I remained a fortnight at Richmond and Petersburg, making excursions by the railroads, on horseback, or on foot, to plantations of different character, and that were recommended to me, as illustrating the different systems of culture prevailing in Eastern Virginia; and I now proceed to give you a general sketch of this district.

It extends from the base of the Blue Ridge to the sea at Chesapeake Bay, being about 175 miles in width, and the same in length. It has no distinct physical boundary on the north and south; and my observations may be considered applicable—allowing for some modification of climate, owing to difference of latitude—to the greater part of Maryland and the northern and eastern part of North Carolina.

It is so divided by streams, that but a small part of it is more than fifteen miles from water navigable by sea-going vessels or bateaus. Ships of the largest class ascend several of the rivers more than fifty miles, and sloops much further. These rivers and their tributaries also afford, at convenient intervals, excellent milling power.

About one hundred miles from, and parallel to, the shore, but with frequent irregular spurs, a granite steppe, or ledge. subdivides the district—the country below it being alluvial, generally level, and frequently low and marshy. In geological phrase, the upper region is primary. the low country of tertiary formation. The rivers are subject to the influence of tides up to this ledge. which occasions “rapids” in them, precluding further ascent of vessels from the sea. There is a general tendency of descent in a southeasterly direction from the Blue Ridge to the shore; but this is more rapid, and the surface is much more undulating and varied above than below the ledge.

In the tide-water region the summers are long and debilitating, though the extremes of heat are no greater than at New-York—the mercury seldom, if ever, rising to 100°F. As you ascend towards the mountains the summer is [128] shorter, and in their immediate vicinity, or in what is known as the piedmont country, the climate is peculiarly healthful and invigorating.

Most of the plants of the temperate zone flourish—a few fruits and agricultural productions slightly changing the character they have in New-York. It is more favorable to Indian corn than the climate of New-York, less so to oats, which grain has a peculiar adaptability to flourish and increase in weight in regions of short summers and bleak surfaces. Apples, of varieties that mature in February in New-York, here ripen on the tree. There were formerly apples that were probably seedlings of the district that ripened late in the winter; but with the characteristic habit of the people they have been allowed to become nearly or quite extinct. Winter apples, therefore, are extensively imported from the North.

The climate would permit the culture of many valuable plants which cannot exist at New-York, and the indigenous productions of the soil are much more varied. But little advantage has, however, been taken of this opportunity; the productions of agriculture being less-varied in general than in the free states. The difficulty of introducing anything new into the routine of labor where slaves are employed, is the first reason of this.

Near Norfolk, the culture of semi-tropical vegetables for the Northern markets has commenced. It is mainly a free-labor enterprise. In the southern part, for about fifty miles north from the south line of Virginia, cotton is cultivated on many plantations, not however to any great extent for other than the local demand. By some attention to varieties, and a gradual improvement under careful culture, it would be profitably extended much further, if the demand for it should continue as at present.

Rice is cultivated by the negroes in the swamps for their own use and for sale, but nowhere is any attention paid to it by the planters. Under a small proprietory, enough would be raised for the home demand and its consumption be increased.

The fig and the olive can be grown anywhere with cotton. The fig is cultivated in gardens in Norfolk, and single trees of considerable age may be found on exposed sites in all the southern half of the district. The olive is not cultivated or known here at all. There is no grape culture or wine making, except experimentally. There is a reasonable prospect that it might be a successful business.

An experimental plantation in the vicinity of Washington, in which the fitness of the climate to the culture of various foreign agricultural productions should be tested, would add greatly to the wealth and commercial independence of the country if there were sufficient enterprise in the people of this district to make use of the results.

The soil of both the upper and lower regions is greatly varied, and often every description will be found on a single small farm. The local names made use of to distinguish the different varieties (“mulatto,” “chinquapin,” &c.) have reference only to the color of the surface. In the lower region, there [129] is a large proportion of poor sandy land, but on the border of the rivers, the soil is in every respect of excellent quality and suitable to the culture of all the most valuable agricultural productions. In the upper region, a clayey soil of good natural quality, predominates, though it is often covered with sand. This sandy surface soil varies in texture and quality, but most generally is so thin where it is poor, that it can be broken through and clay mingled with it by a four-horse plow.

Beds of fossil sea-shells underlay many counties of the lower region, the application of which to the surface-soil is of very great advantage. Of this improvement I shall again speak.

The earlier settlers of Virginia naturally located themselves on the banks of the broad navigable streams, and first brought the rich meadows on their borders into cultivation. I think there is no evidence that these meadows have declined in productive capacity from that time to this. A gradual, slight deepening of the tillage, with the addition, in late years, of a little lime to the soil, to hasten and make more complete the process of disintegration and decomposition, has sufficed to supply abundant material for the crops removed from it during nearly two centuries.

The great profits of the Tobacco growing, on new soils, however, when this plant became the staple of the Colony, as it soon did, led to the rapid removal of the natural forests of oak, beech, and other deciduous trees, on the naturally poor. soils of the upland. As fast as the newly cleared land failed to make a profitable return under the careless culture of the exhausting tobacco, it was given up and new breadths of the forest cleared.

In the “old field,” in place of the former growth of deciduous trees, the wronged soil sent up a thick growth of pines, which were eventually, when all the aboriginal forest within convenient reach had been gone over, themselves felled and burned on the ground, and the land was again subjected to a course of tobacco. Thus the rotation was first, tobacco; second, pine, until after a few generations the tobacco crop became so light that it ceased to be profitably cultivated. Then the planter, if he had sufficient enterprise, would gather together his flocks and herds of African slaves and European “bondsmen or redemptioners;” and settle himself again upon some previously unoccupied tract, fell the oaks, and put it through the same process, pine succeeding tobacco, and tobacco, pine.

