Part 15

But this is not all. There is rotting and rotting. When the rotting of vegetable matter goes on under certain conditions it is highly favorable to the growth of other vegetation, even of the vegetation of the same kind of plants as those supplying the rotting material. Thus, rotten and rotting straw is a good manure for wheat; and the modern scientific vine-grower carefully places the dressing of his vines about their roots, in order that they may rot, and supply the necessary salts for future growth. The same applies generally; rotting cabbage-leaves supply the best of manure for cabbages; rotting rhubarb-leaves for rhubarb; rose-leaves for rose-trees; and so on throughout the vegetable kingdom.

Why, then, should the bog-rotting be so exceptionally malignant? As I am not aware that any answer has been given to this question, I will venture upon one of my own. It appears to be mainly due to the excess of moisture preventing that slow combustion of vegetable carbon which occurs wherever vegetable matter is heaped together and _slightly_ moistened. We see this going on in steaming dung-hills; in hayricks that have been stacked when imperfectly dried; in the spontaneous combustion of damp cotton in the holds of ships, and in factories where cotton-waste has been carelessly heaped; and in cucumber-frames and the other “hot-beds” of the gardener.

In ordinary soils this combustion goes on more slowly, but no less effectively, than in these cases. In doing so it maintains a certain degree of warmth about the roots of the plants that grow there, and _gradually_ sets free the soluble salts which the rotting vegetables contain, and supplies them to the growing plants as manure, at the same time forming the humus so essential to vegetation.

A great excess of water, such as soddens the bog, prevents this, and also carries away any small quantity of soluble nutritious salts the soil may contain. Thus, instead of being warmed and nourished by slight humidity, and consequent oxidation, the bog soil is chilled and starved by excess of water.

The absolute necessity of the first operation—that of drainage—is thus rendered obvious; and I suspect that the need of four years’ rest, upon which Mr. MacAlister insists, is somehow connected with a certain degree of slow combustion that accompanies and partially causes the consolidation of the bog. I have not yet had an opportunity of testing this by inserting thermometers in bogs under different conditions, but hope to do so.

The liming next demands explanation. Mr. Henry says that “it leaves the soil sweetened by the neutralization of its acids.”

In order to test this theory I have digested (_i.e._, soaked) various samples of turf cut from Irish bogs in distilled water, filtered off the water, and examined it. I find that when this soaking has gone far enough to give the water a coloring similar to that which stands in ordinary bogs, the acidity is very decided—quite sufficiently so to justify this neutralization theory as a partial explanation. There is little reason to doubt that the lime is further effective in enriching the soil; or, in the case of pure bogs, that it forms the soil by disintegrating and decomposing the fibrous vegetable matter, and thus rendering it capable of assimilation by the crops.

Another effect which the lime must produce is the liberation of free ammonia from any fixed salts that may exist in the bog.

The bog-burning method of reclamation is easily explained. In the first place, the excessive vegetable encumbrance is reduced in quantity, and the remaining ashes supply the surface of the bog on which they rest with the non-volatile salts that originally existed in the burnt portions of the bog. In other words, they concentrate in a small space the salts that were formerly distributed too sparsely through the whole of the turf which was burnt.

As there are great differences in the composition of different bogs, especially in this matter of mineral ash, it is evident that the success of this method must be very variable, according to the locality.

On discussing this method with Mr. MacAlister (Mr. Henry’s steward, under whose superintendence these reclamation works are carried out), he informed me that the bogs on the Kylemore estate yield a very small amount of ash—a mere impalpable powder that a light breath might blow away; that it was practically valueless, excepting from the turf taken at nearly the base of the bog. The ash I examined where the bog-burning is extensively practiced in Donegal, was quite different from this. The quantity was far greater, and its substance more granular and gritty. It, in fact, formed an important stratum, when spread over the surface of the ridges. These differences of composition may account for the differences of opinion and practice which prevail in different districts. It affords a far more rational explanation than the assumption that all such contradictions arise from local stupidities.

There is one evil, however, which is common to all bog-burning as compared with liming—it must waste the ammoniacal salts, as they are volatile, and are driven away into the air by the heat of combustion. Somebody may get them when the rain washes them down to the earth’s surface again; but the burner himself obtains a very small share in this way.

We may therefore conclude that where lime is near at hand, bog-burning is a rude and wasteful, a viciously indolent mode of reclamation. It is only desirable where limestone is so distant that the expense of carriage renders lime practically unattainable, and where the bog itself is rich in mineral matter, and so deep and distant from a fuel demand, that it may be burned to waste without any practical sacrifice. Under such conditions it may be better to burn the bog than leave it in hopeless and worthless desolation.

