232 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



humid. Fortunate country, where the earth needs 

 not to be painfully torn to open her bosom to 

 fecundity, where i? is sufficient, if I may use 

 the expression, for (tie husbandman to indicate 

 the kind of riches which he wishes to have, in 

 order to their being lavished upon him ; where, 

 in a word, Nature seems to remit to man, who is 

 incessantly offering violence to her, all labour 

 and even all acknowledgment ! This trefoil yields 

 three successive crops, before it again resigns 

 its place to the rice : the second of these is always 

 more beautiful than the other two, because then 

 the plant has room to spread out its roots, and 

 the stalk is no longer cramped by the stubble, It is 

 easily conceivable how beautiful and brilliant such 

 an alternation of produce must be, and which no 

 other country on the globe can display. The barsim, 

 green or dried , is the most common, and the most 

 succulent food of the brute creation, whether in 

 pasture, or in the fold. One essential quality of 

 this excellent fodder, and which it is more natural 

 to ascribe to the climate than to difference of spe- 

 cies, is this, that I never saw it occasion to the 

 animal that sudden and sometimes mortal infla- 

 tion, which our trefoil scarcely ever fails to pro- 

 duce, when the animals pasture on it, or eat it 

 newly cut, in too great a quantity, and without 

 mixture. 



In 



