ntains
are still in sight, and seem in the clear atmosphere to be very near you
even when forty or fifty miles distant, but you are traversing a spacious
plain which slopes imperceptibly to the Po, and is matched by one nearly
as level on the other side. This great plain of upper Italy, with the Po
in its center, commences at the foot of the lower Alps very near the
Mediterranean, far west of Turin and of Genoa, and stretches across the
widest portion of the peninsula till it is lost in the Adriatic. The
western half of this great valley is Piedmont; the eastern is Lombardy.
Its fertility and facility of cultivation are such that even Italian
unthrift and ignorance of Agriculture are unable to destroy the former
or nullify the latter. I never saw better Wheat, Grass, and Barley, than
in my journey of a hundred miles across this noble valley of the Po, or
Piedmont, and the Indian Corn, Potatoes, &c., are less promising only
because of the amazing ignorance of their requirements evinced by
nine-tenths of the cultivators. In the first place, the land is not plowed
half deep enough; next, most of it is seldom or never manured; thirdly, it
is planted too late; and fourthly, three or four times as much seed is
planted as should be. I should judge that twenty seed potatoes, or kernels
of corn, to each square yard is about the average, while five of either is
quite enough. Then both, but especially Corn, are hilled up, sugar-loaf
fashion, until the height of each hill is about equal to its breadth at
the base, so that two days' hot sun dries the hill completely through,
while there is no soil a foot from each stalk for its roots to run in.
From such perverse cultivation, a good yield is impossible. There has been
no rain of consequence here for some weeks, whence Wheat and Barley are
ripening too rapidly, while Corn, Potatoes and Vegetables suffer severely
from drouth, when with deeper plowing and rational culture everything
would have been verdant and flourishing. Yet this great plain in some
parts is and in most might be easily and bountifully irrigated from the
innumerable mountain streams which traverse it on their way to the Po. I
never saw another region wherein a few Sub-soil Plows, with men qualified
to use them and to set forth the nature and advantages of skillful
cultivation generally, are so much wanted as in Piedmont.

The Vine is of course extensively cultivated in Piedmont, as everywhere
in Italy, but not so unive