Arable land

“ Interspersed among the hills are numerous fine tracts of arable land, which may in general be alleged of the valleys of the numerous rivers and creeks by which the country is watered. The soil upon the hills is generally productive, except where the surface is rocky and the declivities abrupt, which is more particularly the case in the vicinity of rivers, where the high lands are divided into numerous knobs, being cut by deep ravines with abrupt and precipitous banks. ”

“ From the edge of the downs begin capital arable fields, generally of very great dimensions and in some places running a mile or two back into little cross valleys formed by hills of downs. After the corn-fields come meadows on each side, down to the brook or river. The farmhouses, mansions, villages and hamlets are generally situated in that part of the arable land that comes nearest to the meadows. ”

“ The arable land was divided into two or, more usually, three fields, which were cut up into strips bounded by balks and allotted to the villagers in such a way that one holding might include several disconnected strips in each field—a measure designed to prevent the whole of the best land falling to one man. ”

“ Subsequent alterations in its surface, due to erosion and other factors, gave rise to the present uplands and lowlands, which have been of determining influence in the peopling of the section, the rugged uplands offering so hard a subsistence that they were nowhere willingly chosen for settlement so long as land might still be had in the lowlands. ”

“ We have arid lands in the West, cut-over lands in the Northwest, Lake States, and South, and also swamp lands in the Middle West and South, which can be made available through the proper development. Much of this land can be made suitable for farm homes if properly handled. But it will require that each type of land be dealt with in its own particular fashion. The arid land will require water ”

“ The soil is sharpened.’ He explained to me that in Red river valley, where the land is heavier, it would take very many years to bring about that result, and it would not be of so much value to this generation, but in the lighter soil, farther west, it has a marked effect, and, as he argued, there is no question about it. ”

“ Eleven thousand acres of fertile hill and dale, sinking and swelling gently, so as to attract all the benignity of sun or breeze—not more densely wooded than is common on our own western shores, and watered to an ornamental perfection—truly on any civilized land, such is a goodly heritage. ”

“ Years ago, when the supply of government land had seemed inexhaustible, the tide of settlers had swept around the forgotten frontier, on beyond the arid and semi-arid land to the fertile soil and the gold fields on the Pacific Coast. But the time had come when this neglected prairie was the only land left for a land-hungry people. ”

“ It is estimated that about one million acres on the Atlantic and Baltic shores of Europe have become, since the destruction of the forests, a moving desert of sand dunes, rolling inland, burying the fertile soil, and rendering the land barren by the sand showers sprinkled over it ”

“ Except in the immediate valleys of the larger rivers there is very little land that would be suitable for agriculture. From one hundred and fifty miles inland down to the sea, the country is of an entirely different character again; that is to say, it is country that is originally overlain by from a very few feet at its edge to one hundred feet or more, a very tough impervious boulder clay, which holds up the water, and on which the drainage, up to the present time, is of a very imperfect character. ”

“ There is little left of the large timber which once filled the region, but much young growth, and there are hundreds of acres of cleared land and pasture-ground where the forests are springing fast and covering the country once more, as if they had no idea of losing in their war with civilization and the intruding white settler. ”

“ Of the travellers who passed over the vast stretches of prairie or mountain or woodland, many saw the possibilities of this vast land, and prophesied as to what might be wrought here, when, in the dim and distant future, which none could yet foresee, settlements should have pushed out from the east and occupied the land. ”

“ The bottoms of the valley, many of which are of rich alluvial loam, have lain fallow ever since, and will perhaps continue to be neglected until the genius of civilization shall have spread its beneficent influences over the land. This soil is the more valuable for cultivation on account of the facilities for irrigation which the river affords; as it too frequently happens that the best lands of the settlements remain unfruitful for want of water. ”

“ This new alluvial land, formed by the rivers and the sea, is of astonishing fertility, and is so much the more valuable, as the ancient soil of these countries, being covered with heaths and peat-mosses, is almost everywhere unfit for cultivation. The alluvial lands alone produce subsistence for the many populous cities that have been built along these coasts, since the middle age, and which perhaps would not have attained their present flourishing condition, without the aid of the rich deposits [131] which the rivers had prepared for them, and which they are continually augmenting. ”

“ The effect is a curious one, for often when one is approaching a settlement on the river-banks, the fact that the watercourse and its cultivated surrounding land is far sunk below the level of the plain renders it invisible until one reaches the very edge of the decline. Up to that point one’s eye ranges from the level plain on which one is to where it commences again beyond, its barren appearance and uniform colouring presenting the effect that both join, and it seems impossible that a large colony with gardens and irrigated lands can exist in the neighbourhood. ”

“ In all mountain regions where population has begun to press upon the meager limits of subsistence, level land and soil are at a premium. In ancient Peru space was begrudged for the dead.1293 Cities covered considerable space on the roomy intermontane plateaus; but in the narrow lateral valleys, houses and temples were built on rocks, in order to reserve every fertile spot for agriculture.1294 The traveler notices the same thing throughout the Alps. Compact villages cling to the mountain sides, leaving the alluvial hem of the stream or level glacial terrace free for the much needed fields. ”

“ The soil is pure sand; and, though the holly, with its coral berries, and the wild myrtle grow in considerable abundance, mingled with the pines, these preponderate, and the whole land presents one wearisome extent of arid soil and gloomy vegetation. Not a single decent dwelling did we pass: here and there, at rare intervals, a few miserable negro huts squatting round a mean framed building, with brick chimneys built on the outside, the residence of the owner of the land and his squalid serfs, were the only evidences of human existence in this forlorn country. ”

