Even yet, after the lapse of so many centuries, its richest soils remain undrained-marshy lands abounding throughout the kingdom, for the reclamation of which the aid of government is now invoked.*

Turning next to Belgium we see the rude and poor Luxemburg and Limburg to have been cultivated from a period far beyond the range of history, while Flanders, now so rich, remained until the seventh century an impenetrable desert. As late even as the thirteenth century, the forest of Soignies covered the site of the city of Brussels, and the fertile province of Brabant was in a great degree uncultivated; yet have we but to pass to the next adjoining province, that of Antwerp, to find, in the now almost abandoned Campine, evidences of cultivation dating back to the commencement of our era. There are found the ancient city of Heerenthals, with its walls and gates-and Gheel, which dates back to the seventh century; and there the traveller passes over the domain of the Counts of Merode, with its castle of Westerloo, one of the oldest in Belgium; in the ditches of which are yet found implements of war dating back to the period of the Romans. Everywhere, the oldest villages are found on the knolls, or in the sand, near the swamps with which the country was once to so great an extent covered. The wool trade of the country had its origin in the Campine, and it was to the necessity for communication between the people of these and other poor lands that the existence of many of the towns and cities was due. In the days of Cæsar, the site of the present Maestricht was known only as the place of passage of the Maes-and that of Amiens was then but little more than the place of passage of the Somme; while the Broecksel of a later period, now Brussels, came into notice because of being used by those who required to cross the Senne.

*

of the dogmas, and a mechanical observance of the practices of the Roman church. * To stop this intellectual contagion, nothing less was necessary than to strike the people collectively, and annihilate the social order from which its independent spirit and its civilization proceeded." Hence the crusade against the Waldenses, and Albigeois, which resulted in the incorporation of these provinces into the Kingdom of France, the most disastrous event in the history of Southern France. "The old civilization of these provinces," continues M. Thierry, "received a mortal blow from their union with countries less advanced in cultivation, in manufactures, in policy, and in taste for the arts."-History of the Conquest of England, vol. iii. p. 324.

* Journal des Economistes, Nov. 1855, p. 210.

In the early history of Holland, we see a miserable people, surrounded by forests and marshes covering the most fertile lands— but living on islands of sand, and forced to content themselves with eggs, fish, and very small supplies of vegetable food of any kind. Their extreme poverty exempted them from the grinding taxation of Rome, and by slow degrees they increased in numbers and in wealth. Chief among the provinces, however, from an early period, was the narrow district lying between Utrecht and the sea, which eventually gave its name Haupt, or headland, to the entire region and there it is we find the poorest soil, capable of yielding little beside bent, or fern. Unable by means of agriculture to obtain food, the Dutch sought it from manufactures and trade. Wealth and population continued to grow, and with their growth came the clearing of woods, the draining of marshes, and the subjection to cultivation of the rich soils in the outset so much avoided; until at length we find in it the richest nation of Europe.

§ 7. Further north, we meet a people whose ancestors passed from the neighborhood of the Don, through the rich plains of Northern Germany, and finally selected for themselves the barren mountains of the Scandinavian peninsula-as the land best suited for them in their then existing condition.* Poor as was the

* The philosophy of this is thus most accurately exhibited by one of the best travellers of our time, a gentleman who has given much attention to every portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. "What could have induced a migratory population from the Tanais (the Don), on which traditionary history fixes their original seat, after reaching the southern shores of the Baltic, to have turned to the north and crossed the sea to establish themselves on bleak, inhospitable rocks, and in the severe climate of Scandinavia, instead of overspreading the finer countries on the south side of the Baltic ? * * We make a wrong estimate of the comparative facilities of subsisting, in the early ages of mankind, in the northern and southern countries of Europe. If a tribe of red men from the forests of America had been suddenly transported in the days of Tacitus to the forests of Europe beyond the Rhine, where would they, in what is called the hunter state, that is, depending for subsistence on the spontaneous productions of nature, have found in the greatest abundance the means and facilities of subsisting themselves? Unquestionably on the Scandinavian peninsula, intersected by narrow inlets of the sea teeming with fish, by lakes and rivers rich in fish, and in a land covered with forests, in which not only all the animals of Europe that are food for man abound, but from the numerous lakes, rivers, ponds, and precipices in this hunting field, are to be got at and caught with much greater facility than on the boundless plains, on which, from the Rhine to the Elbe, and from the Elbe to the Vistula, or to the steppes of Asia, to hem in a herd of wild animals in their flight.”—Laing, Chronicles of the Sea Kings, Introductory Dissertation, p. 39.

general character of the soil, the poorest portions of it were thosc first settled. Everywhere throughout the country is found a repetition of the facts already described in regard to Scotland-the marks of early agriculture being found on high and poor lands that long since have been abandoned. To such an extent has this been the case, that it has afforded countenance to the belief that the peninsula must really have been the seat of the great "Northern Hive," the overflow from which had peopled Southern Europe -it having been supposed that no one would have cultivated these very poor soils when it rested with himself to select for his use the very rich ones that, according to M. Ricardo, are always first selected for occupation. The facts here observed are, however, only a repetition of those we see to have occurred in North and South America, in England, Scotland, France, and Belgium.

