The land on quitting Chatham is chalk at bottom; but before you reach Sittingbourne there is a vein of gravel and sand under, but a great depth of loam above. About Sittingbourne the chalk bottom comes again, and continues on to this place, where the land appears to me to be as good as it can possibly be. Mr. WILLIAM WALLER, at whose house I am, has grown, this year, Mangel-Wurzel, the roots of which weigh, I think, on an average, twelve pounds, and in rows, too, at only about thirty inches distant from each other. In short, as far as _soil_ goes, it is impossible to see a finer country than this. You frequently see a field of fifty acres, level as a die, clean as a garden and as rich. Mr. _Birkbeck_ need not have crossed the Atlantic, and Alleghany into the bargain, to look for land _too rich to bear wheat_; for here is a plenty of it. In short, this is a country of hop-gardens, cherry, apple, pear and filbert orchards, and quick-set hedges. But, alas! what, in point of _beauty_, is a country without woods and lofty trees! And here there are very few indeed. I am now sitting in a room, from the window of which I look, _first_, over a large and level field of rich land, in which the drilled wheat is finely come up, and which is surrounded by clipped quickset hedges with a row of apple trees running by the sides of them; _next_, over a long succession of rich meadows, which are here called marshes, the shortest grass upon which will fatten sheep or oxen; _next_, over a little branch of the salt water which runs up to Faversham; _beyond that_, on the Isle of Shepry (or Shepway), which rises a little into a sort of ridge that runs along it; rich fields, pastures and orchards lie all around me; and yet, I declare, that I a million times to one prefer, as a spot to _live on_, the heaths, the miry coppices, the wild woods and the forests of Sussex and Hampshire. _Thursday, 6 Dec._