THE BELGIAN CAMPINE-SANDS OF EASTERN EUROPE. 513 
The Belgian Campine. 
In the northern part of Belgium, and extending across the 
confines of Holland, is another very similar heath plain, called 
the Campine. This is a vast sand flat, interspersed with 
marshes and inland dunes, and, until recently, considered 
wholly incapable of cultivation. Enormous sums have been 
expended in reclaiming it by draining and other familiar 
agricultural processes, but without results at all proportional 
to the capital invested. In 1849, the unimproved portion of 
the Campine was estimated at little less than three hundred 
and fifty thousand acres. The example of France has prompt¬ 
ed experiments in the planting of trees, especially the maritime 
pine, upon this barren waste, and the results have been such 
as to show that its sands may both be fixed and made produc¬ 
tive, not only without loss, but with positive pecuniary ad¬ 
vantage.* 
Sands and Steppes of Eastern Europe. 
There are still unsubdued sand wastes in many parts of in¬ 
terior Europe not familiarly known to tourists or even geo¬ 
graphers. “ Olkuez and Schiewier in Poland,” says Naumann, 
The same author states (p. 304), that when the Moors were driven from 
Spain by the blind cupidity and brutal intolerance of the age, they de¬ 
manded permission to establish themselves in this desert; but political 
and religious prejudices prevented the granting of this liberty. At this 
period the Moors were a far more cultivated people than their Christian 
persecutors, and they had carried many arts, that of agriculture especially, 
to a higher pitch than any other European nation. But France was not 
wise enough to accept what Spain had cast out, and the Landes remained 
a waste for three centuries longer. 
The forest of Fontainebleau, which contains above 40,000 acres, is not 
a plain, but its soil is composed almost wholly of sand, interspersed with 
ledges of rock. The saud forms not less than ninety-eight per cent, of the 
earth, and, as it is almost without water, it would be a drifting desert but 
for the artificial propagation of forest trees upon it. 
* Rconomie Rurale de la Belgique, 'par Emile de Lavelete, Revue des 
Deux Monde », Juin, 1861, pp. 617-644. 
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