(Concluded from last Number.)
Though the cultivation of land by metayers may be unfavourable
to its amelioration, still it may be easily imagined, that the
smaller products of every little farm will be greater, as each must
possess both a garden and a poultry yard. Every field in Lombardy is
encircled with a band of poplars, mulberries, oaks, &c., and they
are often so thick that the eye can scarcely penetrate the rich
growth of leaves. From the boughs, luxuriant vines hang in festoons,
and present to the passing traveller a scene of rural beauty and
enjoyment which he may search for in vain in other countries.
The shade of the trees does not injure the crops, such is the
invigorating effect of a humid soil and an Italian sky.
Of the constant succession of crops we here know very little; indeed
it is the result of experience alone. So much depends on climate,
that we imagine the rotation practised elsewhere can never afford
certain information to us. The largest quantity of the most valuable
product, which may be taken from a spot of ground in any number of
years, is a problem whose solution is of the greatest importance. In
Piedmont the rotation is generally as follow:
1st year, Indian corn, manured, Beans--hemp.
2d year, Wheat.
3d year, Clover, turned up after the first cutting and fallowed
by a fallow.
4th year, Wheat.
This rotation, says M. de Chateauvieux, is one of the most abundant,
and may be pursued indefinitely, notwithstanding the recurrence of
wheat, though perhaps the result may be atributed to the abundance
of manure furnished by a meadow cut three times. After stating that
a farm of sixty arpents supported a family of eight or nine persons,
who kept twenty-two head of large cattle, of which two oxen and a
cow are fattened every year, as well as one or two hogs, that it
gave about one hundred and twenty-five dollars worth of silk, and
furnished more wine than could be consumed, that the preparatory
crop of Indian corn and beans almost subsisted the metayers, and
that nearly all the grain might be sold, as well as a great quantity
of smaller products, he celebrates the industry and management of
the Piedmontese proprietors in the following terms: 'It will be easy
for you, after this, to conceive how Piedmont is perhaps, of all
countries, that where the economy and management of land is best
understood, and the phenomenon of its great population and immense
exportation of produce will thus be explained.'
In the neighbourhood of Placenza, cattle rather than grain
constitute the wealth of the farmer. The cows and oxen are
distinguished by immense horns and beautiful figures, and we believe
that our American race is in no way to be compared with them.--Their
origin is said to be Hungarian; the males are noble animals, but the
cows give little milk. To remedy this inconvenience, two thousand
cows are imported from Switzerland, and the valuable qualities of
the animal are thus perpetuated. The cattle are almost universally
of a slate-grey colour. The rotation of crops is here as follows:
1st year, Indian corn and hemp, manured.
2d year, Wheat.
3d year, Winter beans.
4th year, Wheat, manured.
5th year, Clover, ploughed after the first cutting.
6th year, Wheat.
This succession, however, can only be pursued in a rich soil, which
is manured every three years. There is one article we beg leave to
notice particularly. We imagine that the winter bean might easily
be introduced among us, and with great advantage, as it is capable
of supporting the cold of the severest winter. It is sown in the
beginning of September, and it must have considerable growth before
autumn to resist the attacks of the cold. The stalk then perishes
by the frost, but at the moment the genial warmth of the spring
is felt, two or three new stalks arise, which bloom in the month
of May, and the beans are fit to gather at the end of July. The
management of this important vegetable we give in the words of
the author. 'La culture est extrêmement simple; aprés a récolte
du blé fumé, on retourne la terre par un seul labour et on la
laisse émietter par l'influence de la saison. Aux premiers jours de
Septembre on séme les féves, soit en les enterrant á la charrue,
soit en les recoverant á la herse, soit enfin avec le semoire, qui
les place par rangées, de manière à pouvoir au printemps les sarcler
avec la houe à cheval. Si on ne suit pas cette dernière méthode, il
faut les sarcler à la main, dans le courant d'avril.' The culture of
the winter bean is suited to argillaceous soils, and while it allows
the proper intervals between ploughing the ground and sowing wheat
which succeeds, it is admirably calculated to maintain the fertility
of the ground.
The plains which border on the Po, in the vicinity of Parma and
Lodi, support those fine animals, whose milk is converted into the
celebrated Parmesan cheese. The grass is here far more valuable than
any crop of grain. In the summer the cows are housed and fed with
the green grass of the first and second mowings: that of the third
is converted into hay. At the end of autumn the cows are allowed
to pick up whatever may be left in the fields. These meadows are
perhaps the most fertile on earth; they are generally mowed four
times a year. The cheese is here never made from less than fifty
cows, and as the farms are small, there is one common establishment,
to which the milk is brought twice during the day; an account of it
is kept by the cheesemaker and settled in cheese every six months.
