128 • SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 



Turkey both in Europe and Asia, it would appear from Table 8, is 

 but a trifling exporter of wool. It should be remarked, however, that the 

 wools of the Western Provinces, and of Greece, are generally exported 

 from Trieste to France * Under the late American Tariff, (" Tariff" of 1842,") 

 the export to the United States was becoming an important one — much 

 greater than that to England. In 1846, it amounted, of wools costing less 

 than 7 cents a pound, to 5,744,328 Ibs.t European Turkey has a colder 

 and less uniform climate than Italy, but still it is a fine one,| and being a 

 broken, mountainous country, well adapted to pasturage, and but sparsely 

 populated, {55 to the square mile,) it is wonderful that so little attention 

 has been paid to the culture of wool. But the proud and indolent Turk 

 spurns all rural labor, or all interest in it, leaving it to his vassals — and 

 these, destitute of any security to person or property, taxed, oppressed, 

 liable to be compelled to make forced sales to bey or ayan — or, what is 

 worse, their property seized outright — have little inducement to accumu- 

 late a species of property so easily pounced upon.|| 



Germany (including Prussia and Austria) is now the great producer of 

 fine wools, supplying not only her own manufactories — which are es- 

 timated to consume half the whole product — but exporting the large sur- 

 plus indicated in the Table. Nor is this all ; for to France, the Nether- 

 lands, Switzerland, &c., she is supposed to export half as much as toEng- 

 land.§ The whole region thus included — leaving ovit the Austrian States 

 in Italy, which have already been considered — comprises a territory of 

 468,000 square miles, and a population of 58,800,000, or 130§ to the square 

 mile. The country on the north is level, vast plahis extending from the 

 declivities of the mountains which occupy the center of Germany, to the 

 North Sea and the Baltic. The center is mountainous, and its plains are 

 very elevated. The extreme South is covered with mountains. From the 

 Little Carpathian or Jablunka Mountains, and from the eastern termina- 

 tion of the Styrian and Julian Alps, stretch away the vast Hungarian 

 and Transylvanian plains to the confines of Turkey. 



The great northern plain of Germany is low, sandy, flat, often consist- 

 ing of naked silicious sands or those covered with lichens, interspei-sed 

 with frequent marshes, and terminating in many places on the Baltic in 

 vast morasses, or land redeemed from the sea by dikes. As a whole, the 

 land, particularly in the maritime Provinces, is of an inferior quality, but 

 some portions of it, as for example in Silesia and Saxony, is of a quality 

 ranging from medium to good. The soil of Central and Southern Ger- 

 many (including Austria) must, of course, exhibit many varieties. In gen- 

 eral, however, it may be set down as productive in the valleys, and or- 

 dinary or poor on the high lands. The lower plains of Wirtemberg, 

 Baden, the South of Bavaria, etc., are exceedingly fertile. The plains of 

 Hungary on the south-east not uncommonly exhibit soils of remarkable 

 richness, but they alternate with inferior ones, and with vast and un- 

 healthy morasses. Taken together, the region which I have included un- 

 der the designation of Germany, though not a sterile country, is not 

 favored with soils naturally as productive as those of Italy or Spain ; nor 

 would it at all compare with that portion of the United States west of the 

 Apalachians. 



The climate of Germany is thus summed up by Malte Brun : f[ 



* Somhey, quoted by Bischoff. vol. ii. p. 356. t Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1846. 



t For a picture of this as well as the other natural features of Turkey, both in Kurope and Asia. Greece, 

 and the Ionian Isles — as delicately accurate, as soft and ricb as one of the scenes of Claude — see Childe 

 Harold, Canlo II., the opening of the fJiaour, the Bride of Abydos, etc. Though this may be deemed a sin- 

 gular, it is the very bcft reference, which my reading enables me to make. 



II See Urquhnrt on Turkey and its Resources, p. 139. § Encyclopaidia .■Vmericana; art. Tfool. 



11 Am. ed., vol. ii., p. 594. 

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