nt the past history of Montegnac. What could be
done in that great tract of barren land, neglected by the government,
abandoned by the nobility, useless to industry,--what but war against
society which disregarded its duty? Consequently, the inhabitants of
Montegnac lived to a recent period, as the Highlands of Scotland lived
in former times, by murder and rapine. From the mere aspect of this
region a thinking man would understand how, twenty years earlier, the
inhabitants were at war with society. The great upland plain, flanked
on one side by the valley of the Vienne, on the other by the charming
valleys of La Marche, then by Auvergne, and bounded by the mountains of
the Correze, is like (agriculture apart) the plateau of La Beauce, which
separates the basin of the Loire from that of the Seine, also like those
of Touraine and Berry, and many other of the great upland plains which
are cut like facets on the surface of France and are numerous enough
to claim the attention of the wisest administrators. It is amazing
that while complaint is made of the influx of population to the social
centres, the government does not employ the natural remedy of redeeming
a region where, as statistics show, there are many million acres of
waste land, certain parts of which, especially in Berry, have a soil
from seven to eight feet deep.

Many of these plains which might be covered by villages and made
splendidly productive belong to obstinate communes, the authorities of
which refuse to sell to those who would develop them, merely to keep
the right to pasture cows upon them! On all these useless, unproductive
lands is written the word "Incapacity." All soils have some special
fertility of their own. Arms and wills are ready; the thing lacking is
a sense of duty combined with talent on the part of the government. In
France, up to the present time, these upland plains have been sacrificed
to the valleys; the government has chosen to give all its help to those
regions of country which can take care of themselves.

Most of these luckless uplands are without water, the first essential
for production. The mists which ought to fertilize the gray, dead soil
by discharging oxygen upon it, sweep across it rapidly, driven by the
wind, for want of trees which might arrest them and so obtain their
nourishment. Merely to plant trees in such a region would be carrying a
gospel to it. Separated from the nearest town or city by a distance as
insurmount