. Wayfaring in France, from Auvergne to the Bay of Biscay. Presently the pedlar, myself, and the innkeepersson—a young man who had received his educationelsewhere, and had learnt much that did not chimein with his present surroundings—were in a lightcart, drawn by a lively horse, speeding along theroad over the moors. Here and there, near thevillage, were small fields of buckwheat in the midstof the heather and bracken. My companions ex-plained that each commune was surrounded by aconsiderable extent of moorland that belonged to it, E 50 THE MOORS OF THE CORREZE and that any native of the comm
. Wayfaring in France, from Auvergne to the Bay of Biscay. Presently the pedlar, myself, and the innkeepersson—a young man who had received his educationelsewhere, and had learnt much that did not chimein with his present surroundings—were in a lightcart, drawn by a lively horse, speeding along theroad over the moors. Here and there, near thevillage, were small fields of buckwheat in the midstof the heather and bracken. My companions ex-plained that each commune was surrounded by aconsiderable extent of moorland that belonged to it, E 50 THE MOORS OF THE CORREZE and that any native of the commune had the rightof selecting a piece, which became his absoluteproperty after he had cleared it and brought itunder cultivation ; thus anyone could have whatland he wanted in reason for nothing-. Ouite anArcadian state of things this, were not the conditionsof nature such as to chill the ambition to acquiresuch freeholds. Three years of back-breakinglabour are needed before the land is fit to be putto some profitable purpose. And then what does it. JEANRQN — Ploughing the Moor. E V5NUGN yield ? Buckwheat, and perhaps potatoes. Al-though the peasants have the faculty of extendingtheir landed property in the manner described, theconsideration of means generally stands in the cannot afford to work and wait three existence is truly wretched, and if it were notfor the luxuriant chestnut-woods, which cover thesides of the narrow valleys or gorges with which thebarren plateau is deeply seamed every few miles, A PRIMITIVE PLOUGH 51 the population of the region would be more scantythan it is, for the chestnut goes far to sustain thepeople through the worst months of the year. The plough used upon these moors, on thecausses of the Ouercy, and in some other districtswhere the barrenness of the soil has kept the in-habitants for centuries imprisoned within the circleof their old routine, is one of the simplest that theworld has known. It differs but slightly fro
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1913
