"The best character can be given of them: among them are the best Blacksmiths perhaps in Virginia and several other Tradesmen, Carpenters, &c."
28th. Visited the Playhouse—the piece represented was "The Battle of Hexham;" very humbly got up but the parts respectably filled. It was a full house, being a benefit night; we sat next to the stage-box in the second row: the party who had obtained the front seats were a lady and three gentlemen, two of whom kept on their horsemen's great coats and one his hat the whole night; this custom is common here. As to the state of the stage, it is not a subject worth entering upon; there is in fact no American stage, the players being almost wholly English.
March 3d. The meat market here is plentifully supplied with excellent well-fed beef, good veal and mutton, though the Americans little [197] esteem the latter. The poultry too is well-fed and fine. In order to shew to what point of perfection feeding and grazing have reached, I present the reader with some account of the annual Cattle shew, prefacing it with the advertisement extracted from the Aurora Journal of March 3d, 1820.
"SPLENDID AND EXTRAORDINARY EXHIBITION!
"The public are respectfully informed that twenty-three head of Fat Cattle, eleven Fat Sheep, and two Fat Goats, advertised to be exhibited at the Merchants' Coffee-House, by Messrs. White, Shuster, Fryburg, Drum and Miller, may be seen at B. Graves's Drove-Yard and Cattle-Market; where the public generally are respectfully invited to view this magnificent and splendid shew of fine cattle of American production: such we believe as has never been exhibited for sale, in one day, in any city in the world, at all events never surpassed!!!"
These animals, such as were "never before exhibited in any city in the world," I saw; and can vouch at least for their being very fat;—the cattle were of middling size, and frame pretty good, yet judging from their appearance, I should not have guessed that they possessed (to use a grazier's phrase,) "an aptitude for laying on fat." Any particular information of the length of time they had been feeding, or of the quantity and kinds of food, was not obtained; but I suspect that though their heads were large they had pretty [198] well eaten them off, (as prize cattle are sometimes known to do in other parts of the world,) and that the grand principle of grazing, laying on flesh with the least expense of food, has not here been sufficiently attended to.
When slaughtered, another exhibition was made of the carcases, and they all proved well, not excepting those of the goats which were very fat;[70]—the tallow in some of the beasts weighed considerably more than two hundred lb. and the carcases from eighty to one hundred and thirty stone of fourteen lb. The whole sold for a quarter dollar (13½d.) per lb.; but previous to the sale, it was paraded about the city in one-horse carts, attended by butchers in neat handsome white frocks with insignia, and a military band of music in a cart,—a large model of a ship upon wheels, having a lad dressed as a sailor in it throwing the line, bringing up the rear. I have before had occasion to remark a want of spirit, a flatness—I know not what to call it, among the Americans upon public parades and holidays, when other nations are all life and noise: not a hat was thrown up upon this occasion among the crowd, not one hurrah, not even a smile was to be seen; but all passed by with the quiet and order of [199] business: they all seemed to be calculating how much the meat would sell for, or taking in large draughts of conceit upon having the honour to attend the best beef in the whole world!
Of the state of Agriculture, the little I saw is not worth a comment to the English farmer. The price of all machinery is so high that it precludes the general use of complex implements of husbandry, and the unexhausted fertility of much of the soil, perhaps, renders the use of them less obvious. Clovers are grown in this State in course of cropping, and we may suppose by the following advertisement that they begin to know the value of manure.
"TO BE SOLD,
"This day a quantity of Street Dirt, in Lots to suit Purchasers."