88 March — Little Fields. 



XVIII. 



Scenery round the Val Ste. Veronique — Little Fields — Oxen and 

 Horses — Ploughing with Oxen — Example for the Intellectual — 

 How a Peasant Ploughed — Beautiful Grouping — Splendor of the 

 Ploughshare — Polish of Labor — Independence and Dignity of 

 Ploughmen — Resolute Will and Strength needed in Ploughing. 



IT is one of the most striking peculiarities of the 

 scenery around the Val Ste. Veronique, that al- 

 though the country is almost entirely covered with dense 

 forest, and although the land is a sea of hills with nar- 

 row valleys between them, there are here and there lit- 

 tle patches of it in full tillage, and these are often placed 

 in the most unlikely situations. You will occasionally 

 come upon a little field, islanded in the forest, and 

 occupying very likely just the most awkward bit of 

 steeply-sloping hillside that is to be found there, and 

 yet this little field will be ploughed and sown with the 

 utmost diligence and affection. I know two or three 

 such places, which not only are on a most inconvenient 

 slope to begin with, but have also on their own sur- 

 face a variety of minor inconveniences, in the shape of 

 miniature hills and valleys, or lumps and holes, which 

 seem as if they would baffle the most ingenious plough- 

 man who ever stood behind a team of oxen. With 

 horses, it is unnecessary to observe, such work as this 

 would be simply an impossibility. The heaviest and 

 most sluggish breed of horses in the world would still 



