leave you free as to the time of going, from harvest till Christmas. If you will get yourself conveyed as far as Fredericksburg, which is as far as the stages go on that road, I will find means of conveying you from thence, which will be 70 miles. So far respects the farm over which I wish to place you.

Besides this I have on the opposite side of the little river running through my lands, 2000 acres of lands of the same quality, and which has been cultivated in the same way, which I wish to tenant out at a quarter of a dollar an acre, in farms of such sizes as the tenants would choose. I would hire the laborers now employed on them from year to year to the same tenants, at about 50 dollars for a man and his wife, the tenant feeding and clothing them and paying their taxes and those of the land, which are very trifling. The lands to be leased for seven years or more, the laborers only from year to year, to begin next November. I would like the farms to be not less than 200 acres, because such a farmer would probably like to hire a man and his wife as laborers. I have mentioned these circumstances to you, because I have understood that tenants might probably be got from Maryland, and perhaps it would be agreeable to you to engage some of your acquaintances to go and settle so near where you will be. Perhaps you could inform me in what other part of Maryland or the neighboring States tenants might be more probably found, and I should willingly incur the expense of having them sought for. Your

assistance in this would particularly oblige me. I would ease the rent of the first year, that the tenant might get himself under way with as few difficulties as possible, but I should propose restrictions against cultivating too great a quantity of Indian corn.

In expectation of hearing from you immediately I am, Sir, your humble servant.

P. S. There is a market for wheat, rye, etc., in two little towns on each side of my lands, neither more than two miles and a half distant.

TO MARTHA JEFFERSON RANDOLPH.

PHILADELPHIA, December 31, 1792.

MY DEAR MARTHA,-I received three days ago Mr. Randolph's letter of the 14th from Richmond, and received it with great joy, as it informed me of the re-establishment of dear Anne's health. I apprehend from an expression in his letter that some of mine may have miscarried. I have never failed to write every Thursday or Friday. Perceiving by the Richmond paper that the Western post now leaves that place on Monday, I change my day of writing also to Sunday or Monday. One of the Indian chiefs now here, whom you may remember to have seen at Monticello a day or two before Tarleton drove us off, remembers you and enquired after you. He is of the Pioria nation; perhaps you may recollect that he gave our name to an infant son he

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then had with him, and who, he now tells me, is a fine lad. Blanchard is arrived here and is to ascend in his balloon within a few days. The affairs of France are going on well. Tell Mr. Randolph that I write him a letter by this post in answer to the application to rent Elkhall, but under the possibility that the sale of it may be completed, I inclose his letter to Mr. Hylton with a desire that he will return it to me if the place is sold, otherwise to forward it to Mr Randolph. My best esteem to him and our friends with you. Adieu, my dear. Yours affectionately,

TO JOHN TAYLOR.1

MONTICELLO, December 29, 1794. DEAR SIR,-I have long owed you a letter, for which my conscience would not have let me rest in quiet but on the consideration that the payment would not be worth your acceptance. The debt is not merely for a letter the common traffic of every day, but for valuable ideas, which instructed me, which I have adopted, and am acting on them. I am sensible of the truth of your observations that the atmosphere is the great storehouse of matter for

1 François Blanchard, the famous aeronaut, was born in France in 1738, and died there March 7, 1809. In 1785 he made his remarkable voyage in a balloon across the British Channel with Dr. Jeffries, of Boston. For this successful undertaking Blanchard was rewarded by Louis XVI. He made numerous ascensions in Europe and on this side of the Atlantic. See Nouvelle Biographie Générale, tome vi. pp. 188, 189.-Eds,

recruiting our lands, that though efficacious, it is slow in its operation, and we must therefore give them time instead of the loads of quicker manure given in other countries, that for this purpose we must avail ourselves of the great quantities of land we possess in proportion to our labor, and that while putting them to nurse with the atmosphere, we must protect them from the bite and tread of animals, which are nearly a counterpoise for the benefits of the atmosphere. As good things, as well as evil, go in a train, this relieves us from the labor and expense of cross fences, now very sensibly felt on account of the scarcity and distance of timber. I am accordingly now engaged in applying my cross fences to the repair of the outer ones and substituting rows of peach trees to preserve the boundaries of the fields. And though I observe your strictures on rotations of crops, yet it appears that in this I differ from you only in words. You keep half your lands in culture, the other half at nurse; so I propose to do. Your scheme indeed requires only four years and mine six; but the proportion of labor and

'John Taylor, an eminent statesman and agriculturist, was born in Orange County, Virginia, in 1750, and graduated at William and Mary College in 1770. He became a planter, and was greatly interested in the improvement of agriculture. In 1797 he was one of the Presidential Electors, and in the following year he moved in the Virginia House of Deputies the famous resolutions of 1798. He died in Caroline County, Virginia, August 20, 1824. (See Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography, vol. vi. p. 45.) This letter is printed from the original in the collection of autographs given to the Mass. Hist. Society by Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Washburn.-EDS.

VOL. XVIII-13

rest is the same. My years of rest, however, are employed, two of them in producing clover, yours in volunteer herbage. But I still understand it to be your opinion that clover is best where lands will produce them. Indeed I think that the important improvement for which the world is indebted to Young is the substitution of clover crops instead of unproductive fallows; and the demonstration that lands are more enriched by clover than by volunteer herbage or fallows; and the clover crops are highly valuable. That our red lands which are still in tolerable heart will produce fine clover I know from the experience of the last year; and indeed that of my neighbors had established the fact. And from observations on accidental plants in the fields which have been considerably harrassed with corn, I believe that even these will produce clover fit for soiling of animals green. I think, therefore, I can count on the success of that improver. My third year of rest will be devoted to cowpenning, and to a trial of the buckwheat dressing. A further progress in surveying my open arable lands has shewn me that I can have seven fields in each of my farms where I expected only six; consequently that I can add more to the portion of rest and ameliorating crops. I have doubted on a question on which I am sure you can advise me well, whether I had better give this newly acquired year as an addition to the continuance of my clover, or throw it with some improving crop between two of my crops of grain, as for in