On the whole road from Philadelphia to Lancaster there are not any two dwellings standing together, excepting at a small place called Downing’s Town, which lies about midway; numbers of farm houses, however, are scattered over the country as far as the eye can reach. These houses are mostly built of stone, and are about as good as those usually met with on an arable farm of fifty acres in a well cultivated part of England. The farms attached to these houses contain about two hundred acres each, and are, with a few exceptions only, the property of the persons who cultivate them. In the cultivated parts of Pennsylvania the farms rarely exceed three hundred acres; towards the north, however, where the settlements are but few, large tracts of land are in the hands of individuals, who are speculators and land jobbers. Adjoining to the houses there is generally a peach or an apple orchard. With the fruit they make cyder and brandy; the people have a method also of drying the peaches and apples, after having sliced them, in the sun, and thus cured they last all the year round. They are used for pies and puddings, but they have a very acrid taste, and scarcely any of the original flavour of the fruit. The peaches in their best state are but indifferent, being small and dry; I never eat any that were good, excepting such as were raised with care in gardens. It is said that the climate is so much altered that they will not grow now as they formerly did. In April and May nightly frosts are very common, which were totally unknown formerly, and frequently the peaches are entirely blighted. Gardens are very rare in the country parts of Pennsylvania, for the farmers think the labour which they require does not afford sufficient profit; in the neighbourhood of towns, however, they are common, and the culinary vegetables raised in them are equal to any of their respective kinds in the world, _potatoes_ excepted, which generally have an earthy unpleasant taste. Though the south-east part of the state of Pennsylvania is better cultivated than any other part of America, yet the style of farming is on the whole very slovenly. I venture, indeed, to assert, that the farmers do not raise more on their two hundred acres than a skilful farmer in Norfolk, Suffolk, or Essex, or in any well cultivated part of England, would do on fifty acres of good land there. The farmer also, who rents fifty acres of arable land in England, lives far more comfortably in every respect than the farmer in Pennsylvania, or in any other of the middle states, who owns two hundred acres of land, his house will be found better furnished, and his table more plentifully covered. That the farmers do not live better in America, I hardly know whether to ascribe to their love of making money, or to their real indifference about better fare; perhaps it may be owing, in some measure, to both; certain it is however, that their mode of living is most wretched. [Sidenote: WAGGONS.]