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Miss Banks and I seated ourselves on a wooden rail, which was part of a manger or a sheep-pen. These Riffis had been forced by famine to abandon their home and come down into Tetuan, where at first they had lived in a cave, on roots principally. The father would go out and hoe when he could get work every land-owner has hoeing to be done; but lately he had had fever.
The Lord of Lone glorying in his earthly paradise, wished to see it enlarged, wished to add one estate to another until he should become the largest land-owner in Scotland, or have his land-hunger appeased. He bought up all the land adjoining Lone, that could be purchased at any price, paying a little cash down, and giving notes for the balance on each purchase.
When, on the contrary, a land-owner had more serf labour at his disposal than he required for the cultivation of his fields, he put the superfluous serfs "on obrok," that is to say, he allowed them to go and work where they pleased on condition of paying him a fixed yearly sum.
Wylder was lord of the manor, and chief land-owner, though his family had never been the most influential, in the parish next that in which lay Mortgrange. He was not much fitted for an English squire. He wished to stand well with his neighbours, but lacked the geniality which is the very body, the outside expression of humanity.
One day, a few years earlier, he had been called from the sea somewhere off the coast of South America to take his place as a land-owner and land-dweller amongst the great squires of England; quite the very last thing he could have anticipated in his wildest dreams. Three sons of the reigning Carey had been capsized in a gale while out yachting.
My sixty thousand acres, which are not diamondiferous, will very soon be worth as much as sixty thousand English acres, say two pounds the acre per annum. That is under the mark, because in Africa the land is not burdened with poor-rates, tithes, and all the other iniquities that crush the English land-owner, as I know to my cost. But that is not all, sir.
Hal was glad to make an exchange with father, and get a few acres near home, while he would still have nice woodland left. Acres of land then did not seem to be worth so much to us, and it was a poor farmer in our section, who had not forty or more acres, for our town was not all level plains, and every land-owner must perforce have more or less of hill and stubble.
The land-owner was a less exacting master than the Empire; often he could defend his tenants from imperial exactions. During the invasions of the Northmen and Hungarians, he was impelled by his own interest to guard his estates to the best of his ability. Therefore common men looked to their landlord, or looked about them for a landlord, to whom they could commend themselves.
Even to-day the crown is probably the largest land-owner in the kingdom, but at the time of the Conquest, and for many years afterward, he certainly owned an hundredfold as much, and that gave him enough revenue for his purse; of course, in those days, money for such things as education, highways, police, etc., was entirely out of their mind. They were not as yet in that state of civilization.
The mountains and hills are dotted over with bushes and low trees, and excepting these the vegetation is very scanty. Each land-owner in the valley possesses a certain portion of hill-country, where his half-wild cattle, in considerable numbers, manage to find sufficient pasture.
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