“English farmers are so far of your opinion, that the best of them say they cannot afford fallows; but neither do they exhaust their soils.”
“How in the name of wonder do they manage then?”
“They practise convertible husbandry to a greater extent than we planters ever dream of. Wheat and barley exhaust the land like canes; but by growing green crops in turn with grain, and changing corn land into pasture, they renew the powers of the soil, and may go on for ever, for aught I see, till fallows are banished from the land, and every rood is fertile in its due proportion.”
“That is all very well,” said Mitchelson; “but it is no example for us. Sugar is our staple, and sugar we must grow. We have little use for green crops, and less for pasture.”
“In the present state of things, certainly,” replied Alfred. “The question is, whether it might not answer to find a use for both? I have seen a calculation, and I mean to verify it as I have opportunity, of the expenses and profits of the management of such an estate as this by methods of convertible husbandry. Such a system involves many changes; but they seem to me likely to be all advantageous; and I long to see them tried.”
“He who made the calculation had better try, son.”
“He means to do so, and I shall go over to Barbadoes, some day, and see the result. He will begin by making his slaves more like English labourers——”
“There is a foolish English fancy to begin with,” observed Mitchelson.
“Employing them,” continued Alfred, “in a greater variety of ways than is common here, and doing much of their work with cattle. Instead of buying provisions, importing bricks, and a hundred other things that might be procured at hand, while the soil is all the time growing barren as fast as it can, he will vary his crops, thus raising food for man and beast; he will enlarge his stock of cattle, thus providing manure for his land, and butcher’s meat for his people; his horses will graze for themselves instead of the slaves doing it for them, and they, meanwhile, will be making bricks and doing other things worthy of men, while the work of cattle will be done by cattle.”
“Very fine, indeed! and what becomes of his sugar all this time?”