were to be found and bred prodigiously.  “I lay not long ago at the foot of South Mountain, in York county, in this State, in a country very thickly settled, at the house of a Justice of the Peace.  Through the night I was kept awake by what I conceived to be a jubilee of dogs, assembled to bay the moon.  But I was told in the morning, that what disturbed me, was only the common howling of wolves, which nobody there regarded.  When I entered the Hall of Justice, I found the ’Squire giving judgment for the reward on two wolf whelps a countryman had taken from the bitch.  The judgment-seat was shaken with the intelligence, that the wolf was coming—­not to give bail—­but to devote herself or rescue her offspring.  The animal was punished for this daring contempt, committed in the face of the court, and was shot within a hundred yards of the tribunal.”

Virginians had not yet learned the merits of grass and pasture, and their cattle, being compelled to browse on twigs and weeds, were often thin and poor.  Many ranged through the woods and it was so difficult to get them up that sometimes they would not be milked for two or three days.  Often they gave no more than a quart of milk a day and were probably no better in appearance than the historian Lecky tells us were the wretched beasts then to be found in the Scottish Highlands.

Hogs received even less care than cattle and ran half wild in the woods like their successors, the famous Southern razor-backs of to-day, being fed only a short period before they were to be transformed into pork.  Says Parkinson: 

“The real American hog is what is termed the wood-hog:  they are long in the leg, narrow on the back, short in the body, flat on the sides, with a long snout, very rough in their hair, in make more like a fish called a perch than anything I can describe.  You may as well think of stopping a crow as those hogs.  They will go a distance from a fence, take a run, and leap through the rails, three or four feet from the ground, turning themselves sidewise.  These hogs suffer such hardships as no other animal could endure.  It is customary to keep them in the woods all winter, as there is no thrashing or fold-yards; and they must live on the roots of trees, or something of that sort, but they are poor beyond any creature that I ever saw.  That is probably the cause why American pork is so fine.  They are something like forest-sheep.  I am not certain, with American keeping and treatment, if they be not the best:  for I never saw an animal live without food, except this; and I am pretty sure they nearly do that.  When they are fed, the flesh may well be sweet:  it is all young, though the pig be ten years old.”

“The aim of the farmers in this country (if they can be called farmers),” wrote Washington to Arthur Young in 1791, “is, not to make the most they can from the land, which is or has been cheap, but the most of the labour, which is dear; the consequence of which has been, much ground has been scratched over and none cultivated or improved as it ought to have been:  whereas a farmer in England, where land is dear, and labour cheap, finds it his interest to improve and cultivate highly, that he may reap large crops from a small quantity of ground.”