Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
The turnips look pretty well all the way down the valley; but, I see
very few, except Swedish turnips. The early common turnips very nearly
all failed, I believe. But the stubbles are beautifully bright; and the
rick-yards tell us that the crops are good, especially of wheat. This is
not a country of pease and beans, nor of oats, except for home
consumption. The crops are wheat, barley, wool, and lambs, and these
latter not to be sold to butchers, but to be sold, at the great fairs,
to those who are going to keep them for some time, whether to breed
from, or finally to fat for the butcher. It is the pulse and the oats
that appear to have failed most this year; and therefore this Valley has
not suffered. I do not perceive that they have many _potatoes_; but what
they have of this base root seem to look well enough. It was one of the
greatest villains upon earth (Sir Walter Raleigh), who (they say) first
brought this root into England. He was hanged at last! What a pity,
since he was to be hanged, the hanging did not take place before he
became such a mischievous devil as he was in the latter two-thirds of
his life!
The stack-yards down this valley are beautiful to behold. They contain
from five to fifteen banging wheat-ricks, besides barley-ricks, and
hay-ricks, and also besides the contents of the barns, many of which
exceed a hundred, some two hundred, and I saw one at Pewsey, and another
at Fittleton, each of which exceeded two hundred and fifty feet in
length. At a farm, which, in the old maps, is called Chissenbury Priory,
I think I counted twenty-seven ricks of one sort and another, and
sixteen or eighteen of them wheat-ricks. I could not conveniently get to
the yard, without longer delay than I wished to make; but I could not be
much out in my counting. A very fine sight this was, and it could not
meet the eye without making one look round (and in vain) _to see the
people who were to eat all this food_; and without making one reflect on
the horrible, the unnatural, the base and infamous state, in which we
must be, when projects are on foot, and are openly avowed, for
_transporting_ those who raise this food, because they want to eat
enough of it to keep them alive; and when no project is on foot for
transporting the idlers who live in luxury upon this same food; when no
project is on foot for transporting pensioners, parsons, or dead-weight
people!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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