Different kinds of culture in Kentucky.—Exportation of colonial produce.—Peach trees.—Taxes
In the state of Kentucky, like those of the southern parts, nearly the whole of the inhabitants, isolated in the woods, cultivate their estates themselves, and particularly in harvest time they assist each other; while some, more independent, have their land cultivated by negro slaves.
They cultivate, in this state, tobacco, hemp, and different sorts of grain from Europe, principally wheat and Indian corn. The frosts, which begin very early, are unfavourable to the culture of cotton, which might be a profitable part of their commerce, provided the inhabitants had any hopes of success. It is by the culture of Indian corn that all those who form establishments commence; since for the few {179} years after the ground is cleared the soil is so fertile in estates of the first class, that the corn drops before it ears. Their process in husbandry is thus: after having opened, with the plough, furrows about three feet from each other, they cut them transversely by others at an equal distance, and set seven or eight grains in the points of intersection. When they have all come up, only two or three plants are left in the ground; a necessary precaution, in order to give free scope for the vegetation, and to insure a more abundant harvest. Toward the middle of the summer the leaves from the bottom of the stalk begin to wither, and successively those from the top. In proportion as they dry up they are carried away carefully, and reserved as a winter sustenance for horses, which prefer that kind of forage to the best hay.
In estates of the first class, that yield annually, Indian corn grows from ten to twelve feet high, and produces, in a common year, forty to fifty English bushels per acre, and sixty to seventy-five in abundant years. Some have been known, the second and third year after the land has been cleared, to yield a hundred. The bushel, weighing about fifty to fifty-five pounds, never sells for more than a {180} quarter of a dollar, and sometimes does not bring half the money.
The species of corn that they cultivate is long and flat in point of shape, and generally of a deep yellow. The time of harvest is toward the end of September. A single individual may cultivate eight or ten acres of it. The culture of corn is one of the most important of the country; much more, however, with regard to exportation than as an object of consumption. The county of Fayette, of which Lexinton is the chief town, and the surrounding counties, are those that supply the most. Good estates produce from twenty-five to thirty bushels per acre, weighing about sixty pounds, although they never manure the ground, nor till it more than once.
The harvest is made in the commencement of July. The corn is cut with a sickle, and threshed the same as in other parts of Europe. The corn is of a beautiful colour, and I am convinced, through the excellence of the soil, that the flour will be of a superior quality to that of Philadelphia, which, as it is well known, surpasses in whiteness the best that grows in France.
The plough which they make use of is light, {181} without wheels, and drawn by horses. It is the same in all the southern states.
The blight, the blue flower, and the poppy, so common in our fields among the corn, have not shewn themselves in North America.
The harvest of 1802 was so plentiful in Kentucky, that in the month of August, the time that I was at Lexinton, corn did not bring more than eighteen pence per bushel, (about two shillings per hundred weight). It had never been known at so low a price. Still this fall was not only attributed to the abundance of the harvest, but also on account of the return of peace in Europe. They are convinced, in the country, that at this price the culture of corn cannot support itself as an object of commerce; and that in order for the inhabitants to cover their expense the barrel of flour ought not to be sold at New Orleans for less than four or five dollars.
In all the United States the flour that they export is put into slight barrels made of oak, and of an uniform size. In Kentucky the price of them is about three-eighths of a dollar, (fifteen pence). They ought to contain ninety-six pounds of flour, which takes five bushels of corn, including the expenses of grinding.
{182} The freightage of a boat to convey the flour to Low Louisiana costs about a hundred dollars. They contain from two hundred and fifty to three hundred barrels, and are navigated by five men, of whom the chief receives a hundred dollars for the voyage, and the others fifty each. They take, from Louisville, where nearly the whole embarkations are made, from thirty to thirty-five days to go to New Orleans. They reckon it four hundred and thirty-five miles from Louisville to the embouchure of the Ohio, and about a thousand miles thence to New Orleans, which makes it, upon the whole, a passage of fourteen hundred and thirty-five miles; and these boats have to navigate upon the river a space of eight or nine hundred miles without meeting with any plantations. A part of the crew return to Lexinton by land, which is about eleven hundred miles, in forty or forty-five days. This journey is extremely unpleasant, and those who dread the fatigues of it return by sea. They embark at New Orleans for New York and Philadelphia, whence they return to Pittsburgh, and thence go down the Ohio as far as Kentucky.
