Agriculture is the most natural, necessary, and honourable employment of man. Ignorant pride and vain folly may represent it as derogatory; but in so doing they show how very far they are from true greatness. Agriculture furnishes for vigorous constitutions the most salutary exercise; and here the brightest geniuses may find ample employment.—An unlimited field for experiment in many branches of natural philosophy is here presented, and there is no sphere in life so well calculated as this to promote individual virtue and public advantage.
Here man is engaged in the peculiar work assigned him by his Creator, and many interesting reflections naturally result from it. The field which he cultivates is his parent earth. According to the righteous appointment of Heaven, he must here obtain his bread by the sweat of his brow, until he returns to the dust. The employment naturally directs his thoughts to his origin and destinies; and impresses his mind with a sense of his mortality, dependence, and accountability to God. Here too he reflects, with peculiar advantage, upon the gracious plan of Redemption. The return of spring joyfully reminds him of the Resurrection; and in the perishing grain which he has sown, he recognizes St. Paul’s similitude of this great event.
[37] The further a man’s employment is from rural scenes and avocations, the further he is from the original dignity and simplicity of his nature. Here may be acquired the greatest comparative degree of physical and mental vigour, the noblest virtues, the truest piety, the most sincere and ardent patriotism, the loftiest independence of character, and all the pleasures which flow from the sprightliness of the imagination and the susceptibility of the heart.
The great and good of every age have spoken in behalf of agriculture; and the Egyptians ascribed the discovery of it to their gods. The worthies of Greece and Rome were well acquainted with the plough; and Cincinnatus left his team, vanquished the Æqui and Volsci, who were besieging the Roman army, and then returned to his beloved employment. Our Washington too, charmed his pure and noble spirit with the rural occupations of his endeared Vernon; and the Emperor of China attends, every spring, to the ceremony of opening the ground, by holding the plough himself.
In my course to Niagara Falls I passed Genesee river. This river rises in Pennsylvania, and enters Lake Ontario about eighty miles east of Niagara river. It contains several falls, from fifty to one hundred feet in height, and offers many fine seats for mills. This river, and those which are connected with it are generally sluggish in their motion.
The tract of country lying upon the Genessee is rich, and well watered. The celebrated Genessee Flats are situated on the borders of the river, and is about twenty miles by four.
The Holland Purchase is a part of the Genessee Country.[[57]]
Although I have not yet surveyed the whole field of domestic emigration, I may, with propriety, introduce in this place some ideas which I [38] have heretofore entertained upon the subject; these ideas having been fully sanctioned by the experience of my whole tour. The subject should be examined both in a national and individual point of view.
Supposing, for a moment, that my reflections upon this topic may produce some effect upon the feelings and opinions of those who are disposed to emigrate, there is little or no danger of lessening the interests of the nation, in relation to it, by checking too much the existing locomotive disposition of the people.
Dear as home is to man, he is, in his best estate, a wanderer. An alien from the purity and peace of Heaven, he will sigh for other scenes until his highest hopes eventuate in a habitation there.