mmense market for
the productions and manufactures of the upper Valley. Indirectly, the
Louisiana sugar business is a source of profit to the farmer of Illinois
and Missouri. Pork, beef, corn, corn-meal, flour, potatoes, butter, hay,
&c. in vast quantities, go to supply these plantations. In laying in
their stores, the sugar planters usually purchase one barrel of second
or third quality of beef or pork per annum, for each laborer. Large
drafts for sugar mills, engines and boilers, are made upon the
Cincinnati and Pittsburg iron foundries. Mules and horses are driven
from the upper country, or from the Mexican dominions, to keep up the
supply.

The commerce of the upper country that concentrates at New Orleans is
amazing, and every year is rapidly increasing. Sixteen hundred arrivals
of steamboats took place in 1832, and the estimated number in 1835 is
2,300.

_Farmers._--In the northern half of the Valley the productions, and the
modes of cultivation and living are such as to characterize a large
proportion of the population as farmers. No country on earth has such
facilities for agriculture. The soil is abundantly fertile, the seasons
ordinarily favorable to the growth and maturity of crops, and every
farmer in a few years, with reasonable industry, becomes comparatively
independent. Tobacco and hemp are among the staple productions of
Kentucky.

Neat cattle, horses, mules and swine are its stock. Some stock growers
have monopolized the smaller farms till they are surrounded with several
thousand acres. Blue grass pastures furnish summer feed, and extensive
fields of corn, cut up near the ground, and stacked in the fields,
furnish stores for fattening stock in the winter.

In some counties, raising of stock has taken place of all other
business. The Scioto Valley, and other districts in Ohio, are famous for
fine, well fed beef. Thousands of young cattle are purchased by the Ohio
graziers, at the close of winter, of the farmers of Illinois and
Missouri. The Miami and Whitewater sections of Ohio and Indiana, abound
with swine. Cincinnati has been the great pork mart of the world.
150,000 head of hogs have been frequently slaughtered there in a season.
About 75,000 is estimated to be the number slaughtered at that place the
present season. This apparent falling off in the pork business, at
Cincinnati, is accounted for by the vast increase of business at other
places. Since the opening of the canals in Ohio, many pro