174
AGRICULTURE ON THE RHINE.
ment of IIesse Darmstadt bought the largest, and has
laid it all down under Iucern. Adjacent is the Ingcl-
heimau, which is let on the condition of the farmer’s
Iuriushingfour hundred loads of dung annually for Count
Ingelheim's vineyards at Ingelheim and in the Rhinegau.
On a third island, immediately opposite Bieberich, there
is a considerable farm, at present untenanted, belonging
to the Duke of Nassau.
In the course of a few rides and drives along the foot
of the Taunus range, it is easy for a visitor to make him-
self fully acquainted with the farming processes and
division of property. Fruit is a part of the crop on all
estates near the mountains, and individuals as well as
whole parishes make it a profitable source of revenue.
Every village has a peculiar fruit for which it is famous.
Frauenstein furnishes cherries; Schierstein, apples and
grapes. We have already noticed the large chestnut-
plantation belonging to Wiesbaden. The village of
Brennthal, about four miles east of Wiesbaden, draws a
revenue of 5000 florins from its fruit, mostly apples.
Eppstcin and IIofheim furnish good cider. Kronberg
serves as a nursery, fruits and fruit-trees of the kinds
most in use being produced there in abundance for the
adjacent country. If we leave the Taunus and cross the
Maine to the territory of Hesse Darmstadt, we find similar
arrangements. The large plain between the mountains
and the Rhine is devoted to grain-crops, but little of this
space can vie in quality with the wheat-lands between
IIochheim and Hanau. The railroad traverses this latter
plain between Mayence and Frankfort ; and the traveller
can there, too, observe the effect of the village system in
taking the cultivators oft` the land, and very much in-
Agricultubs on the rhine.
175
creasing the labour of tillage. Near Frankfort there are
several large farms, the property of foundations, clerical,
charitable, or civic ; and the approach to the city is
through a little forest of apple-trees, which seem to pro-
claim the love of the Frankfort people for cider. Of the
various farms, one belonging to M. Bethmann will best
repay the trouble of visiting.
From Darmstadt to Heidelberg the road runs along the
foot of the Oden mountains, and has the plain on one
side. The mixture of picturesque mountain scenery with
the rich cultivation and plantations of fruit-trees in the
plain have given celebrity to this Bergstrasse, which will
soon be rendered accessible to touriste by the railroad
from Frankfort to Heidelberg that will be opened in the
summer of 1846. Between this road and the Rhine large
villages intervene, which, lying out of the high road,
preserve much that is antiquated in the dress and man-
ners of the inhabitants. There is, however, also, a great
deal of poverty in these villages, the lands of which are
sandy, and exposed to frequent floods from the Rhine.
The whole space of country between the hills and the
river presented, in the spring of 1845, the appearance of
one enormous lake, involving great destruction of pro-
perty. The Grand Duchy of Darmstadt is altogether an
agricultural state, possessing no manufactures of any im-
portance. The revenue is also principally drawn from
the cultivators of the soil, and the land-tax and parish-
rates are both heavy, and press severely on the poor land-
holders, whose energies are lamed by the dispersed situa-
tions of the lands they till. The village system, in this
respect, presents its most disadvantageous side in this
portion of Hesse Darmstadt.