I cannot conclude without again adverting to the importance of this subject, and affirming with the utmost emphasis, that the true Irish patriot is not the political orator, but he who by practical efforts, either as capitalist, laborer, or teacher, promotes the reclamation of the soil of Ireland, or otherwise develops the sadly neglected natural resources of the country.

With Mr. Mitchell Henry’s permission I append to the above his own description of the results of his experiment, originally communicated in a letter to the _Times_; at the same time thanking him for his kind reception of a stranger at Kylemore Castle, and the facilities he afforded me for studying the subject on the spot.

“The interesting account you lately published of the extensive reclamations of His Grace the Duke of Sutherland, under the title of ‘An Agricultural Experiment,’ has been copied into very many newspapers, and must have afforded a welcome relief to thousands of readers glad to turn for a time from the terrible narratives that come to us from the east. If you will allow me, I should like to supplement your narrative by a rapid sketch of what has been done here during the last few years, on a much humbler scale, in the case of land similar, and some of it almost identical, with that in Sutherlandshire.

“The twelve _corps d’armée_ under the Duke’s command, in the shape of the twelve steam-engines and their ploughs, engaged in subduing the stubborn resistance of the unreclaimed wilds of Sutherlandshire, suggest to the mind the triumphs of great warriors, and fill us with admiration—not always excited by the details of great battle; but, as great battles can be fought seldom, and only by gigantic armies and at prodigious expense, so reclamation on such a scale is far beyond the opportunities or the means of most of us; while many may, perhaps, be encouraged to attempt work similar to that which has been successfully carried out here.

“And, first of all, a word as to the all-important matter of cost. Does it pay?

“Including farm-buildings and roads, the reclamations here have cost on an average 13_l._ an acre, which, at 5 per cent, means an annual rent-charge of 13_s._, to which is to be added a sum of from 1_s._ to 3_s._, the full annual value of the unreclaimed land. It is obvious that if we start with an outlay of 30_l._ _plus_ the 1_s._ to 3_s._ of original rent, such an amount would usually be found prohibitory; but, on the other hand, excellent profits may be made if the expenditure is so kept down that the annual rent is not more than from 15_s._ to 18_s._ per acre. Before entering into further details, let me say that I claim no credit for originality in what has been done. The like has been effected on numerous properties in Ireland in bygone days, and is daily being carried out by the patient husbandman who year by year with his spade reclaims a little bit from the mountain side. And you must allow me emphatically to say that what has been done here economically and well would not have been done except for the prudence, patience, and thoughtful mind of my steward, Archibald MacAlister, a County Antrim man, descended from one of the race of Highland Catholic Scotch settlers, who have peopled the north of Ireland and added so much to its prosperity.

“The Pass of Kylemore, in which I live, is undoubtedly favorably situated for reclamation, for there is but little very deep bog, and there is abundance of limestone. In former ages it must have been an estuary of the sea, with a river flowing through it, now represented by a chain of lakes and the small rapid river Dowris. The subsoil is sand, gravel, and schist rock, with peat of various depths grown upon it. As by the elevation of the land the sea long ages ago was driven back, the mossy growth of peat commenced, followed by pine and yew trees, of which the trunks and roots are abundantly found; but, except over a space of about 400 acres, every tree that formerly clothed the hillsides has been cut down or has totally disappeared. The general result is that we have a pass several miles long, bounded on the north and south by a chain of rugged mountains of some 1500 or 1800 feet in height, while the east is blocked up by a picturesque chain running north and south, and separating the Joyce country from Connemara proper, the west being open to the Atlantic. The well-known Killery Bay, or Fiord, would, I doubt not, present an exact resemblance to Kylemore if the sea, which now flows up to its head, were driven out. There are miles of similar country in Ireland, waiting only for the industry of man, where, as here, there exist extensive stretches of undulating eskers, covered with heather growing on the light clay, with a basis of gravel or sand.

