But of all objections to be made to the wisdom of the government,
the strongest may be grounded on the condition of the agricultural
population in various parts of Dalmatia. Nothing is done to improve
their knowledge of the primary art of civilisation. Their implements
of husbandry are described as being on a par with those used by
the unenlightened inhabitants of Asia Minor. The waggons to be
encountered in the neighbourhood of Knin are referable to the same
date in the progress of invention, as are the conveniences in vogue
in the plains about Mount Ida. The mode of tillage is like that
followed in the remote provinces of Turkey; the ploughs of the
rustic population are often inferior to those to be seen in the
neighbouring Turkish provinces. Lastly--most incredible of all!--we
learn that there is not to be found in the whole district of the
Narenta such a thing as a mill, wherein to grind their corn. Will
it be believed that the rustics have to send all the corn they grow
into the neighbouring province of Herzegovina to be ground? The
inconvenience of such an arrangement may easily be conceived. Their
best of the bargain--_i. e._ the being obliged to seek from across
the frontier all the flour they want--is bad enough, and must be
sufficiently expensive; but their predicament is apt to be much
worse than this. In that part of the world, people are subject to
stoppages of intercommunication. The plague may break out in the
Turkish province, and thus a strict quarantine be established, to
the interdiction even of provisions that generally pass unsuspected;
or the country may be flooded, and the ways impassable. What are
the poor people to do then for flour? Why, the only thing they can
do is, to send their corn to their nearest neighbours possessed of
mills--that is to say, to Salona, or to Imoschi. As these places
are distant, the one about thirty-five miles, and the other about
seventy miles, we may fancy how serious must be the pressure of this
necessity. The ordinary expense of grinding their corn is stated
to be about 13 per cent. What it must be when the seventy miles'
carriage of their produce is an item in the calculation, we are left
to conjecture. Now these poor folks are not to be blamed--they have
no funds to enable them to build mills; but that they are left to
themselves in this inability is a reproach to the government under
which they live. This inconvenience so intimately affects their
social wellbeing, that we cannot put faith in the benevolence of the
rulers who allow them to remain so destitute.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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