the old
Franconian divisions of long strips were not maintained) was divided
into three fields, which were much subdivided, and each division
carefully stoned off. The fields were highly cultivated, and fine
grained white wheat was sown in the winter fields. Woad was still
zealously cultivated with great advantage in the north of the
Rennstiegs. Although even before the war the foreign indigo competed
with the indigenous dye, the yearly gain from the woad in Thuringia
could be computed at three tons of gold; this was principally in the
territory of Erfurt and the Dukedom of Gotha; besides this, anise and
saffron produced much money; the cultivation of the teazel also was
formerly indigenous, and the wild turnips, and (by the Rhine) the rape
seed were sowed in the fellows. Flax was carefully prepared by steeping
it in water, and the coloured flowers of the poppies, and the waving
panicle of the millet, raised themselves in the corn-fields. But on the
declivities of warmer situations in Thuringia and Franconia there were
everywhere vineyards, and this old cultivation, which has now almost
disappeared in those countries, must in favourable years have produced
a very drinkable wine, as now on the lower range of the Waldgebirge;
for the wine of particular years is noted in the chronicles as most
excellent. Hops also were assiduously cultivated and made good beer.
Everywhere they grew fodder, and spurry and horse-beans. The meadows,
highly prized, and generally fenced in, were more carefully handled
than two hundred years later; the mole-heaps were scattered, and the
introduction and maintenance of drains and watercourses was general.
Erfurt was already the centre of the great seed traffic, of garden
cultivation, also of flowers and fine orchards. On the whole, when we
compare one time with the other, the agriculture of 1618 was not
inferior to that of 1818. It must be confessed in other respects also,
our century has but restored what was lost in 1618.

The burdens which the peasants had to bear both in service and taxes,
were not small, and greatest of all on the properties of the nobles;
but there were many free villages in that country, and the government
of the rulers was less strict than in Southern Franconia or in Hesse.
Many ecclesiastical properties had been broken up; many domains, and
not a few of the nobles' estates, were farmed by tenants; leases were a
favourite method of raising the rent of the ground. All this