by the Midas-touch of frost. The land does lie "high" and
"dry," but we must take exception to the word "healthy." In the summer
and fall the tidal marshes breed a variety of mosquito capable of biting
through armor plate and of infecting the devil himself with malaria. In
the General's day, when screens were unknown, a large part of the
population, both white and black, suffered every August and September
from chills and fever. The master himself was not exempt and once we
find him chronicling that he went a-hunting and caught a fox and
the ague.

What he says as regards the fisheries is all quite true and in general
they seem to have been very productive. Herring and shad were the chief
fish caught and when the run came the seine was carried well out into
the river in a boat and then hauled up on the shelving beach either by
hand or with a windlass operated by horse-power. There were warehouses
and vats for curing the fish, a cooper shop and buildings for sheltering
the men. The fish were salted down for the use of the family and the
slaves, and what surplus remained was sold. Now and then the landing and
outfit was rented out for a money consideration, but this usually
happened only when the owner was away from home.

At the old Posey fishery on Union Farm the industry is still carried on,
though gasoline engines have been substituted for the horse-operated
winch used in drawing the seines. Lately the industry has ceased to be
very productive, and an old man in charge told me that it is because
fishermen down the river and in Chesapeake Bay are so active that
comparatively few fish manage to get up so far.

The Mount Vernon estate in the old days lacked only one quality
necessary to make it extremely productive, namely, rich soil! Only
ignorance of what good land really is, or an owner's blind pride in his
own estate, can justify the phrase "a good loam." On most of the estate
the soil is thin, varying in color from a light gray to a yellow red,
with below a red clay hardpan almost impervious to water. To an observer
brought up on a farm of the rich Middle West, Mount Vernon, except for a
few scattered fields, seems extremely poor land. For farming purposes
most of it would be high at thirty dollars an acre. Much of it is so
broken by steep hills and deep ravines as scarcely to be tillable at
all. Those tracts which are cultivated are very susceptible to erosion.
Deep gullies are quickly worn on the hillsides and