Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
Hoggart assures us,
have neither tithes, taxes, nor rates; and the people of Canterbury know
that they have a _hop-duty_ to pay, while Mr. Hoggart, of Broad-street,
tells them that he has farms to let, in France, where there are
hop-gardens and where there is no hop-duty. They have lately had races
at Canterbury; and the Mayor and Aldermen, in order to get the Prince
Leopold to attend them, presented him with the Freedom of the City; but
it rained all the time and he did not come! The Mayor and Aldermen do
not understand things half so well as this German Gentleman, who has
managed his matters as well, I think, as any one that I ever heard of.
This fine old town, or, rather, city, is remarkable for cleanliness and
niceness, notwithstanding it has a Cathedral in it. The country round it
is very rich, and this year, while the hops are so bad in most other
parts, they are not so very bad just about Canterbury.
_Elverton Farm, near Faversham, Friday Morning, Sept. 5._
In going through Canterbury, yesterday, I gave a boy six-pence to hold
my horse, while I went into the Cathedral, just to thank St. Swithin for
the trick that he had played my friends, the Quakers. Led along by the
wet weather till after the harvest had actually begun, and then to find
the weather turn fine, all of a sudden! This must have soused them
pretty decently; and I hear of one, who, at Canterbury, has made a
bargain by which he will certainly lose two thousand pounds. The land
where I am now is equal to that of the Isle of Thanet. The harvest is
nearly over, and all the crops have been prodigiously fine. In coming
from Canterbury, you come to the top of a hill, called Baughton Hill,
at four miles from Canterbury on the London road; and you there look
down into one of the finest flats in England. A piece of marsh comes up
nearly to Faversham; and, at the edge of that marsh lies the farm where
I now am. The land here is a deep loam upon chalk; and this is also the
nature of the land in the Isle of Thanet and all the way from that to
Dover. The orchards grow well upon this soil. The trees grow finely, the
fruit is large and of fine flavour.
In 1821 I gave Mr. William Waller, who lives here, some American
apple-cuttings; and he has now some as fine Newtown Pippins as one would
wish to see. They are very large of their sort; very free in their
growth; and they promise to be very fine apples of the kind. Mr. Waller
had cuttings from me off several sorts, in 1822. These were cut down
last year; they have, of course, made shoots this summer; and great
numbers of these shoots have fruit-spurs, which will have blossom, if
not fruit, next year. This very rarely happens, I believe; and the state
of Mr. Waller's trees clearly proves to me that the introduction of
these American trees would be a great improvement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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