“A considerable difference exists between the reclamation of the flat parts, where the bog is pretty deep, and the hillsides, where there is little or no bog. Yet it is to be remembered that bog is nothing more than vegetable matter in a state of partial decomposition, and holding water like a sponge. The first thing is to remove the water by drains, some of which—that is, the big drain and the secondary drains—must go right down to the gravel below; but the other drains—called sheep-drains—need not, and, indeed, must not be cut so deep. The drains are cut wedge-shape by what are called Scotch tools, which employ three men—two to cut and one to hook out the sods; and all that is requisite to form a permanent drain is to replace the wedge-shaped sod, and ram it down between the walls of the drain, where it consolidates and forms a tube which will remain open for an indefinite number of years. We have them here as good as new, made twenty-five years ago; and at Chat Moss, in Lancashire, they are much older. After land has been thus drained—but not too much drained, or it will become dry turf—the surface begins to sink; what was tumid settles down, and in the course of a few months the land itself becomes depressed on the surface and much consolidated. Next it is to be dug by spade-labor or ploughed. We use oxen largely for this purpose, and, strange to say, the best workers we find to be a cross with the Alderney, the result being a light, wiry little animal, which goes gayly over the ground, is easy to feed, and is very tractable. The oxen are trained by the old wooden neck-yoke; but, when well broken, work in collars, which seem more easy to them. Horses on very soft land work well in wooden pattens. After the land has been broken up, a good dressing of lime is to be applied to it, and this, in the expressive language of the people here, ‘boils the bog’—that is, the lime causes the vegetable matter, formerly half decomposed, to become converted into excellent manure. This leaves the soil sweetened by the neutralization of its acids, and in a condition pretty easily broken up by the chain-harrow; or, what is better still, by Randall’s American revolving harrow.

“Good herbage will grow on bog thus treated, but as much as possible should at once be put into root-crops, with farmyard manure for potatoes and turnips. The more lime you give the better will be your crop, and, treated thus, there is no doubt that even during the first year, land so reclaimed will yield remunerative crops. People ask, ‘But will not the whole thing go back to bog?’ Of course it will if not kept under proper rotation, which we find to be one of five years—namely, roots followed by oats, laid down with clover and grass seed, which remains for two years. After being broken up a second time, the land materially improves and becomes doubly valuable. I have no doubt that all bog-lands may be thus reclaimed, but it is up-hill work and not remunerative to attempt the reclamation of bogs that are more than four feet in depth.

“And here I will make a remark as to the effects of drainage in a wet country. By no means does the whole effect result from raising the temperature of the soil; there is something else as important, and that is the supply of ammonia, brought down from the skies in the rain, which, with other fertilizing matter, is caught, detained, and absorbed in the soil. A well-drained field becomes, in fact, just like a water-meadow over which a river flows for a part of a year; and thus the very wetness of the climate may be made to reduce the supply of ammoniacal manures, so expensive to buy.

“The porous, well-drained soil carries quickly off the superfluous moisture, while the ammonia is absorbed by the roots and leaves of the plants. An excessive bill for ammoniacal manures has been the ruin of many a farmer; and our aim in Ireland should be to secure good crops by thorough drainage and constant stirring of the soil, without much outlay for concentrated manures. At the same time I ought to remark that we have grown excellent potatoes by using 5_l._ worth per acre of superphosphate and nitrate of soda in cases in which our farmyard manure has fallen short.

“The reclamation of mountain-land as distinguished from bog-land can best be illustrated by a record of what has been accomplished on two farms here. Three years ago the leases of two upland farms fell in, and I took them into my own hands. The first consists of 600 acres, one-half a nearly level flat of deepish bog running alongside the river, the other half moor heath, which with difficulty supported a few sheep and cattle.

“There had never been any buildings on this land, nor had a spade ever been put into it; and the tenant, being unable to pay his rent of 15_l._ a year for the 600 acres, was glad to give it up for a moderate consideration. The first thing accomplished was to fence and drain thoroughly as before described, and the best half of the land was then divided into forty-acre fields. Exactly now two years ago—on September 15th—a little cottage and a stable for a pair of horses and a pair of bullocks was completed and tenanted by two men and a boy. They ploughed all the week and came home on Saturdays to draw their supply of food and fodder for the ensuing seven days, thus approximating very nearly to the position of settlers in a new country. We limed all the land we could, manured part of it with seaweed and part with the farm manure made by the horses and oxen which were at work, and cropped with roots such as turnips and potatoes. A good portion we sowed with oats out of the lea, but the most satisfactory crop we found to be rape and grasses mixed, for on the best of the land they form at once an excellent permanent pasture. We have now had two crops from this land; and I venture to say that the thirteen stacks of oats and hay gathered in in good condition, and the turnips and roots now growing, which are not excelled in the county Galway—except those of Lord Clancarty at Ballinasloe, who has grown 110 tons of turnips to the Irish acre, equal to upwards of 68 tons to the acre here—present a picture most gratifying and cheering in every way.

