AGRICULTURE ON THE RHINE. 165 



are all villagers living on the produce of their own lands 

 which they for the most part till in person. Some ex- 

 ceptions arc found in landowners who have made money 

 by the sudden rise in the value of land for building, occa- 

 sioned by the removal of the court from Biberich, and 

 the rapid increase of the annual visitors to the waters. 

 Both these changes have occurred within a few years, 

 and have unhinged the steady revolving activity of the 

 husbandman, without having as yet introduced the more 

 refined and larger sphere of action that belongs to towns. 

 The small landowners possess their grounds invariably 

 on three sides of the town ; and the nearest arable land 

 is at least a quarter of a mile distant from the owner's 

 house, while the " gemarkung" or parish extends five 

 miles in breadth, without having outlying farms to them 

 with the few exceptions that we shall notice. The ob- 

 server who notices the march of dung-carts, ploughs, 

 harrows, and other implements at five o'clock in 

 the morning often to perform a distance of two miles of 

 road, and to return after work to a twelve o'clock dinner, 

 will not be at a loss to calculate the amount of labour that 

 is annually wasted by this arrangement. The visitor has 

 constant occasion to wonder at the village appearance of 

 great part of a town in which 20,000 fashionable strangers 

 congregate from all parts of Europe during three months 

 of the summer. Were any one, strangers or domestic spe- 

 culators, or even the authorities of the country, to project 

 a change that would make farming a valuable occupation, 

 while the town would answer the purpose for which 

 towns were intended, in consequence of the alteration it 

 would be found altogether impracticable. It may be 

 assumed to be matter of utter impossibility to purchase at 

 any price one hundred acres of contiguous land, even in 



