had
been sent him, viz. swords, china, and among the rest the key of the
Bastille. I spent a very pleasant day in the house, as the weather was
so severe that there were no farming objects to see, the ground being
covered with snow.

Would General Washington have given me the twelve hundred acres I would
not have accepted it, to have been confined to live in that country; and
to convince the General of the cause of my determination, I was
compelled to treat him with a great deal of frankness. The General, who
had corresponded with Mr. Arthur Young and others on the subject of
English farming and soils, and had been not a little flattered by
different gentlemen from England, seemed at first to be not well
pleased with my conversation; but I gave him some strong proofs of his
mistakes, by making a comparison between the lands in America and those
of England in two respects.

First, in the article of sheep. He supposed himself to have fine sheep,
and a great quantity of them. At the time of my viewing his five farms,
which consisted of about three thousand acres cultivated, he had one
hundred sheep, and those in very poor condition. This was in the month
of November. To show him his mistake in the value and quality of his
land, I compared this with the farm my father occupied, which was less
than six hundred acres. He clipped eleven hundred sheep, though some of
his land was poor and at two shillings and sixpence per acre--the
highest was at twenty shillings; the average weight of the wool was ten
pounds per fleece, and the carcases weighed from eighty to one hundred
twenty pounds each: while in the General's hundred sheep on three
thousand acres, the wool would not weigh on an average more than three
pounds and a half the fleece, and the carcases at forty-eight pounds
each. Secondly, the proportion of the produce in grain was similar. The
General's crops were from two to three[11] bushels of wheat per acre;
and my father's farm, although poor clay soil, gave from twenty to
thirty bushels.

[11] A misstatement, of course.

During this conversation Colonel Lear, aide-de-camp to the General, was
present. When the General left the room, the Colonel told me he had
himself been in England, and had seen Arthur Young (who had been
frequently named by the General in our conversation); and that Mr. Young
having learnt that he was in the mercantile line, and was possessed of
much land, had said he thought he was a great fool t