An inspector belonging to the port of Louisville inserted in the Kentucky Gazette of the 6th of August {183} 1802, that 85,570 barrels of flour, from the 1st of January to the 30th of June following, went out of that port to Low Louisiana. More than two thirds of this quantity may be considered as coming from the state of Kentucky, and the rest from Ohio and the settlements situated upon the rivers Monongahela and Alleghany. The spring and autumn are principally the seasons in which this exportation is made. It is almost null in summer, an epoch at which almost all the mills are stopped for the want of water. Rye and oats come up also extremely well in Kentucky. The rye is nearly all made use of in the distilling of whiskey, and the oats as food for horses, to which they give it frequently in little bunches from two to three pounds, without being threshed.
The culture of tobacco has been greatly extended within these few years. The temperature of the climate, and the extraordinary fertility of the soil gives, in that respect, to this state, a very great advantage over that of Virginia; in consequence of which tobacco and corn form the principal branch of its commerce. It exports annually several thousand hogsheads, from a thousand to twelve hundred pounds each. The price of it is from two to three dollars per hundred weight.
{184} Hemp, both raw and manufactured, is also an article of exportation. In the same year, 1802, there has been sent out of the country, raw 42,048 pounds, and 2402 hundred weight, converted into cables and various sorts of cordage.
Many of the inhabitants cultivate flax. The women manufacture linen of it for their families, and exchange the surplus with the trades-people for articles imported from Europe. These linens, though coarse, are of a good quality; yet none but the inferior inhabitants use them, the others giving a preference to Irish linens, which comprise a considerable share of their commerce. Although whiter, they are not so good as our linens of Bretagne. The latter would have found a great sale in the western states, had it not been for yielding Louisiana; since it is now clearly demonstrated that the expense of conveying goods which go up the river again from New Orleans to Louisville is not so great as that from Philadelphia to Limestone.
Although the temperature of the climate in Kentucky and other western states is favourable to the culture of fruit trees, these parts have not been populated long enough for them to be brought to any great perfection. Beside, the Americans are by no means so industrious or interested in this kind of {185} culture as the European states. They have confined themselves, at present, to the planting of peach and apple trees.
The former are very numerous, and come to the greatest perfection. There are five or six species of them, some forward, and others late, of an oval form, and much larger than our garden peaches. All the peaches grow in the open field, and proceed from kernels without being either pruned or grafted. They shoot so vigorously, that at the age of four years they begin to bear. The major part of the inhabitants plant them round their houses, and others have great orchards of them planted crosswise. They turn the hogs there for two months before the fruit gets ripe. These animals search with avidity for the peaches that fall in great numbers, and crack the stones of them for the kernels.
The immense quantity of peaches which they gather are converted in brandy, of which there is a great consumption in the country, and the rest is exported. A few only of the inhabitants have stills; the others carry their peaches to them, and bring back a quantity of brandy proportionate to the number of peaches they carried, except a part that is left for the expense of distilling. Peach brandy sells {186} for a dollar a gallon, which is equal to four English quarts.
In Kentucky the taxes are assessed in the following manner: they pay a sum equivalent to one shilling and eight-pence for every white servant, six-pence halfpenny for every negro, three-pence for a horse, two shillings per hundred acres of land of the first class, cultivated or not, seventeen-pence per hundred of the second class, and sixpence halfpenny per hundred of the third class. Although these taxes are, as we must suppose, very moderate, and though nobody complains of them, still a great number of those taxable are much in arrears. This is what I perceived by the numerous advertisements of the collectors that I have seen pasted up in different parts of the town of Lexinton. Again, these delays are not peculiar to the state of Kentucky, as I have made the same remark in those of the east.