In the matter of stock as well as in pure agriculture the Virginians were backward. They showed to best advantage in the matter of horses. Virginia gentlemen were fond of horses, and some owned fine animals and cared for them carefully. A Randolph of Tuckahoe is said to have had a favorite dapple-gray named "Shakespeare" for whom he built a special stable with a sort of recess next the stall in which the groom slept. Generally speaking, however, even among the aristocracy the horses were not so good nor so well cared for as in the next century.
Among the small farmers and poorer people the horses were apt to be scrubs, often mere bags of bones. A scientific English agriculturist named Parkinson, who came over in 1798, tells us that the American horses generally "leap well; they are accustomed to leap from the time of foaling; as it is not at all uncommon, if the mare foal in the night, for some part of the family to ride the mare, with the foal following her, from eighteen to twenty miles next day, it not being customary to walk much. I think that is the cause of the American horse having a sort of amble: the foal from its weak state, goes pacing after the dam, and retains that motion all its life. The same is the case with respect to leaping: there being in many places no gates, the snake or worm-fence (which is one rail laid on the end of another) is taken down to let the mare pass through, and the foal follow: but, as it is usual to leave two or three rails untaken down, which the mare leaps over, the foal, unwilling to be left behind, follows her; so that, by the time it is one week old, it has learned to leap three feet high; and progressively, as it grows older, it leaps higher, till at a year old, it will leap its own height."
Sheep raising was not attempted to any great extent, partly because of the ravages of wolves and dogs and partly because the sheep is a perverse animal that often seems to prefer dying to keeping alive and requires skilled care to be made profitable. The breeds were various and often were degenerated. Travelers saw Holland or rat-tailed sheep, West Indian sheep with scant wool and much resembling goats, also a few Spanish sheep, but none would have won encomiums from a scientific English breeder. The merino had not yet been introduced. Good breeds of sheep were difficult to obtain, for both the English and Spanish governments forbade the exportation of such animals and they could be obtained only by smuggling them out.
In 1792 Arthur Young expressed astonishment when told that wolves and dogs were a serious impediment to sheep raising in America, yet this was undoubtedly the case. The rich had their foxhounds, while every poor white and many negroes had from one to half a dozen curs--all of which canines were likely to enjoy the sport of sheep killing. Mr. Richard Peters, a well informed farmer of Pennsylvania, said that wherever the country was much broken wolves were to be found and bred prodigiously. "I lay not long ago at the foot of South Mountain, in York county, in this State, in a country very thickly settled, at the house of a Justice of the Peace. Through the night I was kept awake by what I conceived to be a jubilee of dogs, assembled to bay the moon. But I was told in the morning, that what disturbed me, was only the common howling of wolves, which nobody there regarded. When I entered the Hall of Justice, I found the 'Squire giving judgment for the reward on two wolf whelps a countryman had taken from the bitch. The judgment-seat was shaken with the intelligence, that the wolf was coming--not to give bail--but to devote herself or rescue her offspring. The animal was punished for this daring contempt, committed in the face of the court, and was shot within a hundred yards of the tribunal."
Virginians had not yet learned the merits of grass and pasture, and their cattle, being compelled to browse on twigs and weeds, were often thin and poor. Many ranged through the woods and it was so difficult to get them up that sometimes they would not be milked for two or three days. Often they gave no more than a quart of milk a day and were probably no better in appearance than the historian Lecky tells us were the wretched beasts then to be found in the Scottish Highlands.
Hogs received even less care than cattle and ran half wild in the woods like their successors, the famous Southern razor-backs of to-day, being fed only a short period before they were to be transformed into pork. Says Parkinson:
"The real American hog is what is termed the wood-hog: they are long in the leg, narrow on the back, short in the body, flat on the sides, with a long snout, very rough in their hair, in make more like a fish called a perch than anything I can describe. You may as well think of stopping a crow as those hogs. They will go a distance from a fence, take a run, and leap through the rails, three or four feet from the ground, turning themselves sidewise. These hogs suffer such hardships as no other animal could endure. It is customary to keep them in the woods all winter, as there is no thrashing or fold-yards; and they must live on the roots of trees, or something of that sort, but they are poor beyond any creature that I ever saw. That is probably the cause why American pork is so fine. They are something like forest-sheep. I am not certain, with American keeping and treatment, if they be not the best: for I never saw an animal live without food, except this; and I am pretty sure they nearly do that. When they are fed, the flesh may well be sweet: it is all young, though the pig be ten years old."
"The aim of the farmers in this country (if they can be called farmers)," wrote Washington to Arthur Young in 1791, "is, not to make the most they can from the land, which is or has been cheap, but the most of the labour, which is dear; the consequence of which has been, much ground has been scratched over and none cultivated or improved as it ought to have been: whereas a farmer in England, where land is dear, and labour cheap, finds it his interest to improve and cultivate highly, that he may reap large crops from a small quantity of ground."
No clearer statement of the differences between American and European agriculture has ever been formulated. Down to our own day the object of the American farmer has continued to be the same--to secure the largest return from the expenditure of a given amount of labor. But we are on the threshold of a revolution, the outcome of which means intensive cultivation and the realization of the largest possible return from a given amount of land.
That Washington saw the distinction so clearly is of itself sufficient proof that he pondered long and deeply upon agricultural problems.