Notwithstanding the unfortunate position of this people, by no means enviable to their neighbours, the miseries of famine in Transylvania sometimes cause considerable emigrations of peasants from that vast province into Wallachia and Moldavia. All the best lands in Transylvania being in the hands of Hungarians, Szecklers, and Saxons, the others who form the bulk of the population are driven into hilly and barren situations, where at all times they subsist with difficulty; and of late years the more than ordinary scarcity that prevailed has driven about twenty thousand peasants, subjects of the emperor, into the dominions of the Hospodars, where the great disproportion between the number of agricultural hands and the extent of arable land, renders such emigrations extremely useful. They are placed on the same footing as the native peasants with regard to tribute. The changes of residence that sometimes take place among the peasantry are not detrimental to the collection of the imposts, as it is the business of the Ispravniks of each district to ascertain, every six months, the number and means of the individuals living within the limits of their Ispravnicates, and amenable to taxation. The deficiency of any particular district being made up by the increase in another, no loss accrues to the treasury. There is no regular system exercised with respect to the arrangements of the landholders and peasants. In general, however, the latter are allowed a share of the produce in kind, with an understanding that the burthen of the taxes and impositions falls upon them; not that the former would be averse to taking upon themselves the payment of their tenants’ contributions, but because government is decidedly against the introduction of a similar regulation, the amount and nature of the imposts being nominally fixed, but always exceeding the regular rates. As the Boyars proprietors of land in Wallachia never cultivate the estates for their own account, but merely rent them to those who can make the greatest offer of ready money, the less valuable are sometimes given to the whole body of peasants, residing in them when the advances are made by them. The richest estates give an income of fifty or sixty thousand piasters: but they are divided and subdivided for marriage-portions for the proprietors’ daughters; and if the custom continue for a few generations longer, a system, something similar to the agrarian law, must be the future consequence. The manner of tilling the ground does not materially differ from that of other countries in Europe; oxen are employed instead of horses.