Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 770 pages of information about Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 2.

Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 770 pages of information about Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 2.
the clover.  The spontaneous pasturage is of greensward, which they call fromenteau.  When lands are rented on half-stocks, the cattle, sheep, &c. are furnished by the landlord.  They are valued, and must be left of equal value.  The increase of these, as well as the produce of the farm is divided equally.  These leases are only from year to year.  They have a method of mixing beautifully the culture of vines, trees, and corn.  Rows of fruit-trees are planted about twenty feet apart.  Between the trees, in the row, they plant vines four feet apart, and espalier them.  The intervals are sowed alternately in corn, so as to be one year in corn, the next in pasture, the third in corn, the fourth in pasture, &c.  One hundred toises of vines in length, yield generally about four pieces of wine.  In Dauphine, I am told, they plant vines only at the roots of the trees, and let them cover the whole trees.  But this spoils both the wine and the fruit.  Their wine, when distilled, yields but one-third its quantity in brandy.  The wages of a laboring man here are five louis; of a woman, one half.  The women do not work with the hoe:  they only weed the vines, the corn, &c, and spin.  They speak a patois very difficult to understand.  I passed some time at the Chateau de Laye-Epinaye.  Monsieur de Laye has a seignory of about fifteen thousand arpents, in pasture, corn, vines, and wood.  He has over this, as is usual, a certain jurisdiction, both criminal and civil.  But this extends only to the first crude examination, which is before his judges.  The subject is referred, for final examination and decision, to the regular judicatures of the country.  The Seigneur is keeper of the peace on his domains.  He is therefore subject to the expenses of maintaining it.  A criminal prosecuted to sentence and execution costs M. de Laye about five thousand livres.  This is so burthensome to the Seigneurs, that they are slack in criminal prosecutions.  A good effect from a bad cause.  Through all Champagne, Burgundy, and the Beaujolois, the husbandry seems good, except that they manure too little.  This proceeds from the shortness of their leases.  The people of Burgundy and Beaujolois are well clothed, and have the appearance of being well fed.  But they experience all the oppressions which result from the nature of the general government, and from that of their particular tenures, and of the seignorial government to which they are subject.  What a cruel reflection, that a rich country cannot long be a free one.  M. de Laye has a Diana and Endymion, a very superior morsel of sculpture by Michael Angelo Slodtz, done in 1740.  The wild gooseberry is in leaf; the wild pear and sweet-briar in bud.

Lyons.  There are some feeble remains here of an amphitheatre of two hundred feet diameter, and of an aqueduct in brick.  The Pont d’Ainay has nine arches of forty feet from centre to centre.  The piers are of six feet.  The almond is in bloom.

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