Looking next to Russia, we find a recurrence of the same great fact.* "Almost everwhere," says a recent English traveller, "we see the poorest soil selected for cultivation, whilst that of the richest description remains neglected in its vicinity; for the poorer soil is generally the higher ground, which requires no trouble in draining."+

In Germany, according to Tacitus, "but a small part of the open and level country was occupied ;" the natives dwelling "chiefly in forests, or on the summit of that continuous ridge of mountains by which Suevia is divided and separated from other tribes that lie still more remote." Looking now to the country watered by the Danube and its tributaries, we see the population abounding at the heads of the streams, but gradually diminishing as we descend the great river, until at length reaching the richest lands, we find them entirely unoccupied. Pausing for a moment in Hungary, we see in "the Puszta" the cradle, or rather, as we are told by a recent traveller, "the keep of Hungarian nationality"—and here

* "The government of Pskow occupies the ninth place in regard to its relative extent of arable land, whilst, in consequence of the bad quality of its soil, it is one of the poorest in regard to its productive forces. On the other hand, the governments of Podolia, Saratow, and Wolhynia, which are the most fertile portions of the empire, occupy a rank far inferior to many others, in regard to their extent of cultivated land."-Tegoborski's Russia, vol. i. p. 131.

† Revelations of Russia, vol. i. p. 355. Manners of the Germans, chap. xliii.

we have a wide plain extending from the Theiss to the Danube, containing 15,000 square miles-consisting of a series of sandhills that roll away like waves, until earth and sky are blended together.*

Beyond the Theiss, rich lands abound, exhibiting no signs of life except "countless flocks of wild birds, cranes, and ducks, and divers, among the reeds—there, on a bank, a vulture tearing some carrion to pieces; and now and then the bold eagle or the hawk flying heavily by, scarcely any of these stirring at our approach. A lonely, desolate scene enough, but a part of those immense marshy districts in Hungary whose drainage, under an efficient agriculture, would reclaim so much good land; and which are now the causes of such deadly fevers and diseases."†

Looking into Italy, we see a numerous population in the highlands of Cisalpine Gaul, at a period when the rich soils of Venetia were unoccupied. Passing southward, along the flanks of the Apennines, we find a gradually increasing population, with an increasing tendency to the cultivation of the better soils; and towns whose age may almost be inferred from their situation. The Samnite hills were peopled, Etruria was occupied, and Veii and Alba were built, before Romulus gathered together his adventurers on

"The expanse, in truth, resembles the great ocean solidified. Mile after mile it stretches away in a dull, depressing uniformity, unbroken by a village, a house, or a tree. Indeed, the name by which the plain is known— the Puszta-means "empty or "void ;" and it is well described by its name. It is bare, naked, and desolate, and destitute even of a stream of water. Here and there the long pole of a draw-well rises against the sky, like a spectral arm; or like the mast of a stranded ship. Occasionally a herd of cattle strays along in search of herbage, watched by mountain herdsmen. The only other sign of life is a solitary crane or stork, perched on one leg, amidst a bog white with the powder of soda; or a vulture wheeling high in the air in search of prey. A profound silence rests on the plain; and when broken by the herdsman's voice, or the bellowing of the cattle, the sound startles the ear, as it speeds, one knows not whence, on the wings of the wind. * * Its denizens are pure and unadulterated Hungarians; the same men as the Magyars, when, a thousand years ago, they wandered away in search of "fresh fields and pastures new," from the plains of distant Asia. Every man is a horseman, and every one is able and ready to become a soldier in defence of his country. The inhabitants of the Puszta are herdsmen, following great droves of horses, buffaloes, snow-white bullocks, sheep, and swine, from pasture to pasture; and remaining the whole year round beneath the canopy of heaven. The wildest amongst them are the swineherds, and their greatest distinction is to be a redoubtable fighter. They are pre-eminently the heroes of the plain. Even their very pleasures are warlike and sanguinary."

† Brace's Letters on Hungary, N. 12.

the banks of the Tiber; and Aquileia filled a place in Roman history that was denied to the site of the modern Pisa.

In the island of Corsica there are three distinct regions; on the lower one of which the sugar-cane, the cotton-plant, tobacco, and even indigo could be grown; and it might be made, as we are told, "the India of the Mediterranean."* The second "represents the climate of Burgundy, Morvan, and Bretagne, in France," all of which latter the reader has seen to have been the seats of early settlement; and here it is, accordingly, that "the greater part of the Corsicans live in scattered hamlets on the mountain side, or in the valleys." Looking next to Sicily, we learn that "the natives seem to have been of rude pastoral habits, dispersed either among petty hill-villages, or in caverns hewn out of the rock, like the primitive inhabitants of the Balearic islands and Sardinia ;" and yet, of all the islands of the Mediterranean, none so much abounded in those rich soils which, according to M. Ricardo, should have been first appropriated.

Turning now to Greece, we meet the same great and universal fact. Earliest amongst the settlements were those of the hills of Arcadia, which long preceded those on the lands of Elis watered by the Alpheus; and the meagre soil of Attica, whose poverty was such as to have been assigned as a reason why it had escaped the desolating presence of invaders of early ages, was among the earliest occupied; while the fat Boeotia followed slowly in its rear. On the hill-tops, in various quarters, the sites of deserted cities presented, in the historical times of Greece, evidences of former occupationg and cultivation. The short, steep slope of eastern Argolis was early abandoned as incapable of yielding a return to labor, yet there was the seat of "the Halls of Tiryns," and there now are found the ruins of the palace of Agamemnon, and of the Acropolis of Mycena. The place of the city, as we are told by Aristotle, was chosen because the lower part of the plain was then so marshy as to be unproductive;" whereas, in his own time, or almost eight centuries afterwards, the plain of Mycena had become barren, and that of Argos well drained and fertile.|| North of the

* Gregorovius's Corsica, p. 143.

Grote. History of Greece, vol. iii. 368. § Grote. History of Greece, vol. ii. 108. Leake. Travels in the Morea, vol. ii. 366.

† Ibid., p. 144.