The same plan has been introduced in Switzerland.
In the Milanese, the farms are larger than in other parts of Italy,
because the culture of the grasses demands less care and labour than
other branches of farming, and fewer advances. Irrigation is here
carried to such an extent, that every two or three arpents can be
inundated by its own canal. The good quality of the grass, however,
in time becomes deteriorated, other plants gradually spring up in
the place of the grasses; the sluices are then closed, and the
ground is ploughed for hemp; after which, and a crop of legumes,
oats, and wheat, it is again laid down in grass. A meadow will
generally last fifteen years, and the course of harvests returns
every five. M. de Chateauvieux gives the following remarkable
outline:
1st year, Hemp, followed by legumes.
2d year, Oats.
3d year, Wheat, followed by legumes.
4th year, Indian corn.
5th year, Wheat.
15th year, Natural meadow, dunged every 3 years, and mowed 4
times a year.
-- --
20 years 67
-- --
Of these sixty-seven crops from the same ground there are sixty-one
for the use of animals, five for the sustenance of man, and only one
for his clothing. There is, perhaps, no country on the face of the
earth which can boast such a proportion of agricultural products.
To obtain this result, the ground is manured, very profusely
however, five times in twenty years, and it is a singular fact that
this manure is applied always to the grass and never to the grain.
The culture of rice occupies a part of Italy, and is a source of
great profit to the owner of the soil. The difficulties in its
cultivation are so trifling, that, contrary to the usual custom, the
ground is let out at a fixed rent of one hundred and sixty francs
the arpent; three crops are received every five years. As with us,
these rice grounds are most unhealthy, and the stagnant water which
covers them produces disease in all the surrounding country. The
unfortunate peasant rarely escapes its deleterious effect, and the
government, sensible of this constant draft on human life, have
prohibited the further extension of the culture of this grain.
One of the most singular features in the physical character of
Italy, is the constant elevation of the beds of rivers, particularly
the Arno and the Po, by means of depositions of earth and stones,
brought down by the heavy rains from the mountains.--This had become
so alarming, that the raising of dykes yielded to a very ingenious
operation called _Colmata_, by which the water of the river was
allowed to overflow a certain space, and this very deposition,
about three or four inches in a year, made to raise the level of
the adjacent shores. But this process, which is fully described by
Sismondi, must necessarily have a limit. Embankments are resorted
to, and in some places the bed of the Po is absolutely thirty feet
above the level country. The Po even now frequently overflows and
devastates its banks; the inhabitants, provided always for the
calamity which unfortunately is not unfrequent, take to their
boats and wait till the inundation has subsided. There would seem
to be little doubt that at some day not far distant, the whole
delta of the Po, or _Polesino_, as it is called, will become one
wide and wretched marsh. Even now the roads are often impassable.
Ferara, consecrated by the genius of Ariosto and Tasso, will be
extinguished, and Revenna, already fallen from its high honours,
be known only as the deserted capital of a potentate of the lower
empire.
M. de Chateauvieux, climbing the mountains which separate Tuscany
from Modena, and leaving behind him the fertile plains of Lombardy,
entered those lofty regions, where the earth does not produce
sufficient sustenance for the inhabitants, who are employed with
their flocks of goats and sheep, in constantly traversing the
mountains in a manner somewhat similar to that of the Spanish
shepherds. The author employs himself in describing the scenery of
the Corniche, and though it is perhaps among the finest in Europe,
and he might have felt all its changeful beauty and sublimity, still
we think he is far more fortunate in his delineations of rural
economy.
The agriculture of Tuscany has been so fully and ably investigated
by Sismondi,[2] that little was left to M. de Chateauvieux. The
valley of the Arno, in truth the only fertile part of the dukedom,
(for the rest is composed of precipitous mountains, or that silent
and hideous district the Maremma) stretches from Cortona to Pisa,
and forms about one-sixth of its whole territory. The farms are
very small, being from three to six arpents, so that one pair of
oxen supplies the necessities of ten or twelve metayers, in the
working of their little plat of ground. They manifest, however,
their extravagance in maintaining a horse, which may transport their
produce to market, and their wives and daughters to mass or a
rustic ball.--The most general rotation of crops is here:
1st year, Indian corn, beans, peas, or other legumes dunged.
2d year, Wheat.
3d year, Winter beans.
4th year, Wheat.
5th year, Clover, sown after the wheat, cut in the spring and
followed by _sorgho_.
