AMERICAN PROGRESS.

Waikato Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1603, 12 October 1882, Page 2

AMERICAN PROGRESS.

The following extracts from a letter received by a gentleman in Waikato from a friend in the United States, will be of interest to many of our reeiders. Some time ago a paragraph appeared in our columns stating that the cotton crop of America would fall 40% short this year. Such does not appear to be the case. The letter is- dated Atlanta, Georgia, Aug. 4th, 1882, and the extracts we make are as follow -. — I was very much interested in your description of the wonderful fertility of your country — especially in wheat, and some other crops you mentioned. There has always been a strange fascination to me about your Australasian countiy. It is so different from our North American country that it seems like a new world to read of your wonderful developments and growth in all nature. Then the wild stories that formerly came to us about the natives in the early settlement of Australia, together with the rich goldfields, and wonderful flocks and herds that the hand of civilization has utilized and brought up ; all these things make it a country that it sounds more like romance than reality to read about. I would like very greatly to visit portions of your great Southern continent if I were not afraid of the sea ; but I am too much of a land-lubber to ever get away from the shores of my own country. I have been wanting to go to Europe for several yeais, but cannot make up my mind to tackle the Atlantic. So I suppose I will have to confine myself to a trip to California and Mexico. The truth is, there are so "many wonderful things about our own country that it takes a life-time to see them. We have had one of the most bountiful years in Georgia and through the whole South than has ever been known; the fruit and berry crop is remarkable. The wheat and oats the largest crop ever known, and the corn as fine as the land can produce. Col. Peters told me yesterday ho would make more corn than he had made three years before, and his 1 wheat yield is something wonderful. It j would pay to be a farmer if the earth I would yield like it has this year. Our people are changing greatly in the diversity of their farming. More attention is being paid every year to grain, while many are making money rapidly by gardening and fruit raising. About Charleston the market gardening is something wonderful? I hear of one party who had eleven acres in early cabbage which bi ought him over $10,000 ; and the steamers in the spring were carrying five to ten thousand barrels of early potatoes at a trip, which must have netted the producer nearly five dollars a barrel. I hear of one county in lower Georgia which has shipped this year over one hundred thousand dollars worth of water melons. I understand one orchard near Griffin will clear nearly #25,000 on peaches. So you see our old State is booming along. The gold mines of the State aie atti acting a great deal of attention, and capital is coming in rapidly. There are thousands of new spindles going up constantly, and the State will soon be dotted with cotton mills. Our cotton crop, which at List is our most important crop, promises splendidly, though we are having a little too much rain now. Our firm is still in cotton, and doing well. We are now, probably, the largest interior buyers in the U.S. We did last year about 110,000 bales, and think we will reach nearly 120,000 the year closing September Ist, 1882 Atlanta is driving ahead. It would do you good to see how she grows. I hope you will come to America before long. Would be glad to have you come to live. But if you can't do that you at least ought to visit us again.