Thus gradually the plantations were advanced across all the light soils of the lower region, and into the stiffer and better soils above the rapids of the rivers, until at length these became almost exclusively dovoted to the tobacco culture, and so continue to the present day, little or no tobacco being cultivated in the tide-water district, while it continues the staple of most of the counties above.

It would be naturally supposed that after a time the light lands would sufficiently recover to tempt their owners again to resume tobacco planting, and you would certainly see no reason why it should not prevail on the river- [130] meadows, the soils of which are entirely unexhausted, and admirably adapted to support its heavy demands. The reason given is that they are more profitably employed in bearing corn and wheat. But knowing that soils of a similar description in the more Northern States, equally well adapted to wheat and corn, have lately increased in value from its having been discovered that tobacco could be matured upon them, it is evident that this is not a sufficient explanation.

A great depression of the price of tobacco occurred at the period of our second war with England, owing to the interruption of commerce, and was sustained by the continued political agitations in Europe and the subsequent financial distress in our own country up to a late period. At this time, tobacco, being an article of compact value and cheaply transported, could still be much more profitably raised and brought to market from the back country than corn and wheat, there being then no facilities of communication from these districts superior to horse draft over the rudest roads, while crops raised on the river bank could be readily and cheaply transported by shipping to any desired market. Thus tobacco was entirely lost as a crop below the rapids that obstructed a higher navigation, the possessors of the land only retaining a holy horror of it as the scourge that had rendered the greater part of the land within their reach utterly valueless for the general purposes of husbandry.

The reason the culture is not resumed at the present day, when tobacco is again high and wheat low (and when tobacco is taking the place of corn crops on land no better and in climate much less adapted to it than on the soils of the river intervals) is probably this. The cultivation and curing, sorting, packing, &c., of tobacco, are processes entirely different from any the laborers of the present day in the low country are familiar with, and slave labor is so exceedingly unintelligent and prejudiced that it is next to impossible to introduce any new process requiring skill or the use of unaccustomed instruments where it is employed.

The utter poverty of the soil, and the sorry, disgraceful, bankrupt condition of the proprietors of it in lower Virginia, at the period in which tobacco culture became no longer profitable, can only be compared to the misery of a sot who is deprived of the means of obtaining his accustomed stimulus. Up to this period the Virginia proprietors had been a race of lords. Of the mode of life and the character of the agriculture then prevailing, a Virginian writer of our day thus gives a picture:

No man of wealth, or with a moderate estate, thought of attending personally to his farming. Every detail of management was entrusted to the overseers, who rarely were stimulated by even the general superintendence and control of their employers. Overseers’ wages were generally paid in a certain share or proportion of the crops they made. Thus, they had a direct interest in drawing from the land and labor as much as possible during the current year of their engagement; and none whatever in preserving or increasing the productive power of the land for later times. It came to be recognised as a maxim of agricultural [131] morals, that “it was not just for a proprietor to interfere with and change his overseer’s designed direction of the labors of the farm, inasmuch as any abstraction from immediate product, for the sake of future improvement, operated to lessen the overseer’s profits for the present year.” This doctrine accorded so well with the disposition of every indolent, careless, and wasteful proprietor, then it is no wonder that it came to be generally received, and conformed to in practice.

The more wealthy proprietors, having no occupation of industry, spent their time mostly in seeking pleasure. Visits to each other were frequent and protracted. It was rare that anyone of this class was without some company, either at home or abroad. Besides such exercises of reciprocal hospitality, every idle or homeless “gentleman” of the whole country found in every mansion a comfortable sojourning place, and, at least the outward show, if not the reality, of welcome, so long as he might choose to stay. Of course, visits from such persons were ordinary occurrences—and were sometimes protracted for weeks or months. That this particular neighborhood was not “eaten out” by this class of genteel and honorable vagrants and spongers, was not because of their deficiency of numbers, or of active use of their facilities-but because they had like privileges in every part of the country. This race, fortunately, is now nearly extinct. But many such individuals are still remembered, who for man y years of their adult life, and some for their whole life, pursued no other business, and had no other means of support, except visiting their friends. Of course they counted their friends by hundreds.

The wealthier proprietors were not only hospitable and kind hosts, but also refined and pleasing companions. Their fathers’ wealth had served to give to them education and manners of good society. With many excellent social and moral qualities, their habits of idleness and pleasure-seeking naturally led to the attendant and consequent vices. Social drinking was often carried to excess; and card-playing was sure to be introduced whenever as many neighbors dined together as served to make up a game of 100. Horse-racing was a favorite amusement of all classes; some of the farmers owned and ran race-horses, and nearly all reared horses of the high blood, and at the high cost required for the turf.

How like the “true gentlemen” of Ireland!

But let us not forget in passing that when the time of retribution came, the slaves suffered not—the peasants starved! I have seen the one intimately,and from what] have at present seen of the other, I must declare that the Virginia slave is more happy, more comfortable, in some sense more free; and in better and more manly relation to his masters, than the Irish peasant or the English agricultural laborer is to the “higher classes” of those countries.

I wonder not that the London Times moves against “Uncle Tom.” It has a cut backward which its hundreds of thousands of English readers will not lose. Slavery will not die until the world has humbled itself to learn a lesson from it.

Oh, God! who are we that condemn our brother? No slave ever killed its own offspring in cool calculation of saving money by it, as do English free women. No slave is forced to eat of corruption, as are Irish tenants. No slave freezes to death for want of habitation and fuel, as have men in Boston. No [132] slave reels off into the abyss of God, from want of work that shall bring it food, as do men and women in New-York. Remember that, Mrs. Stowe. Remember that, indignant sympathizers.

Oh, Christian capitalists, free traders in labor, there is somewhat to be built up, as well as somewhat to be abolished before we repose in the millennium.