An Artilleryman’s Diary–Jenkin Lloyd Jones

Glendale, Monday, Oct. 12. Very pleasant day and health good. Went to graze at 10 A. M., returned at 12. We grazed in the middle of the wood. The grass is dry and withered, but better than nothing. One from Wisconsin would be surprised to find the season so far advanced, if he were to come here. The corn is yellow and the leaves are sear and dead, and everything looks much later than it usually does in Wisconsin. But the change here is slower and it gradually falls into a healthy old age, while there everything is green in the evening and next morning blighted by the bitter frost. With proper culture in intelligent hands, vegetation of all kinds can be brought to a higher degree of perfection here than there. But instead of finding extensive fields waving with clover and rich with beauty, we find but small worn-out patches with deadened trees, standing as a monument of the enterprising race that has so long inhabited these parts—ignorance and slavery.