slopes. At one time
such a gully on Union Farm extended almost completely across a large
field and was deep enough to hide a horse, but Washington filled it up
with trees, stumps, stones, old rails, brush and dirt, so that scarcely
a trace of it was left. In places one comes upon old fields that have
been allowed to revert to broom sedge, scrub oak and scrub pine. One is
astonished at the amount that has never been cleared at all. Only by the
most careful husbandry could such an estate be kept productive. It never
could be made to yield bumper crops.

The situation confronting "Farmer Washington" was this: He had a great
abundance of land, but most of it on his home estate was mediocre in
quality. Some of that lying at a distance was more fertile, but much of
it was uncleared and that on the Ohio was hopelessly distant from a
market. With the exception of Mount Vernon even those plantations in
Virginia east of the Blue Ridge could not be looked after in person. He
must either rent them, trust them to a manager, or allow them to lie
idle. Even the Mount Vernon land was distant from a good market, and the
cost of transportation was so great that he must produce for selling
purposes articles of little bulk compared with value. Finally, he had an
increasing number of slaves for whom food and clothing must be provided.

His answer to the problem of a money crop was for some years the old
Virginia answer--tobacco. His far western lands he left for the most
part untenanted. Those plantations in settled regions but remote from
his home he generally rented for a share of the crop or for cash. The
staple articles that he produced to feed the slaves were pork and corn,
eked out by herring from the fishery.

From his accounts we find that in 1759 he made thirty-four thousand one
hundred sixty pounds of tobacco; the next year sixty-five thousand
thirty-seven pounds; in 1763, eighty-nine thousand seventy-nine pounds,
which appears to have been his banner tobacco crop. In 1765 the quantity
fell to forty-one thousand seven hundred ninety-nine pounds; in 1771, to
twenty-nine thousand nine hundred eighty-six pounds, and in 1773 to only
about five thousand pounds. Thereafter his crop of the weed was
negligible, though we still find occasional references to it even as
late as 1794, when he states that he has twenty-five hogsheads in the
warehouses of Alexandria, where he has held it for five or six years
because of low prices.

[Illust