[208-5] In Moscow, merchants close their accounts at Easter. Then begins a new cycle of fashions, after which all that remains is sold at mock-prices. (Kohl, Reise, 98.) In Paris, there are houses which buy up everything as it begins to go out of fashion and then send it into the provinces and to foreign parts. Thus, there are immense amounts of old clothing shipped from France and England to Ireland. Hence, the latter country can have no national costume appropriate to the different classes; and the traveler sees with regret, crowds of Irish going to work in ragged frock-coats, short trowsers and old silk hats. In Prussia, many of the peasantry, in the time of Frederick the Great, wore the discarded uniforms of the soldiery.
[208-6] Schäffle, N. Oek. Hermann, Staatsw. Untersuchungen, II, Aufl., 100.
CONSUMPTION WHICH IS THE WORK OF NATURE.
The least enjoyable of all consumption (loss-consumption) is that which is the work of nature; and nature is certainly most consuming in the tropics. During the rainy season, in the region of the upper Ganges, mushrooms shoot up in every corner of the houses; books on shelves swell to such an extent that three occupy the place previously occupied by four; those left on the table get covered over with a coat of moss one-eighth of an inch in thickness. The saltpetre that gathers on the walls has to be removed every week in baskets, to keep it from eating into the bricks. Numberless moths devour the clothing. Schomburgk found that, in Guiana, iron instruments which lay on the ground during the rainy season became entirely useless within a few days, that silver coins oxydized, etc.; evidently a great obstacle in the way of the employment of machinery. In summer, the soil of this same region, so rich in roots, is so parched by the heat, that subterranean fires sometimes cause the most frightful destruction.
In Spanish America, there are so many termites and other destructive insects that paper more than sixty years old is very seldom to be found there.[209-1]
The warmer portions of the temperate zone are naturally most favorable to the preservation of stone monuments. Thus, for instance, in Persepolis, where there has been no intentional destruction, the stones lie so accurately superimposed the one on the other that the lines of junction can frequently be not even seen. The amphitheatre of Pola has lost in two thousand years only two lines from the angles of the stones.[209-2] The Elgin marble statues would certainly have lasted longer in Greece than they will in England. On the other hand, warm and dry climates have a very peculiar and exceedingly frightful species of nature-consumption in the locust plagues. The principal countries affected by such consumption are Asiatic and African Arabistan, the land of the Jordan and Euphrates, Asia Minor, parts of Northern India. On Sinai, locust plagues occur, on an average, every four or five years; but from 1811 to 1816, for instance, they destroyed everything each year. Their course is in its effects like an advancing conflagration. It turns the green country, frequently in a single day, into a brown desert; and famine and pestilence follow in its path.[209-3]
The colder regions of the temperate zone are exposed to danger and damage from land-slides in their long series of mountains, and from avalanches, from quicksands in many of their plains, from floods and the total destruction of land along their coasts;[209-4] but, on the other hand, they are, relatively speaking, freest from hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanoes, the ravages of which no human art or foresight is competent to cope with. From the point of view of civilization and of politics there is here a great advantage. See § 36. The former maritime power of Venice and of Holland is closely allied to the dangers with which the sea continually threatened them, and which was a continual spur to both. But, on the other hand, the danger from earthquakes which always impends over South America and Farther India, must produce consequences similar to those of anarchy or of despotism, because of the uncertainty with which they surround all relations. See § 39.[209-5]
[209-1] Ritter, Erdkunde VI, 180 ff; Schomburgk in the Ausland, 1843, Nr. 274; Humboldt, Relation hist., I, 306; Neuspanein, IV, 379; Pöpping, Reise, II, 197 ff., 237 ff. The ant, even in Marcgrav's time, was called the rey do Brazil.
[209-2] Ritter, Erdkunde VIII, 895; Burger, Reise in Oberitalien, I, 7. The monuments of Nubia have suffered much less from the hand of time than those of Upper Egypt, because the air of the plateau is drier. The effects of climate have been most severely felt in Lower Egypt, where the air is most moist. (Ritter, I, 336, 701.) In the case of wood, on the other hand, dryness may be a great agent of destruction. Thus, in Thibet, wooden pillars, balconies, etc., have to be protected with woolen coverings to keep them from splitting. (Turner, Gesandtsreise, German translation, 393 ff.)