ousand acres,
nearly one half was under cultivation during the last part of its
owner's life. We must not forget that at this time few tools and very
little machinery were used in farming. At Mount Vernon, the negroes
and the hired laborers numbered more than five hundred. The owner's
orders were, "Buy nothing you can make within yourselves." The Mount
Vernon gristmill not only ground all the flour and the meal for the
help, but it also turned out a brand of flour which sold at a fancy
price. The coopers of the place made the flour barrels, and
Washington's own sloop carried the flour to market. A dozen kinds of
cloth, from woolen and linen to bedticking and toweling, were woven
on the premises.

{70} In 1793, although he had one hundred and one cows on his farms,
Washington writes that he was obliged to buy butter for the use of
his family. Another time, he says that one hundred and fifteen
hogsheads of "sweetly scented and neatly managed Tobacco" were
raised, and that in a single year he sold eighty-five thousand
herring, taken from the Potomac.

For his services in the French and Indian Wars, Washington received
as a bounty fifteen thousand acres of Western lands. By buying the
claims of his fellow officers who needed money, he secured nearly as
much more. After the Revolution, Washington and General Clinton
bought six thousand acres "amazingly cheap," in the Mohawk valley. No
wonder Washington was spoken of as "perhaps the greatest landholder
in America."

Like many other Southern proprietors, Washington had no end of bother
with his slaves. He bought and sold negroes as he did his cattle and
his horses, but, as he said, "except on the richest of Soils they
only add to the Expense." In 1791, the slaves on the Mount Vernon
estate alone numbered three hundred. In this same year, the owner
wrote one day in his diary that he would never buy another slave; but
the next night his cook ran away, and not being able to hire one,
"white or black," he had to buy one. "Something must be done," he
said, "or I shall be ruined. It would be for my Interest to set them
free, rather than give them Victuals and Clooths."

{71} Washington was too kind-hearted ever to flog his slaves, and yet
his kindness was often abused. Fat and lazy, they made believe to be
sick, or they ran away, and they played all kinds of pranks. In his
diary, we read the tale of woe. We are told that his slaves would
steal his sheep and his potatoes; would