rica; and I
find in one of Washington's letters[E] to him the following allusion to
the scheme:--"To have such a tenant as Sir John Sinclair (however
desirable it might be) is an honor I dare not hope for; and to alienate
any part of the fee-simple estate of Mount Vernon is a measure I am not
inclined to."

* * * * *

Another British cultivator of this period, whose name is associated with
the Mount Vernon estate, was a certain Richard Parkinson of Doncaster,
who wrote "The Experienced Farmer," and who not only proposed at one
time to manage one of the Washington farms, but did actually sail for
America, occupied a place called Orange-Hill, near Baltimore, for a year
or more, travelled through the country, making what sale he could of his
"Experienced Farmer," and on his return to England, published "A Tour
in America," which is to be met with here and there upon the top-shelves
of old libraries, and which is not calculated to encourage immigration.

He sets out by saying,--"The great advantages held out by different
authors, and men travelling from America with commission to sell land,
have deluded persons of all denominations with an idea of becoming
land-owners and independent. They have, however, been most lamentably
disappointed,--particularly the farmers, and all those that have
purchased land; for, notwithstanding the low price at which the American
lands are sold, _the poverty of the soil is such_ as to make it not to
pay for labor; therefore the greater part have brought themselves and
their families to total ruin."

He is distressed, too, by the independence of the laborers,--being
"often forced to rise in the morning to milk the cows, when the servants
were in bed."

Among other animals which he took with him, he mentions "two
race-horses, ten blood mares, a bull and cow of the North Devon, a bull
and cow of the no-horned York, a cow (with two calves and in calf again)
of the Holderness, five boar- and seven sow-pigs of four different
kinds."

On arriving at Norfolk, Virginia, in November, he inquired for hay, and
"was informed that American cattle subsisted on blades and slops, and
that no hay was to be had." He found, also, that "American cows eat
horse-dung as naturally as an English cow eats hay; and as America grows
no grass, the street is the cheapest place to keep them in." This sounds
very much as if it had been excerpted from the scientific column of the
London