6 AGRICULTURE OX THE RHINE. 



people turn the advantages of soil and climate with 

 which they are endowed. In this volume we propose to 

 afford the inquiring traveller, or such as are not less 

 inquiringly disposed because they stay at home, a clue to 

 the varied map of agricultural activity which the banks 

 of the Rhine unfold, A greater variety of objects and 

 modes of cultivation is assuredly presented by i>o other 

 region of equal space. In no country has the well-being 

 of the people been more intimately interwoven with its 

 agricultural policy and prosperity than m Germany. 

 Few tours present a larger sphere of observation to the 

 landowner, the farmer, and the statesman, than that 

 which, with the aid of Rhenish steamers and railroads, 

 he can accomplish in the space of a few weeks. With 

 these preliminary observations we enter at once upon our 

 task of tracing the peasant to his cottage, the lord to his 

 castle, and both to the great mart of the world, at which 

 all are buyers and sellers, not alone of produce and ma- 

 nufactures, but of consideration, influence, comfort, and 

 independence. He is but a soiry calculator who does 

 not look beyond the money price at which he buys and 

 sells, as we shall have frequent occasion to show in the 

 course of this tour. We shall often have to test the value 

 of the epithets dear and cheap; and perhaps no other 

 district can so fully illustrate how relative the notions 

 are that attacli to those words. 



The entrance into Germany by the Rhine presents 

 nothing very attractive to the eye. Long before the 

 traveller reaches the Prussian frontier, the neat farm- 

 houses that in Holland line the carefully walled or fas- 

 cined banks of the great stream, gay in their shutters 

 and doors of red or green, and grouped with the coppice 



