or
Lombardy. The little patch of Wheat is so carefully reaped that scarcely
a grain is left, and children bear the sheaves on their backs to the
allotted shelter, while mothers and maidens are digging up the soil with
the spade, and often pulling up the stubble with their hands,
preparatory to another crop. Switzerland could not afford to be a
Kingdom,--the expense of a Court and Royal Family would famish half her
people. Yet everywhere are the signs of frugal thrift and homely
content. I met only two beggars in that long day's ride through sterile
Switzerland, while in a similar ride through the fertile plains of
Italy I should have encountered hundreds, though there each day's labor
produces as much as three days' do here. If the Swiss only _could_ live
at home, by the utmost industry and economy, I think they would very
seldom be found elsewhere; but in truth the land has long been peopled
to the extent of its capacity for subsisting, and the steady increase
which their pure morals and simple habits ensure must drive off
thousands in search of the bread of honest toil. Hence their presence
elsewhere, in spite of their passionate attachment to their free native
hills.

Most of the dwellings through all this region are built of stone--those
of the poor very rudely, of the roughest boulders, commonly laid up with
little or no mortar. The roofs are often of split stone. The houses of
the more fortunate class are generally of hewn or at least tolerably
square-edged stone, laid up in mortar, often plastered and whitened on
the outside, so as to present a very neat appearance. Barns are few, and
generally of stone also. The Vine is quite extensively cultivated, and
often trained on a rude frame-work of stakes and poles, so as completely
to cover the ground and forbid all other cultivation. Elsewhere it is
trained to stakes--rarely to dwarf trees as in Italy. The Mulberry holds
its ground for two-thirds of the way up the valley, giving out a little
after the Vine and before Indian Corn does so. Wheat gives place to Rye
about the same time, and the Potato, at first comparatively rare,
becomes universal. As the Mulberry gives out the Chestnut comes in, and
flourishes nobly for some ten or twenty miles about midway from
Bellinzona to Airolo. I suspect, from the evident care taken of it, that
its product is considerably relied on for food. Finally, as we gradually
ascend, this also disappears, leaving Rye and the Potato to strug