as I had never seen before: the longest straw was of about
twelve inches. The wheat was all thrashed, therefore I could not
ascertain the produce of that: I saw some of the straw, however, and
thought it had been cut and prepared for the cattle in the winter; but I
believe I was mistaken, it being short by nature, and with thrashing out
looked like chaff, or as if chopped with a bad knife. The General had
two thrashing machines, the power given by horses. The clover was very
little in bulk, and like chaff; not more than nine inches long, and the
leaf very much shed from the stalk. By the stubbles on the land I could
not tell which had been wheat, or which had been oats or barley; nor
could I see any clover-roots where the clover had grown. The weather was
hot and dry at that time; it was in December. The whole of the different
fields were covered with either the stalks of weeds, corn-stalks, or
what is called sedge--something like spear-grass upon the poor limestone
in England; and the steward told me nothing would eat it, which is true.
Indeed, he found fault with everything, just like a foreigner; and even
told me many unpleasant tales of the General, so that I began to think
he feared I was coming to take his place. But (God knows!) I would not
choose to accept of it: for he had to superintend four hundred slaves,
and there would be more now. This part of his business especially would
have been painful to me; it is, in fact, a sort of trade of itself.
I had not in all this time seen what we in England call a corn-stack,
nor a dung-hill. There were, indeed, behind the General's barns, two or
three cocks of oats and barley; but such as an English broad-wheeled
waggon would have carried a hundred miles at one time with ease. Neither
had I seen a green plant of any kind: there was some clover of the first
year's sowing: but in riding over the fields I should not have known it
to be clover, although the steward told me it was; only when I came
under a tree I could, by favour of the shade, perceive here and there a
green leaf of clover, but I do not remember seeing a green root. I was
shown no grass-hay of any kind; nor do I believe there was any.
The cattle were very poor and ordinary, and the sheep the same; nor did
I see any thing I liked except the mules, which were very fine ones, and
in good condition. Mr. Gough had made a present to General Washington of
a bull calf. The animal was shown to me when I first landed at Mount
Vernon, and was the first bull I saw in the country. He was large, and
very strong-featured; the largest part was his head, the next his legs.
The General's steward was a Scotchman, and no judge of animals--a better
judge of distilling whiskey.
I saw here a greater number of negroes than I ever saw at one time,
either before or since.
The house is a very decent mansion: not large, and something like a
gentleman's house in England, with gardens and plantations; and is very
prettily situated on the banks of the river Potowmac, with extensive
prospects.... The roads are very bad from Alexandria to Mount Vernon.
The General still continuing at Philadelphia, I could not have the
pleasure of seeing him; therefore I returned to Alexandria.
I returned [to Mount Vernon some weeks later] ... to see General
Washington. I dined with him; and he showed me several presents that had
been sent him, viz. swords, china, and among the rest the key of the
Bastille. I spent a very pleasant day in the house, as the weather was
so severe that there were no farming objects to see, the ground being
covered with snow.
Would General Washington have given me the twelve hundred acres I would
not have accepted it, to have been confined to live in that country; and
to convince the General of the cause of my determination, I was
compelled to treat him with a great deal of frankness. The General, who
had corresponded with Mr. Arthur Young and others on the subject of
English farming and soils, and had been not a little flattered by
different gentlemen from England, seemed at first to be not well
pleased with my conversation; but I gave him some strong proofs of his
mistakes, by making a comparison between the lands in America and those
of England in two respects.
First, in the article of sheep. He supposed himself to have fine sheep,
and a great quantity of them. At the time of my viewing his five farms,
which consisted of about three thousand acres cultivated, he had one
hundred sheep, and those in very poor condition. This was in the month
of November. To show him his mistake in the value and quality of his
land, I compared this with the farm my father occupied, which was less
than six hundred acres. He clipped eleven hundred sheep, though some of
his land was poor and at two shillings and sixpence per acre--the
highest was at twenty shillings; the average weight of the wool was ten
pounds per fleece, and the carcases weighed from eighty to one hundred
twenty pounds each: while in the General's hundred sheep on three
thousand acres, the wool would not weigh on an average more than three
pounds and a half the fleece, and the carcases at forty-eight pounds
each. Secondly, the proportion of the produce in grain was similar. The
General's crops were from two to three[11] bushels of wheat per acre;
and my father's farm, although poor clay soil, gave from twenty to
thirty bushels.
[11] A misstatement, of course.
During this conversation Colonel Lear, aide-de-camp to the General, was
present. When the General left the room, the Colonel told me he had
himself been in England, and had seen Arthur Young (who had been
frequently named by the General in our conversation); and that Mr. Young
having learnt that he was in the mercantile line, and was possessed of
much land, had said he thought he was a great fool to be a merchant and
yet have so much land; the Colonel replied, that if Mr. Young had the
same land to cultivate, it would make a great fool of _him_. The Colonel
did me the honour to say I was the only man he ever knew to treat
General Washington with frankness.
The General's cattle at that time were all in poor condition: except his
mules (bred from American mares), which were very fine, and the Spanish
ass sent to him as a present by the king of Spain. I felt myself much
vexed at an expression used at dinner by Mrs. Washington. When the
General and the company at table were talking about the fine horses and
cattle I had brought from England, Mrs. Washington said, "I am afraid,
Mr. Parkinson, you have brought your fine horses and cattle to a bad
market; I am of opinion that our horses and cattle are good enough for
our land." I thought that if every old woman in the country knew this,
my speculation would answer very ill: as I perfectly agreed with Mrs.
Washington in sentiment; and wondered much, from the poverty of the
land, to see the cattle good as they were.
The General wished me to stay all night; but having some other
engagement, I declined his kind offer. He sent Colonel Lear out after I
had parted with him, to ask me if I wanted any money; which I
gladly accepted.