“ It is no less a one than what proportion of the soil of England—of its commons, charts, and forests, its scars, fells, and moorlands—shall be retained to be used in common by her people as open unappropriated space both now and in the time to come. ”

“ It was necessary, of course, that the place to be selected should be pretty low land, and near the river; for if the land was high, the work of excavating the basins would have been so much increased as to render the undertaking impracticable. ”

“ At present, this species of inundated land offers no inconvenience to the people, except in the production of miasm, and even that, perhaps, becomes too much diluted with the atmosphere to produce mischief before it reaches the settlements on the borders of the prairie. Hence the inference is correct, that our inundated lands present fewer obstacles to the settlement and growth of the country, and can be reclaimed at much less expense, than the swamps and salt marshes of the Atlantic States.
2. River Bottoms or Alluvion. The surface of our alluvial bottoms is not entirely level. ”

“ This Ball, or lands containing this diversified matter or soil, contains about eighty acres in circumference; which amuseth most men how the earth, clay, sand, totty-stones, or spar-stone land, should yet be so high above the solid rocks to the top of this mountain, unless Noah's flood was universal, and reached to this island, as the labouring tinners believe and tell us. ”

“ As one effect of the subdivision of the land, the soil, so far as nature permits, is highly cultivated, its appearance fertile, finished, beautiful, and in striking contrast with the dominating vast, bare mountain rocks and snowbeds. The many towns and cities bear abundant signs of a general prosperity, their roads, bridges, stores, residences, and public buildings betokening in the inhabitants industry and energy, and freedom to employ these qualities. ”

“ We gave the greatest land-grant ever given to an individual or a corporation in the history of the world—sixty millions of acres; when I say to Mr Hill, of course I mean the Northern Pacific. We gave outright a strip of land 2000 miles long, 20 miles wide in the States and 40 miles wide in the Territories! Worse than that: instead of giving it in a solid body, we gave every even section, so that in timber lands it carried an immense advantage over anybody else coming in from the outside. ”

“ Here and there rise ugly hills or ugly mountains, black or russet as the case may be. This country is parcelled out into farms larger than English parishes, varying, as they do, from six thousand to twenty thousand acres of land. ”

“ These ridges are continually intersected by valleys, or rather ravines of great fertility, but they are so narrow, and the good land contained in them is so very limited in extent, that from the first moment of the establishment of a colony here the individuals composing it must necessarily be scattered over a large space of country. ”

“ Their way undulated over rich land, and the dull feeling of mind which mere flat country engenders was destroyed by gradually rising hills, crowned with granite, pudding-stone rocks, and bluestone. Broad flat lands and valleys, many miles in extent, moderately wooded and grassed, lay round them. Their expectations of finding good country were exceeded, for "a very great portion of this tract was land of the finest description, fit for the plough, sheep, or cattle;" ”

“ The good land in the immediate neighbourhood of the town, may be said to run in patches of fifty and a hundred acres. The site of the Government Garden, which I have already noticed, is of the richest possible soil. The Scotch Gardener told me, there was nothing on Earth that would not grow upon it. The vein continues down the face of the mountain, towards the sea about one hundred acres possibly, until it arrives at an extensive swamp and back water, where the soil becomes poor and sandy. ”

“ Sir Oliver Lodge recently presided at an important meeting held in Birmingham to consider the question, and it was agreed that, now that 164 the mineral wealth of the locality had been exhausted, it was only right that the surface of the land should be altered for good by a system of tree-planting, the land itself being rendered useless for mining, agriculture, and habitation. ”

“ From time to time it has been necessary to make changes in the land laws, as when the discovery of mineral lands, reserved by congress called for the substitution of lieu lands, but there has been no diminution in quantity or value. ”

“ This being the nature of the country the farmer can but hedge his land and fields with stone: he is in a measure compelled to do so, since the earth is full of it and the land strewn with boulders; to make a field he must remove it and bestow it somewhere. Now after centuries of this process of removing and piling up stones, the farm land has become covered over with a network of these enduring hedges, or fences, intersecting each other at all angles ”

“ The present ridges and valleys of the Highlands are entirely the work of erosion. When they began to be traced, the area probably presented the aspect of a wide undulating tableland. Since that early time the valleys have sunk deeper and deeper into the framework of the land, the ridges have grown narrower, and the mountains have arisen, not by upheaval from below, but by the carving away of the rest of the block of which they formed a part. In this evolution, geological structure has played an important part in guiding the erosive tools. ”

“ Judging even by his own imperfect test, that of local situation—how imperfect I need not stop to point out—is it true that in England or France at the present day the uncultivated part of the soil consists of the plains and valleys, and the cultivated, of the hills? Every one knows, on the contrary, that it is the high lands and thin soils which are left to nature, and when the progress of population demands an increase of cultivation, the extension is from the plains to the hills. ”

“ Gored acres. No man's land.
Two other small details marking the open field system require only to be simply mentioned. Corners of the fields which, from their shape, could not be cut up into the usual acre or half-acre strips, were sometimes divided into tapering strips pointed at one end, and called 'gores,' or 'gored acres.' In other cases little odds and ends of unused land remained, which from time immemorial were called 'no man's land,' or 'any one's land,' or 'Jack's land,' as the case might be.
Hitchin, Purwell Field. ”

“ There is a standing controversy waged among settlers, as to whether it is better to take up such land as ours or to go in for a tract of open fern-land. On open lands you can easily clear the ground, and, though it will not, as a rule, yield grass for mere surface-sowing, yet the plough can be put into it within a year or two. ”