“The second farm, of 240 acres, which adjoins this, had a good building on it; but, having been let on lease at about 10_s._ an acre to a large grazier whose stock-in-trade was a horse, a saddle, and a pair of shears, had not been cultivated or improved.

“Similar proceedings on this farm have produced similar results; and, if now let in the market, I have no doubt that after two years of good treatment these farms would be let at 20_s._ an acre, and I do not despair of doubling this figure in the course of time.

“The exact weight of the turnip crop this season is, on raw bog, drained, limed, and cropped this year for the first time, 24 tons per acre; manure, seaweed. On land ploughed but not cropped, last year 23½ tons; mixed mineral manure. On land from which a crop of oats had previously been taken, 29 tons; manure, farmyard, with 3 cwt. per acre mineral manure.

“Last year my excellent steward, Mr. MacAlister, visited the Duke of Sutherland’s reclamations in Scotland, and was kindly and hospitably received. He found the land and the procedure adopted almost identical, with the conviction that oxen and horses will suit us better at the present time than steam culture, chiefly on the score of economy. He also visited the Bridgewater Estate at Chat Moss, near Manchester, where so much has been done to bring the deep peat into cultivation, and he found the system that has been followed there for so many years to be like that described above, marl, however, being used in the place of lime.”

At the time of my visit to Kylemore the hay crops were down and partly carried on the reclaimed bog-land above described. The contrast of its luxuriance with the dark and dreary desolation of the many estates I had seen during three summers’ wanderings through Ireland added further proof of the infamy of the majority of Irish landlords, by showing what Ireland would have been had they done their duty.

AERIAL EXPLORATION OF THE ARCTIC REGIONS.

On our own hemisphere, and separated from our own coasts by only a few days’ journey on our own element, there remains a blank circle of unexplored country above 800 miles in diameter. We have tried to cross it, and have not succeeded. Nothing further need be said in reply to those who ask, “Why should we start another Arctic Expedition?”

The records of previous attempts to penetrate this area of geographical mystery prove the existence of a formidable barrier of mountainous land, fringed by fjords or inlets, like those of Norway, some of which may be open, though much contracted northward, like the Vestfjord that lies between the Lofoden Islands and the mainland of Scandinavia. The majority evidently run inland like the ordinary Norwegian fjords or the Scotch firths, and terminate in land valleys that continue upwards to fjeld regions, or elevated humpy land which acts as a condenser to the vapor-laden air continually flowing towards the Pole from the warmer regions of the earth, and returning in lower streams when cooled. The vast quantities of water thus condensed fall upon these hills and table lands as snow crystals. What becomes of this everlasting deposit?

Unlike the water that rains on temperate hill-sides, it cannot all flow down to the sea as torrents and liquid rivers, but it does come down nevertheless, or long ere this it would have reached the highest clouds. It descends mainly as glaciers, which creep down slowly, but steadily and irresistibly, filling up the valleys on their way; and stretching outwards into the fjords and channels, which they block up with their cleft and chasmed crystalline angular masses that still creep outward to the sea until they float, and break off or “calve” as mountainous icebergs and smaller masses of ice.

These accumulations of ice thus _formed on land_ constitute the chief obstructions that bar the channels and inlets fringing the unknown Polar area. The glacier fragments above described are cemented together in the winter time by the freezing of the water between them. An open frozen sea, pure and simple, instead of forming a barrier to arctic exploration, would supply a most desirable highway. It must not be supposed that, because the liquid ocean is ruffled by ripples, waves, and billows, a frozen sea would have a similar surface. The freezing of such a surface could only start at the calmest intervals, and the ice would shield the water from the action of the wave-making wind, and such a sea would become a charming skating rink, like the Gulf of Bothnia, the Swedish and Norwegian lakes, and certain fjords, which, in the winter time, become natural ice-paved highways, offering incomparable facilities for rapid locomotion. In spite of the darkness and the cold, winter is the traveling season in Sweden and Lapland. The distance that can be made in a given time in summer with a wheeled vehicle on well-made post roads can be covered in half the time in a _pulk_ or reindeer sledge drawn over the frozen lakes. From Spitzbergen to the Pole would be an easy run of five or six days if nothing but a simply frozen sea stood between them.

This primary physical fact, that arctic navigators have not been stopped by a merely frozen sea, but by a combination of glacier fragments with the frozen water of bays, and creeks, and fjords, should be better understood than it is at present; for when it is understood, the popular and fallacious notion that the difficulties of arctic progress are merely dependent on latitude, and must therefore increase with latitude, explodes.

_It is the physical configuration of the fringing zone of the arctic regions, not its mere latitude, that bars the way to the Pole._