Author : Frances Parthenope Verney
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781331473954
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (739 download)
Book Synopsis Peasant Properties, Vol. 1 of 2 by : Frances Parthenope Verney
Download or read book Peasant Properties, Vol. 1 of 2 written by Frances Parthenope Verney and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-15 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Peasant Properties, Vol. 1 of 2: And Other Selected Essays The distances for the owners to go to their bits of land are very great. There are few cross-roads, so they must tramp along the grassy muddy paths between the fields to reach their work no trees were to be seen but the occasional rows of hideous black poplars, with branches trimmed up for fuel and to prevent their overshadowing the soil. There was not room for a real tree anywhere in the economy of that world. In Belgium the number of small parcelles is increasing. According to official statistics in 1846 there were 5, 500, 000, and 758, 000 proprietors. Thirty years after, in 1876, the parcelles had increased by about a million, and there were 1, 131, 000 proprietors. It appears as if the petite culture only answered with market gardens near the great towns, which give advantages of good markets and plenty of manure in all countries alike. Here, however, the towns are many and close together. The bits of land were generally the size of a large allotment, about an acre or so (one man will own several of these), and the effect on the naked country is as of a patchwork quilt thrown over it; a small brown patch for the ploughed land, a light green for the mown grass, a dark green for the uncut clover, a yellow one for the corn, and then da capo, over and over again. There seemed a ull level of poverty everywhere; there was not a house as big as an ordinary English farmhouse to be seen, particularly from Brussels to Verviers; everything skimped, cramped, uniform in ugliness and squalid wretchedness. We drank tea in the inner court of the hotel at Brussels, alfresco, with an old French priest, who had come in to see the Belgian Exhibition and was very discontented with affairs at home. 'Gambetta, c'est un farceur, un buveur d'estaminets il ya dix ans; allez, c'est une famuse degringolade pour la France d'etre gouvernee par un homme comme ca.' About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
