38
AGRICULTURE ON THE RHINE.
Cleves the feudal tie soon gave way to a calculation of
mutual advantage between the owner and cultivator, and
the custom of farming out land was here adopted earlier
and has been continued on a more extensive scale than in
any other part of Germany.
That the opinion we have ventured, in ascribing the
free position of the peasant and landowner in the Duchy
of Cleves to the influence of trade, is not a forced one,
is proved by the fact-cited by Rive in his valuable work
on the peasants’ holdings in Westphalia. It appears that
when, in the fourteenth century, the county of Mark, on
the right bank of the Rhine, was united with Cleves, the
rulers of the latter district could not understand why the
relations between the feudal lords and the peasants should
not be allowed to regulate themselves in the natural manner
prescribed by mutual interest, as they had seen take
place on the left bank. They could not enter into the
feelings of the peasants to depend upon customary privi-
leges, or on the interference of the government to protect
them from encroaching superiors. But it is likely too
that the statesmen of Cleves calculated too lightly the
disadvantageous position of Westphalia, which lay out of
the high road of trade, and possessed no traversable roads.
To this county of Mark we now invite our readers to
follow us, and for that purpose recommend them to follow’
the road from Marienbaum to Xanten, an old Roman
station, prettily situated about a mile from the river’s
bank. The antiquarian may there seek the possible site
of the wood in which Civilis excited the Bataviaris to
revolt against Cæsar, and the position of the celebrated
Castra Vetera. Lovers of art will admire the magnifi-
cent church, which is too little visited by strangers, and
AGRICULTURE ON THE RHINE. 39
where the architect will find the first specimen of that
combination of the round with the pointed arch, which
is CharacteristicoftheRhenish architecture of the middle
ages. We may take a passing steamer at Xanten and
land on the opposite bank at Ruhrart, at the mouth of
the navigable and romantic river Ruhr, whose rocky bed
and rapid current at Miihlheim are crossed by a hand-
some chain-bridge.
These two places are the chief seat of the coal-trade,
which has attained a great extent on the Rhine.