After crossing the Patowmac, I passed on to Frederic in Maryland, which has already been mentioned, and from thence to Baltimore. The country between Frederic and Baltimore is by no means so rich as that west of the Blue Ridge, but it is tolerably well cultivated. Iron and copper are found here in many places. No works of any consequence have as yet been established for the manufacture of copper, but there are several extensive iron works. The iron is of a remarkably tough quality; indeed, throughout the states of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, it is generally so; and the utensils made of it, as pots, kettles, &c. though cast much thinner than usual in England, will admit of being pitched into the carts, and thrown about, without any danger of being broken. The forges and furnaces are all worked by negroes, who seem to be particularly suited to such an occupation, not only on account of their sable complexions, but because they can sustain a much greater degree of heat than white persons without any inconvenience. In the hottest days in summer they are never without fires in their huts.
The farms and plantations in Maryland consist, in general, of from one hundred to one thousand acres. In the upper parts of the state, towards the mountains, the land is divided into small portions. Grain is what is principally cultivated, and there are few slaves. In the lower parts of the state, and in this part of the country between Frederic and Baltimore, the plantations are extensive; large quantities of tobacco are raised, and the labour is performed almost entirely by negroes. The persons residing upon these large plantations live very similar to the planters in Virginia: all of them have their stewards and overseers, and they give themselves but little trouble about the management of the lands. As in Virginia, the clothing for the slaves, and most of the implements for husbandry, are manufactured on each estate. The quarters of the slaves are situated in the neighbourhood of the principal dwelling house, which gives the residence of every planter the appearance of a little village, just the same as in Virginia. The houses are for the most part built of wood, and painted with Spanish brown; and in front there is generally a long porch, painted white.
WEATHER.
CLIMATE.
From Baltimore I returned to Philadelphia, where I arrived on the fourteenth day of June, after having been absent about three months. During the whole of that period the weather had been extremely variable, scarcely ever remaining alike four days together. As early as the fourteenth of March, in Pennsylvania, Fahrenheit’s thermometer stood at 65° at noon day, though not more than a week before it had been so low as 14°. At the latter end of the month, in Maryland, I scarcely ever observed it higher than 50° at noon: the evenings were always cold, and the weather was squally and wet. In the northern neck of Virginia, for two or three days together, during the second week in April, it rose from 80° to 84°, in the middle of the day; but on the wind suddenly shifting, it fell again, and remained below 70° for some days. As I passed along through the lower parts of Virginia, I frequently afterwards observed it as high as 80° during the month of April; but on no day in the month of May, previous to the fourteenth, did it again rise to the same height; indeed, so far from it, many of the days were too cold to be without fires; and on the night of the ninth instant, when I was in the neighbourhood of the South-west Mountains, so sharp a frost took place, that it destroyed all the cherries, and also most of the early wheat, and of the young shoots of Indian corn; in some particular places, for miles together, the young leaves of the forest trees even were all withered, and the country had exactly the appearance of November. On the tenth instant, the day after the frost, the thermometer was as low as 46° in the middle of the day; yet four days afterwards it stood at 81°. During the remainder of the month, and during June, until I reached Philadelphia, it fluctuated between 60° and 80°; the weather was on the whole fine, but frequently for a day or two together the air felt extremely raw and disagreeable. The changes in the state of the atmosphere were also sometimes very sudden. On the sixth day of June, when on my way to Frederic-town, after passing the Patowmac River, the most remarkable change of this nature took place which I ever witnessed. The morning had been oppressively hot; the thermometer at 81°, and the wind S. S. W. About one o’clock in the afternoon, a black cloud appeared in the horizon, and a tremendous gust came on, accompanied by thunder and lightning; several large trees were torn up by the roots by the wind; hailstones, about three times the size of an ordinary pea, fell for a few minutes, and afterwards a torrent of rain came pouring down, nearly as if a water-spout had broken over head. Just before the gust came on, I had suspended my thermometer from a window with a northern aspect, when it stood at 81°; but on looking at it at the end of twenty-three minutes, by which time the gust was completely over, I found it down to 59°, a change of 22°. A north-west wind now set in, the evening was most delightful, and the thermometer again rose to 65°. In Pennsylvania the thermometer has been known to vary fifty degrees in the space of twenty-six hours.
The climate of the middle and southern states is extremely variable; the seasons of two succeeding years are seldom alike; and it scarcely ever happens that a month passes over without very great vicissitudes in the weather taking place. Doctor Rittenhouse remarked, that whilst he resided in Pennsylvania, he discovered nightly frosts in every month of the year excepting July, and even in that month, during which the heat is always greater than at any other time of the year, a cold day or two sometimes intervene, when a fire is found very agreeable.
The climate of the state of New York is very similar to that of Pennsylvania, excepting that in the northern parts of that state, bordering upon Canada, the winters are always severe and long. The climate of New Jersey, Delaware, and the upper parts of Maryland, is also much the same with that of Pennsylvania; in the lower parts of Maryland the climate does not differ materially from that of Virginia to the eastward of the Blue Ridge, where it very rarely happens that the thermometer is as low as 6° above cipher.
In Pennsylvania, the range of the mercury in Fahrenheit’s thermometer has been observed to be from 24° below cipher to 105° above it; but it is an unusual occurrence for the mercury to stand at either of these extreme points; in its approach towards them it commonly draws much nearer to the extreme of heat than to that of cold. During the winter of 1795, and the three preceding years, it did not sink lower than 10° above cipher; a summer however seldom passes over that it does not rise to 96°. It was mentioned as a singular circumstance, that in 1789 the thermometer never rose higher than 90°.
CLIMATE.
Of the oppression that is felt from the summer heats in America, no accurate idea can be formed without knowing the exact state of the hygrometer as well as the height of the thermometer. The moisture of the air varies very much in different parts of the country; it also varies in all parts with the winds; and it is surprising to find what a much greater degree of heat can be borne without inconvenience when the air is dry than when it is moist. In New England, in a remarkably dry air, the heat is not found more insupportable when the thermometer stands at 100°, than it is in the lower parts of the southern states, where the air is moist, when the thermometer stands perhaps at 90°, that is, supposing the wind to be in the same quarter in both places. In speaking of Virginia I have taken notice of the great difference that is found between the climate of the mountains and the climate of the low country in that state. The case is the same in every other part of the country. From the mountains in New England, along the different ridges which run through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the southern states, even to the extremity of Georgia, the heat is never found very oppressive; whilst as far north as Pennsylvania and New York, the heat in the low parts of the country, between the mountains and the ocean, is frequently intolerable.