RECLAMATION OF WASTE LAND. 425 



the point that in his hfetimc he devoted the main part of 

 his attention to the work, and caused £6,000,000 to be 

 spent on the reclamation of moors and " brooks." In the 

 present day that £6,000,000 may appear a paltry sum. 

 But at the time of Carlyle's hero it meant about eight per 

 cent, of the public revenue, spread over twenty-three years. 

 And when his ministers and administrators in their clumsy 

 red-tape way raised objections, on the score of an. insuffi- 

 ciency of available labour, in respect of a large moor in 

 Friesland — which ^irovince had become Prussian in 1744 — 

 the king promptly ordered the release of half the number of 

 prisoners detained in the military prison of Emden, being 

 rural folk, accustomed to agricultural labour, and their 

 settlement upon the moor, wdth y^ acres of land assigned 

 as property to each. For this they were to pay by instal- 

 ments, presently, after the holdings had been got into good 

 order. In such way arose the new thriving village of ]\Ioor- 

 dorf which exemplifies one specifically valuable feature in 

 the reclamation of bogland, namely, its pronounced utility 

 for settling purposes. Frederick was not the first to dis- 

 cover such aptitude. Reclamation of moorland had even 

 before his day found its way from Holland into the western 

 parts of Germany, of course on Dutch lines. There moor- 

 land abounds to such an extent that about thirty per cent, 

 of the entire territory of the grandduchy of Oldenburg is 

 made up of it. The whilom electorate, then kingdom, of 

 Hanover also has plenty of moorland ; and the two episcopal 

 sees of Bremen and Verden, holding extensive stretcher 

 land in it, were active promoters of colonisation thus 

 combined with reclamation, setting up in this way no 

 fewer than 100 new villages within fifty years. 



However, King Frederick's activity in the matter gave 

 a new fillip to the movement. During his reign he had 

 about 625,000 acres of moorland reclaimed. 



In recent da^^s reclamation of moorland has made very 

 m.arked progress in Germany, owing to the attention devoted 

 to it under the systematic agricultural policy directed by 

 the State, with the aid of many leading private agricul- 

 turists. Perhaps the doings of the Government in the 



