Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808Pinkney, lieutenant-colonel (Ninian)
History
Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808
Pinkney, lieutenant-colonel (Ninian)
France -- Description and travel
farm, and sees land of the most productive powers reduced to sterility
by slovenly management. A suggestion immediately arises in his mind--how
much might this land be made to produce under a more intelligent
cultivation? Full of this idea he perhaps inquires the price, and
finding it about one-tenth of what such land would cost in England,
immediately makes his purchase, settles, and begins his operations. Here
his eyes are soon opened. He must send to England for all his
implements; and even then his French labourers neither can or will learn
the use of them. An English ploughman becomes necessary; the English
ploughman accordingly comes, but shortly becomes miserable amongst
French habits and French fellow-labourers.
In this manner have failed innumerable attempts of this kind within my
own knowledge. It is impossible to transplant the whole of the system of
one country into another. The English or the American farmer may
emigrate and settle in France, and bring over his English plough and
English habits, but he will still find a French soil, a French climate,
French markets, and French labourers. The course of his crops will be
disturbed by the necessity of some subservience to the peculiar wants of
the country and the demands of the market. He cannot, for example,
persevere in his turnips, where he can find no cattle to eat them, no
purchasers for his cattle, and where, from the openness of the climate
in winter, the crop must necessarily rot before he can consume it. For
the same reason, his clover cultivation becomes as useless. To say all
in a word, I know not how an English or an American farmer could make a
favourable purchase in France, though the French Government should come
forward with its protection. The habits of the country have become so
accommodated to its agriculture, that they each mutually support the
other, and a more improved system can only be introduced in the
proportion in which these national habits can be fundamentally changed.
But such changes must necessarily be gradual and slow, and must not be
reckoned upon by an individual.
I found myself so indisposed at Clermont, that I retired very early to
my bed. My complaint was a giddiness in the head, brought on by riding
in the sun. Every country has its peculiar medicine as well as its
religion, and in every country there are certain family receipts,
certain homely prescriptions, which, from their experienced efficacy,
merit more attention than a member of the faculty would be inclined to
give them. My host at Clermont accordingly became my physician, and by
his advice I bathed my feet in warm water, and getting into bed between
the blankets, after drinking about a quart of cold spring-water, I can
only say that the remedy had its full effect. After a violent
perspiration in the night I fell into a sound sleep, and awoke in the
morning in such complete health and spirits, as to ride to Chantilly to
breakfast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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