56 



HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE. 



Part I. 



42 



chiefly wheat, which is reaped by peasants from the mountains, some of whom also stay 

 and assist in sowing the succeeding crop ; whence, the whole disappear ; and the ma- 

 remmes remain a desert with a few men, whom Chateauvieux designates as halt 

 savages who run over these solitudes like Tatars, armed with long lances, and covered 

 with coarse woollens and untanned skins." The lance they use in huntmg down the- 

 oxen when any are to be caught for the butcher, or to break-m for labor ; and the 

 clothing alluded to has been recommended by the medical men of Rome, as the most 

 likely to resist the attacks of the malaria (bad air), or pestilence. 



302 The agricultural impler^ients and operations differ little from those of other parts 

 of Italy. The plough, or araire, of Rome {fig. 41.), is a rude implement, with a broad 

 flat share, on the hinder end of which the .. ^ 



ploughman stands ; and thus drawn along, 

 his weight makes a deeper furrow. Two 

 strips of wood (the bin^e auris of Virgil), 

 about eighteen inches long, are often attached 

 to the share, diverging a little from each other, 

 and these serve to lay open the furrow like 

 our mould-board. In the operation of pro- 

 pagating the vine, cuttings are planted in 

 trenches four feet deep, into which stones have been previously thrown, for the alleged 

 purpose of encouraging moisture about the roots. The same mode was practised in 

 Virgil's time. {Georg. 

 ii. 346.) The common 

 Roman cart {Jig. 42.), 

 is supposed to have 

 been originally design- 

 ed by the celebrated 

 Michael Angelo, in his < ! . '"" 

 quality of engineer and 

 wheeler. Buonarotti. 

 {See Lasteyrie, Col. des 

 Mali. ^c. ) 



303. The farm of 



Campo Morto (field of death) includes the whole property of St. Peter's church in 

 Rome, which is supported from its sole revenue. This vast estate is situated in the 

 Pontine marshes, and the following outline of its management is taken from a letter of 

 Chateauvieux, written in July 1813 ; 



304. The farmery, the only building on an estate of many thousand acres, consists of a central building 

 and two wings, the ground-floor of the central part consists of an immense kitchen and five large rooms, 

 the latter without windows, and unfurnished. The first story consists of six rooms, used as corn- 

 cliambers, with the exception of one, which was furnished, and served to lodge the principal officers. 

 The two wings contained large vaulted stables, with hay-lofts over. One female lived in the house, in 

 order to cook for the officers or upper servants, whose wives and familieslive in the towns as do those of 

 the shepherds. There was no garden, or any appearance of neatness or cleanliness, and not a fence or a 

 hedge, and scarcely a tree on the whole farm. 



305. Thefattore, or steward, was an educated man, and a citizen of Rome, where his family lived ; he and 

 all the other officers, and even shepherds, always went out mounted and armed. 



306. The reapers were at work in a distant part of the estate, when Chateauvieux went over it : they 

 were an immense band, ranged as in the order of battle, and guarded by twelve chiefs or overseers on 

 horseback, with lances in their hands. These reapersi;had = lately arrived from the mountains; half 

 were men and the rest women. " They were bathed in sweat ; the sun was intolerable ; the men were 

 good figures, but the women were frightful. They had been some days from the mountains, and the foul air 

 had begun to attack them. Two only had yet taken the fever ; but they told me, from that time a 

 great number would be seized every day, and that by the end of harvest the troop would be reduced at 

 least one half. What then, I said, becomes of these unhappy creatures ? They give them a morsel of 

 bread, and send them back. But whither do they go ? They take the way to the mountains ; some re- 

 main on the road, some die, but others arrive, suffering under misery and inanition, to come again the 

 following year." 



307. The corn is threshed fifteen davs after being cut : the grain is trodden out under the feet of horses, 

 cleaned, and carried to Rome. The 'straw was formerly suffered to be dispersed by the wind ; but it is 

 now collected in heaps at regular distances over the country, and always on eminences : there it lies 

 ready to be burned on the approach of " those' clouds of grasshoppers which often devastate the 

 whole of this country." 



308. The live stock of the farm consisted of a hundred working oxen ; several hundreds of wild cows and 

 bulls kept for breeding, and for the sale of their calves and heifers ; two thousand swine, which are fatted by 

 nuts and acorns in the forests belonging to the estate ;' a hundred horses for the use of the herdsmen. There 

 were four thousand sheep on the low grounds, and six hundred and eighty thousand on the mountains 

 belonging to the estate. Of the latter, eighty thousand were of the Negretti breed, whose wool it was 

 intended to have manufactured into the dresses of all the mendicant monks in Italy, and into the great- 

 coats of the shepherds : the rest were of the Pouille breed, which produces a white wool, but only on the 

 upper part of the body. As mutton is not good, and but little eaten in Italy, they kill most of the tup- 

 lambs as soon as they are born, and milk the ewes to make cheese. The temporary flocks had not ar- 

 rived when Chateauvieux was at Campo Morto, the fields not being then cleared of their crops. 



309. The farmer of this extensive domain is M, Trucci, who pays a rent for it 

 of 22,000 piastres (4950/.). This, said M, Trucci to Chateauvieux, " supposes an 

 extent of three thousand rubbi, or six thousand acres, of culturable land. I have nearly as 



