"And how we have worked at our place already!" suggested Herbold; "how many trees have we felled!"
"Well, well, that would be the least part of the business," smiled Stevenson; "there can't be so very many in three weeks; besides, all that is not lost, it has been useful to you for practice, and cannot prove otherwise than beneficial hereafter. But I quite agree with Mr. Wolfgang. If you are not unanimous among yourselves whether to stay or go, as it almost seems to me is the case, why then only take some four or five milch kine and calves, so that you may have milk for the children and the sick, at all events three or four horses besides, and no hogs, they would only be a plague to you, and let that suffice for your beginning in cattle management."
Siebert and Herbold fully agreed with this, and with the assistance of Wolfgang and Stevenson selected such of the cows as appeared the best; then chose three horses, small but sturdy ponies, such as are serviceable in the woods, and, on the fourth morning after their departure from home, they had concluded everything with such good fortune, and so much more quickly than they had expected, that they were ready to think about their march back. But they first strolled, with old Stevenson, through all his fields and improvements, and Herbold especially was much astonished at a style of farming of which he had, up to that time, had no conception.
The Indian corn field claimed his chief attention, for although the emigrants, on their journey by canal through Ohio, had already seen fields with rail fences, yet that had always been in the more settled districts, and the fields really looked like fields. But here everything was more in its primeval state, and although the fences had been put up durably and well, yet in the interior there stood almost as many stumps and large girdled trees as there were stalks of corn. It remained an inexplicable riddle to Herbold how any human being could plough among those stumps and roots, for such a field, containing, at least, ten German morgens, or about twenty English acres, could not be tilled with the spade; yet the furrows seemed regular and straight. The plough unquestionably had done it, and Stevenson showed them one without wheels,[22] so as to allow the ploughman to draw it out before every root, to lift it out of the way of stumps of trees, and by pressing or easing it let it go shallower or deeper.
The old American explained to them the culture of the Indian corn, which was very simple, and conducted them between the rows of stalks, frequently from ten to twelve feet high, and which, with their heavy cobs, and drooping, dry, silky little bushes, or flags, presented a stately, and to the eye of the husbandman, most grateful appearance.
The stalks stood, as is customary, upon little mounds or hillocks, quite four feet apart, so as to leave full play for the leaves, and pumpkins or water melons had been sown between them, and throve amazingly, especially the former, which, in some instances, had reached an extraordinary size.
"What, in the name of Heaven, do you do with all these pumpkins?" asked Mr. Siebert, in astonishment, "why, there are actually enough to victual a whole colony."
"Pumpkins," said Stevenson, "are, properly speaking, one of the most useful things which a farmer can sow; horses and cows eat them eagerly, hogs will let themselves be beaten to death for them, and they are one of the most healthy and nourishing articles of food for mankind which we possess here in Tennessee, or indeed throughout the whole west of America.
"For mankind, too?"