The Middleburgh post. [volume] (Middleburgh, Snyder Co., Pa.) 1883-1916, 1889-08-22
A Trip to the South.

your request please find lnclosed,
the impressions and incidents of my
Southern trip, which / trust will
prove as interesting to your rea-
ders rs it did to me.
A New York and New England
landscape to the eye of the prac-
tical farmer, in comparison with any
other portion of the United States,
presents sharp contrasts.
The broad level stretch of the
Western prairie impresses us with n
strange newness and age the barn
like two room structure of the
homesteader seems out of place in
the center of hundred-acre corn
field, free from stumps and stones,
an appropriate condition of age {;
the absence of forest trees i'll groves
or on road sides, is unnatural when
riding through orchards and culti-
waited fields. 1t seems as though
the world of our childhood, with
"Thc orchard. the meadow, the deeptangled
wildwood,
The bridge and the rock where the cateract fell
surrounded by the horizon of high
forest crowned hills, had suddenly
sunk and left us floating on bound
less ocean of broad undulating ridg-
es of green verdure The transpar-
ent atmosphere shotens distance
and magnifes objects, and what
appears to the expectant traveller Il
commodious hotel, dwindles at the
approach into the unpretending
cabin of the squatter large forest
trees, marking the line of prairie
stream, when reached after weary
miles of travel, changes misteriously
into insignificant shrubbery.
But how different are our emo
tions when we go South, South into
the land of battlefelds, over which
have surged armies in the agonizing
death struggle and we look out
with keenest interest at the mens
tion of Alexandria, Manassas, Bull
Run, Warrenton, Culpepper, Rapi
dan and Gordonsville, as though we
expected still to see the long gleam-
ing battle line and hear the roll of
drums. the boom of cannons and
the crash of the cavalry charge
We almost imagine the dead and
dying scattered over those far off
fields, sad sequence of bloody strife
This is n land of mystery and of
fiction, the land of Cudioe's Cave
and Uncle Toms cabin, and we peer
into every negros face as if we eX-
pectcd to discover the veritable
Uncle Tom. Aunt Chloe, or George
or Eliza. To our boyhood's imagi-
nation it is represented as II land of
ease, wealth and luxury, in strong
contrasts with toll penury and
stripes land from which came oft
repeated tales that stirred our
youthful blood Mt once with indig-
nation and with sympathy.
1t is hard to realize how we are
held willing captives by the chains
of education and prejudice, and how
quickly the links part and set us free
before the enlightenment of mutual
intercourse and knowledge, and
how the dream vagaries coniured
up in the imagination, are dissipat-
ed by the logic of experience.
As soon rs the tourist leaves
Pennsylvania and enters into Mary.
land and Northern Virginia, n char
actcristic change takes place in the
farm landscape, There are larger
fields and fewer outbuildings, less
acreage of grass and IL correspond
ing absence of stock more dilapi
dated cabins and fewer farmhouses,
more waste and carelessness, and
less neatness and thrift than arc
found III the rural districts of the
North.
The villages are for the most part
small collections OF dlngy, dllapidat
cd dwellings, corn mill, a couple
of stores, which generally do duty
as n dispensary of dry goods, gro
ceries, fertilizers, farm utensils
drugs and whisky. Il so-called hotel,
mixture of II second class saloon
and third class lodging house
On Saturdays are congregated in
this exchange center molly gath
ering of quaint, sallow, shambling
tobacco chewing whites, and fat,
carless, giggling negroes of all ages
and sexes, some half naked and 9th
ers dressed in cheap holiday finery
Here and there can be recognized O
planter, by his simple, unpretend
ing gentlemanly bearing towards