368 DEVON GREENERY 



More beautiful land to farm than those soft slopes 

 of the lower Exe Valley we do not hope to see, and 

 if the rents, about 353. an acre, seemed pretty high 

 as compared with other parts of the country, good 

 land is rarely dear ; it is the cheap stuff that usually 

 proves so expensive. Leases had ceased to be general ; 

 only about one farm in five in the district was then 

 let on lease. Labourers, we were told, received 143. 

 or i 5 s. a week in money, their cottages free, a breadth 

 of potatoes in the root field, and their wood was drawn 

 for them. They also had two quarts of cider a day, 

 though on some farms this was commuted for an 

 extra fifteeripence a week. With harvest money a 

 man's earnings would be equivalent to about i8s. 

 or 2 os. a week, with a cheap house a sum on which 

 an agricultural labourer has hitherto been able to 

 manage very comfortably, though he is now beginning 

 to feel the pinch of rising prices. But for all that 

 we were told that emigration was considerable among 

 the younger men ; the Colonial agents were inde- 

 fatigable, and there is still enough of the old spirit 

 of adventure left in the Devon blood to determine 

 men to have a flutter with fortune across the seas. 

 As we have seen him, the agricultural labourer is not 

 disposed to quarrel with his work, only with its lack 

 of opportunity to make an independency. 



