XXX.
LOMBARDY.
Milan, Thursday, July 10, 1851.
Lombardy is of course the richest and most productive portion of Italy. Piedmont alone vies with her, and is improving far more rapidly, but Lombardy has great natural capacities peculiarly her own. Her soil, fertile and easily tilled from the first, was long ago improved by a system of irrigation which, probably from small and casual beginnings, gradually overspread the whole table land, embracing, beside that of the Adige, the broad valley of the Po and the narrower intervals of its many tributaries, which, rushing down from the gorges of the Alps on the west and the north, are skillfully conducted so as to refresh and fertilize the whole plain, and, finding their way ultimately to the Po, are thence drawn again by new canals to render like beneficence to the lower, flatter intervals of Venezia and the Northern Papal States. Nowhere can be found a region capable of supporting a larger population to the square mile than Lombardy.
American Agriculture has just two arts to learn from Lombardy—Irrigation and Tree-Planting. Nearly all our great intervales might be irrigated immensely to the profit of their cultivators. Even where the vicinity of mountains or other high grounds did not afford the facility here taken advantage of, I am confident that many plains as well as valleys might be profitably irrigated by lifting water to the requisite height and thence distributing it through little canals or ditches as here. Where a head of water may be obtained to supply the requisite power, the cost need not be considerable after the first outlay; but, even though steam-power should be requisite, in connection with the admirable Pumping machinery of our day, Irrigation would pay liberally in thousands of cases. Such easily parched levels as those of New-Jersey and Long Island would yield at least double their present product if thoroughly irrigated from the turbid streams and marshy ponds in their vicinity. Water itself is of course essential to the growth of every plant, but the benefits of Irrigation reach far beyond this. Of the fertilizing substances so laboriously and necessarily applied to cultivating lands, at least three times as great a proportion is carried off in running water as is absorbed and exhausted by the crops grown by their aid; so that if Irrigation simply returned to the land as much fertility as the rains carry off, it would, with decent husbandry, increase in productiveness from year to year. The valley of the Nile is one example among many of what Irrigation, especially from rivers at their highest stage, will do for the soil, in defiance of the most ignorant, improvident and unskillful cultivation. Such streams as the Raritan, the Passaic and most of the New Jersey rivers, annually squander upon the ocean an amount of fertilizing matter adequate to the comfortable subsistence of thousands. By calculation, association, science, labor, most of this may be saved. One hundred thousand of the poor immigrants annually arriving on our shores ought to be employed for years, in New-Jersey alone, in the construction of dams, canals, &c., adequate to the complete irrigation of all the level or moderately sloping lands in that State. Farms are cheaper there to-day than in Iowa for purchasers who can pay for and know how to use them. Long Island can be rendered eminently fertile and productive by systematic and thorough Irrigation; otherwise I doubt that it ever will be.
Much of Lombardy slopes very considerably toward the Po, so that the water in the larger or distributing canals is often used to run mills and supply other mechanical power. It might be used also for Manufacturing if Manufactures existed here, and nearly every farmer might have a horse-power or so at command for domestic uses if he chose. We passed yesterday the completely dry beds of what seemed to be small rivers, their water having been entirely drawn away into the irrigating canals on either side, while on either hand there were grist-mills busily at work, and had been for hundreds of years, grinding by water-power where no stream naturally existed. If I mistake not, there are many such in this city, and in nearly all the cities and villages of Lombardy. If our farmers would only investigate this matter of Irrigation as thoroughly as its importance deserves, they would find that they have neglected mines of wealth all around them more extensive and far more reliable than those of California. One man alone may not always be able to irrigate his farm except at too great a cost; but let the subject be commended to general attention, and the expense would be vastly diminished. Ten thousand farms together, embracing a whole valley, may often be irrigated for less than the cost of supplying a hundred of them separately. I trust our Agricultural papers will agitate this improvement.
As to Tree-Planting, there can be no excuse for neglecting it, for no man needs his neighbor's coöperation to render it economical or effective. We in America have been recklessly destroying trees quite long enough; it is high time that we began systematically to reproduce them. There is scarcely a farm of fifty acres or over in any but the very newest States that might not be increased in value $1,000 by $100 judiciously expended in Tree-Planting, and a little care to protect the young trees from premature destruction. All road-sides, steep hill-sides, ravines and rocky places should be planted with Oak, Hickory, Chestnut, Pine, Locust, &c., at once, and many a farm would, after a few years, yield $100 worth of Timber annually, without subtracting $10 from the crops otherwise depended on. By planting Locust, or some other fast-growing tree, alternately with Oak, Hickory, &c., the former would be ready for use or sale by the time the latter needed the whole ground. Utility, beauty, comfort, profit, all combine to urge immediate and extensive Tree-Planting; shall it not be commenced?