Having heard of a horse-power dredge called the _Hippopotamus_ that was in use on the Delaware River, he made inquiries concerning it but feared that it would not serve his purpose, as he would have to go from one hundred to eight hundred or a thousand yards from high water-mark for the mud--too far out for a horse to be available.

Mechanical difficulties and the cost of getting up the mud proved too great for him--as they have proved too great even down to the present--but he never gave up the idea and from time to time tried experiments with small plots of ground that had been covered with the mud.

His enthusiasm on the subject was so great that Noah Webster, of dictionary fame, who visited him in this period, says that the standing toast at Mount Vernon was "Success to the mud!" Every scientific agriculturist knows that erosion is one of the chief causes of loss in soil fertility and that in the basins and deltas of streams and rivers there is going to waste enough muck to make all of our land rich.

But the cost of getting this fertility back to the soil has thus far proved too great for us to undertake the task of restoration.

It is conceivable, however, that the time may come when we shall undertake the work in earnest and then the dream of Washington will be realized.
The spring and summer of 1785 proved excessively dry, and the crops suffered, as they always do in times of drought.