In the beginning of the year 1800, snow fell in most places about three feet deep, but there is no other instance known of so great a fall of it. The continuation of snow, besides its usefulness to grain, renders sleighs common and convenient for the transportation of produce to market, a pair of horses travelling^ with thirty bushels, at the rate of 35 or 40 miles in a day. The winters usually break up about the middle of March.

The cheapness and fertility of land in this country, togethei with its easy communications with different markets, and the teraperateness, and healthiness of the climate in general, art advantages, not possessed in an equal degree in other new settlements, which render this country an object worthy of attention to those who wish their estates in a few years to increase in extent

1182 PAPERS RELATING TO

and value. The price of the best lands, not improved, on the ea^i^ of the Genesee river, is commonly from two to four dollars an acre, and one hundred acres, having twenty or thirty acres improved, and a house and barn, are sold from six to twenty dollars an acre. On the west of the Genesee river, the best unimproved lands sell from one and a half to two and a half dollars an acre, and may be purchased on a credit of six to ten years. Lands that are now selling at four dollars an acre, were sold twelve years ago at only the same number of shillings an acre, and the advance of their value in the course of 10 or 15 years hence will most probably be very considerable. A farm may probably be puchased in the cheapest manner by buying land without any improvement. Three men with a yoke of oxen may clear and fence, and sow or plant ten acres in five or six weeks, and also build a comfortable house ; and such improvement may be hired at the rate of ten or twelve dollars an acre and 50 to 100 dollars for a log house.