eed
be said of them. Their culture, too, is by women and children, and
therefore earnestly to be desired in countries where there are
slaves. In these, the women and children are often employed in labors
disproportioned to their sex and age. By presenting to the master
objects of culture, easier and equally beneficial, all temptation to
misemploy them would be removed, and the lot of this tender part of our
species be much softened. By varying too the articles of culture, we
multiply the chances for making something, and disarm the seasons, in a
proportionable degree, of their calamitous effects.

The olive is a tree the least known in America, and yet the most worthy
of being known. Of all the gifts of heaven to man, it is next to the
most precious, if it be not the most precious. Perhaps it may claim
a preference even to bread; because there is such an infinitude of
vegetables, which it renders a proper and comfortable nourishment. In
passing the Alps at the Col de Tende, where they are mere masses of
rock, wherever there happens to be a little soil, there are a number of
olive trees, and a village supported by them. Take away these trees, and
the same ground, in corn, would not support a single family. A pound of
oil, which can be bought for three or four pence sterling, is equivalent
to many pounds of flesh, by the quantity of vegetables it will prepare,
and render fit and comfortable food. Without this tree, the country of
Provence and territory of Genoa, would not support one half, perhaps
not one third, their present inhabitants. The nature of the soil is of
little consequence, if it be dry. The trees are planted from fifteen to
twenty feet apart, and when tolerably good, will yield fifteen or twenty
pounds of oil yearly, one with another. There are trees which yield much
more. They begin to render good crops at twenty years old, and last till
killed by cold, which happens at some time or other, even in their best
positions in France. But they put out again from their roots. In Italy,
I am told, they have trees of two hundred years old. They afford an
easy but constant employment through the year, and require so little
nourishment, that if the soil be fit for any other production, it may
be cultivated among the olive trees, without injuring them. The northern
limits of this tree, are the mountains of the Cevennes, from about the
meridian of Carcassonne to the Rhone, and from thence, the Alps and
Apennines as far