[2] Tableau de l'agriculture Toscane, par J. C. L. Sismondi.
This _sorgho_ is a sort of parsnip, which is reduced into flour, of
which they make a bad soup and a poor polente. The ground is manured
only once in five years, a circumstance which abundantly proves
the richness of this deep alluvial soil. Notwithstanding all this
fertility and a cultivation which resembles rather that of a garden,
than a farm, the country does not produce enough to resist the
effects of a bad year. The metayers live with the greatest economy,
and though their cottages are built with a taste which seems
indigenous to the country, the interior exhibits a total absence of
all the conveniences of life, and supplies but a frugal subsistence.
Such is the view which M. de Chateauvieux has taken. But in our
opinion the peasantry of Tuscany under all circumstances, are not
only more neat in their persons, but better clothed, and apparently
enjoying more happiness, than that of any other district in Italy.
There can be little doubt, that all this distress and privation
arises from the system of the metayers; a system which, deriving
its existence from the feudal state, is equally to be deprecated,
whether we consider the political character of the community or
the individual happiness of its members. The man who has no other
possession than his industry, and who cannot hope to change his
situation, can never have such a stake in the state, as to render
him either an intelligent or valuable member of it. On the other
hand, the metayer, bound to furnish half the seed and to divide and
sell the produce, pretty generally consumes one year the fruits of
the last; or if there be a surplus, how is it to be invested? There
would seem to be no other mode, than in the sticks which he is bound
to supply, for the support of the vines, for the landlord provides
the stock and repairs the house. He then can only lay up his money
in his chest, or spend it on his pleasures. Thus the end of a year
finds him no better off than at its commencement, for want of such
an interest in the soil, as would secure him from the effects of his
negligence and indifference in its cultivation.
Before leaving this part of Italy, we ought to mention a subject
which is of some little importance; the manufacture of straw hats,
which has just commenced in our country. It is doubtless a most
profitable exertion of industry. The raw material costs nothing,
and M. de Chateauvieux informs us that this branch annually amounts
to three millions (we presume) of francs. The straw is of beardless
wheat, cut before it is ripe, and whose vegetation has been thinned
(étiolée) by the sterility of the soil. This soil is chosen among
calcareous hills; it is never manured, and the grain is sown very
thick. The women who are employed in making the Leghorn hats, earn
from about thirty to forty cents per day, no trifling sum in Italy.
The Maremma or country of the Malaria forms the third district,
extending from Leghorn to Terracina, and from the sea to the
mountains, and having a width of twenty-five or thirty miles. M.
de Chateauvieux speaks of this singular country in the following
terms: 'Le ciel reste également pur, la verdure aussi fraiche,
l'air aussi calme; la sérénité de cet aspect semble devoir inspirer
une entiére confiance, et je ne saurais cependant vous exprimer l'
espèce d'effroi que l'on éprauve malgré soi en respirant cet air
à la fois si suave et si funeste.' A country so very singular in
its character would necessarily require a very peculiar system of
management. Our author developes this system in a visit he made to a
domain called Campo Morto, in the most deserted part of the Maremma.
Here was a Faltore, charged with the administration of the farm. The
whole Maremma of Rome is in the hands of eighty proprietors, who are
called mercanti de' tenuti, and reside as well as their Fattori in
the city.--On this farm there were four hundred horses, of which,
one hundred were broken; two thousand hogs, which ran in the woods
and fed on the acorns; some hundreds of cows, who give no other
revenue than the sale of the calves, which is estimated at about
eight dollars each cow; one hundred oxen used to the plough, and
about four thousand sheep. The rent of this farm was about eighteen
francs the arpent of cultivated land, amounting in all to about
$22,000. The annual profit was about $5000, besides interest at five
per cent. on the capital of the flocks.
In the midst of this establishment there was a vast _casale_ or
farm house, destitute of furniture and inhabited but a very few
days in the year.--Every thing around breathed the most perfect
desolation; all was vast and silent. The harvest had just commenced
and a thousand labourers, of whom one half were women, had descended
from the mountains to gain a small pittance during a few days, by
reaping the rich grain of six hundred and sixty arpents for the
lordly proprietor, and if they did not perish at their toil, to go
back after having respired the elements of a miserable death. Some
days had elapsed since the harvest began, and only two labourers had
been attacked by the fever of the Malaria; every day would, however,
increase the number, till at the completion of their task, scarcely
half of them would remain. 'What then becomes of these unfortunate
people?' said M. de Chateauvieux. 'They get a piece of bread and
are sent off,' was the inhuman reply,--'But where do they go to?'
