512 THE TUSCAIT MAEEMMA. 



Before any serious attempts were made to drain or fill up the 

 marshes of the Maremma, various other sanitary experimenta 

 were tried. It was generally believed that the insalubrity of the 

 province was the consequence, not the cause, of its depopulation, 

 and that, if it were once densely inhabited, the ordinary operations 

 of agriculture, and especially the maintenance of numerous do- 

 mestic fires, would restore it to its ancient healthfulness.* In 

 accordance with these views, settlers were invited from various 

 parts of Italy, from Greece, and, after the accession of the Lor- 

 raine princes, from that country also, and colonized in the Ma- 

 remma. To strangers coming from soils and skies so unhke those 

 of the Tuscan marshes, the climate was more fatal than to the in- 

 habitants of the neighboring districts, whose constitutions had 

 become in some degree inured to the local influences, or who at 

 least knew better how to guard against them. The consequence 

 very naturally was that the experiment totally failed to produce 

 the desired effects, and was attended with a great sacrifice of life 

 and a heavy loss to the treasury of the state. 



The territory known as the Tuscan Maremma, ora ma/ritima, 

 or Maremme — for the plural form is most generally used — lies 

 upon and near the western coast of Tuscany, and comprises about 

 1,900 square miles Enghsh, of which 500 square miles, or 320,000 

 acres, are plain and marsh, including 45,500 acres of water sur- 

 face, and about 290,000 acres are forest. One of the mountain 

 peaks, that of Mount Amiata, rises to the height of 5,Y80 feet. 

 The mountains of the Maremma are healthy, the lower hills much 

 less so, as the malaria is felt at some points at the height of 1,000 

 feet, and the plains, with the exception of a few locaHties favor- 

 ably situated on the sea-coast, are in a high degree pestilential. 

 The fixed population is about 80,000, of whom one-sixth live on 

 the plains in the winter and about one-tenth in the summer. 

 Nine or ten thousand laborers come down from the mountains of 

 the Maremma and the neighboring provinces into the plain, dur- 

 ing the latter season, to cultivate and gather the crops. 



species of waterfowl which, though very fat, are, ecclesiastically speaking, 

 meagre. 



* Macchiavelli advised the Government of Tuscany " to provide that men 

 should restore the wholesomeness of the soil by cultivation, and piuify the air 

 by fires." — Salvagnoli, Memorie, p. 111. 



