Three years of back-breaking
labour are needed before the land is fit to be put to some profitable
purpose. And then what does it yield? Buckwheat, and perhaps potatoes.
Although the peasants have the faculty of extending their landed property
in the manner described, the consideration of means generally stands in the
way. They cannot afford to work and wait three years. Their existence is
truly wretched, and if it were not for the luxuriant chestnut-woods, which
cover the sides of the narrow valleys or gorges with which the barren
plateau is deeply seamed every few miles, the population of the region
would be more scanty than it is, for the chestnut goes far to sustain the
people through the worst months of the year.
The plough used upon these moors, on the _causses_ of the Quercy, and
in some other districts where the barrenness of the soil has kept the
inhabitants for centuries imprisoned within the circle of their old
routine, is one of the simplest that the world has known. It differs but
slightly from the one figured in the most ancient of Egyptian hieroglyphs,
and is really the same as that which was used in Gaul under the Romans.
Indeed, it has not the improvements that the Romans introduced.
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