'To the mountains; some stop on the road, some die, others get home
almost expiring with misery and famine, only to follow the same life
next year.'
The Malaria is one of those singular phenomena whose origin has
baffled every effort at discovery, and the remedy for which has
never yet been ascertained. Attempts have been made to cultivate
the soil of the Maremma, and colonies were established within its
circuit, but the resistless scythe of sure and silent death swept
away the presumptuous intruders.--During half of the year, a few
miserable beings, armed with lances and clothed in skins, the
living images of death, wander over these devoted plains with their
flocks; and if accident should delay their return to the mountains,
fall certain victims to this fatal disease. Immense numbers of
sheep, cows, horses, and goats find a subsistence on these wastes
and supply the markets of Rome and the Val d'Arno. The soil is
extremely steril; the whiteness of the pure argil being only alloyed
by a mixture of sulphur, which is produced in great profusion.
The cause of the Malaria, as we before remarked, has escaped all
the investigations of science; it still remains a mystery no less
profound, than its effects are dreadful. Some have supposed it to
arise from the low pools of stagnant waters, which collect on the
face of the Maremma; but the disease prevails on the heights of
Radiocofani and within the lofty precincts of Volterra.
Some have supposed that the disease was caused by exposure to the
sudden changes of temperature at the going down of the sun.[3]
This is supported, it is true, by the very weighty face related
by de Bonsteten in his _Voyage au Latium_, of a man who resided
at Ardea sixteen years without being indisposed. But we doubt
whether any solution that has ever been proposed was so perfectly
ridiculous or so completely destitute of foundation. Do the people
then die in the towns of this disease, where we know it to be a
custom not to go out after dark, of mere exposure to a changing
atmosphere? A short distance from the Porta del Popolo at Rome are
two villas, one on each side of a small lane, but both situated on
high ground. We were informed that during the summer season, a man
would run very imminent danger of death in sleeping in one, while
he might remain in the other with perfect impunity. How is this
to be reconciled with the doctrine that the disease caused by the
Malaria is nothing but fever and ague, brought on by exposure? The
truth is, this dreadful enemy every year makes further inroads; no
longer satisfied with pursuing the wretched thousands of enervated
labourers and shepherds, who at evening crowd for safety into
Rome, it is advancing into the city in the midst of darkness, and
spreading from the Porta del Popolo, on the one side, and from the
Palatine on the other, up the sides of the Quirinal. In 1791, says
M. de Chateauvieux, Rome had a population of 160,000; at the time of
this visit, it numbered only 100,000, of whom more than 10,000 were
gardeners, shepherds, and vine-dressers. Four years afterwards we
heard it computed at from 80 to 90,000. Undoubtedly political events
have had no small effect in diminishing the number of inhabitants;
but still we believe the Malaria must have had a no less powerful
influence. Annually it roams over the finest villas without the
walls, and ravages large districts of the town within; and neither
the magnificence of the villa Borghese, nor the luxuriant beauty
and towering pines of Doria Pamfili, can resist the assaults of
this silent and deadly foe. Time seems to hold its mantle over the
queen of cities, and to prepare by a fate as extraordinary as its
former history, to blot it out from the admiration of mortals.
Encompassed already by the awful stillness of a desolate waste,
once filled up with sixty towns, which the antiquarian in vain
attempts to trace, perhaps her own site may be hereafter unknown;
and some future traveller may boast with enthusiasm of having once
again penetrated its deserted streets, of having visited the spot
enobled by the heroic virtue of Junius Brutus, or the eloquence and
wisdom of Cato the censor. But we must leave a subject, on which we
could dwell still longer with delight, and conclude our notice of a
book, of which we would hope our readers have received a favourable
impression. The subject of the work is not only important in itself,
but most interesting to us. Italy is essentially an agricultural
country; she is neither a manufacturing nor a commercial state.
It is by her agriculture, that she supports more than 17,000,000
of inhabitants, or about 1237 to a square league; a population
far superiour to that of France or England. It is her agriculture
which laid the foundations of those splendid cities which crowd her
plains; it is her agriculture, which, should it ever be protected
by an enlightened government, will again yield nourishment to the
principles of liberty, and raise her to a level with the most
respectable nations of Europe. M. de Chateauvieux has devoted
himself to the illustration of this noble subject, and we are
confident that his work will not only afford many valuable hints
to the practical farmer, but some lessons to our statesmen, in any
future attempts which may be made to elevate manufactures at the
expense of the most dear and invaluable interests in our country.
[3] See Edinburgh Review for March, 1817, p. 57.
From the Edinburgh Farmer's Magazine.