English or Scotch farmers would be welcomed over here by the
great landowners. Your countryman, Professor Wrightson, convinced
himself of this when he was here in 1873. If they could command some
capital, the produce of the land in many instances could be doubled."
I asked my friend about labourers' wages, but he said it was difficult
to give any fixed rate. A mere agricultural day-labourer would get from
1s. 3d. to 1s. 6d.; sometimes the evil practice of paying wages in kind
obtained--viz., a man receives so much Indian corn (_kukoricz_). And not
unfrequently a peasant undertakes to plough the fields twice, to hoe
them three times, and to see the crop housed, for which he receives the
half of the yield provided he has furnished the seed. The peasants' own
lands, as a rule, are very badly managed; their ploughing is shallow,
and they do nothing or next to nothing in the way of drainage.
CHAPTER XIX.
Want of progress amongst the Saxons--The
Burzenland--Kronstadt--Mixed character of its
inhabitants--Szeklers--General Bem's campaign.
It was a glorious morning when I left the comfortable village of Zeiden.
Before me were the rich pastures of the Burzenland, a tract which
tradition says was once filled up by the waters of a great lake, till
some Saxon hero hewed a passage through the mountains in the Geisterwald
for the river Aluta, thus draining this fertile region.
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