The Circassians still entertain the ancient nomadic idea that the soil is common property. Occupancy, however, gives a title for the time being; and individuals consider the land enclosed or improved by them as their own. But it is usage that no person shall claim more land than he can fairly occupy; and at his decease it is either divided equally among his sons, or is enjoyed by them in common. This, nevertheless, does not prevent the chiefs and nobles in certain parts of the country from cultivating considerable tracts by means of serfs and captives, to whom in many instances are supplied the means and appliances of farming on condition of their making return of one half of the products in kind. Nor is the lot of these laborers a hard one; for oftener will they be seen racing, wrestling, pitching quoits, and sleeping under the hedges and wattled fences than bending over the short-tailed plough or hoe. Agriculture, in its season, is prosecuted with such a degree of diligence, however, as suffices to supply the few simple wants of the mountaineer. The soil of the valleys and river bottoms, which are cleared by setting fire to the long grass and brushwood, generally yields a large increase of every species of grain. Here also cotton, tobacco, indigo, and the vine are indigenous; many of the fruits of the most favored climes of Europe are found wild in the woods, as the peach, the pear, and the cherry; almonds and nuts of various kinds abound; the olive yields its oil; the mulberry feeds the silkworm; the figtree is purple with fruit; the pomegranate ripens its crimson pulp; the palm does not refuse its dates; and, in short, in the vales and slopes which extend from the level of the steppes up to the snow-line of the mountains there is almost every variety of grain and fruit which grows between the tropics and the poles. But though the soil, watered by innumerable streams and irrigated by the springs of the mountains, is exceedingly productive, the implements of husbandry are all of the rudest. The plough with its short and almost perpendicular handles, its flat and arrow-shaped share, barely scratches the ground; the coarse but sweet grasses are mown with a stubbed scythe; and the wains are heard creaking through the hills on revolving axles, with wheels hewn out of solid pieces of wood, and in every respect as primitive as those used by Priam and his Trojans. Nor less so are the sledges for transporting hay down from the upper mountains; for they consist of a long limb of a tree trimmed on one side, while upon the branches of the other is reared the conical stack which, when the snow has fallen in winter, is easily drawn down into the valleys.