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CHAPTER IV.
If we recross the Rhine at Dtisseldorf, and regain the
high road which we left at Xanten, we come, in the neigh-
bourhood of Crefeld, into a manufacturing district. The
population of the circles of Crefeld and Gladbach is
nealy 600 to the English square mile ; that of the circle
of Kempen exceeds 350 to the mile. The labourers, or
more properly speaking, the weavers, in this district, like
those near Elberfeld, occupy very small holdings, which
they cultivate in the usual garden-like manner tlɪat ac-
companies such allotments. The price of produce is
here, too, generally high, and the complaints of distress
are loud and manifold throughout the district, especially
in the present year, when the failure of the potato-crop
threatens to press heavily upon the poorer portion of the
population. We find ourselves therefore once more in a
part of the country which ought to merge from agriculture
into gardening in a natural manner, and cannot wonder
at the high prices and high rents which these small par-
cels obtain. In the adjacent districts of Geldern and
Jülich, although the soil is better, neither rent nor pur-
chase-money rates so high. Flax is cultivated through-
out, and linen is one of the chief productions of the loom
in these parts. Cotton-factories are creeping into this
neighbourhood, but those as yet established are on a very
small scale. Silk gives the most employment, after linen,
to the hand-loom weavers.
AGRICULTURE ON THE RHINE.
57
The effects of trade and manufactures upon the agri-
cultural interests on the left bank of the Rhine are only
strikingly visible as far as Crefeld, with the adjoining
circle of Gladbach. As we approach Neuss all assumes
an appearance that must be as novel to a Belgian and a
Dutchman as to an Englishman. The whole face of the
country is altered. Large tracts of arable land, denuded
of all planting, and no longer dotted with the houses or
cottages of the cultivators, extend on every side, but
leave the villages clustered round the distant spires, dis-
tinctly visible in testimony of the existence of inhabitants,
who are only seen on the fields at sowing and harvest
time. What we have hitherto seen, together with much
else that we shall have to describe upon the Rhine, is
exceptional in German scenery. But from Neuss to the
mountains near Bonn, and as far as the distant coast of the
Baltic, the habit of living in villages, often at a consider-
able distance from the fields they cultivate, is the leading
feature of German agricultural life. Nearly all the social
and not a few political arrangements are essentially af-
fected by this disposition of the dwellings of the inhabit-
ants, which has materially contributed to form the na-
tional character. In former times it is possible that self-
defence was the cause of a custom so generally adopted.
The number of inhabitants in a village, although unable
to contend with a large armed force, sufficed to ward oft"
the plundering or tyrannical attempts of single knightly
freebooters, at a time when it was found necessary to
sanctify by clerical injunctions the plough in the field,
and to exempt Sundays and holidays from sanguinary
contest by the “ Trêve de Dieu.” That the custom still
prevailed after those barbarous ages had passed away may be