Occasionally the word _mark_ denotes something larger than an estate, and is applied to an entire province. What is the origin of this? In the documents of the sixth and seventh centuries, in the writings of Marius of Avenches, in the laws of the Alamanni and in those of the Bavarians, and later on in the capitularies of Charles the Great, _marca_ signified the frontier of a country.[115] Little by little this word began to mean border-country, and so arose the expression “the marches” of Spain, of Brittany, Carinthia, Austria, Brandenburg; until almost every country had insensibly grown into a “march.” Must we suppose from this, as Maurer would maintain, that the whole German territory was mark-land from the very first? Not at all. We know the origin of each of these marches, and almost the exact date at which they came into existence. One belongs to the ninth century, another to the tenth, and another was not created until the eleventh. To refer them to a remote period of antiquity is an error which might easily have been avoided.[116] We may allow that Maurer proves easily and with abundant evidence that the word _marca_ was often used; but what he had to prove was that this _marca_ meant land held in common, and for this he has not, up to this point, given the slightest evidence. There are, on the contrary, thousands of documents showing that lands within the mark were held as private property, and not in common. In a deed of 711, Ermanrad gives away in perpetuity “thirty acres which he owns in the _marca Munefred_,” and he adds that this land is his “by inheritance from his grandmother.”[117] Another makes a gift “of all he owns in the _marca Bettunis_, whether inherited from his father or his mother.”[118] Maurer is ready to admit that arable land was held as private property, but he will not allow that meadows and forests could be held in the same way. We have seen, however, in documents of the eighth or ninth centuries, that forests and pastures were given away or sold in perpetuity, as well as arable land.[119] In 793 Rachilde makes a gift “of all that is his property in the _marca_ Dinenheimer; and this includes _mansi_, fields, meadows, pastures, waters, and streams.”[120] Meginhaire, to take another case, gives what he possesses in the villa Frankenheim and mentions “fields, _mansi_, meadows, pastures, forests and streams.”[121] The same thing is repeated in thousands of documents;[122] showing that a system of private ownership was in force in the mark, as well as in the villa, and that it extended to lands of every description. This is the conclusion to which we are brought by the twenty documents from the collections of _Traditiones_ referred to by Maurer. Not one of them shows a trace of a community of the mark or of any other community. All the twenty, like the thousands of documents Maurer passes over, are simply deeds relating to private property.