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EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
A Proprietor of the Imperial Estate of Kolin , with a description of the former and present condition of the same.
It was only through full confidence in my practical experience gained in agricultural labors continued without pause for fifty years, and especially in the reorganization of many large and small estates, that I was induced at the age of sixty- one years to purchase such a worn-out piece of property as the estate of Kolin. It cost me in the year 1862, $217,000.
The only buildings belonging to the estate at the time, either for farming purposes or for dwellings, were the Castle in the city of Kolin, of which the larger portion was occupied by the imperial and royal district officials, a wing alone remaining for the use of the proprietor, then the brewery close at hand, a large granary and a barn together, five hunters’ lodges in Bejchor, Lzowitz, Baczow, Hradisko and Saan, and a saw-mill at Bejchor with a dwelling for the machinist. I had the wing of the Castle fitted for my use and also built the necessary stables and carriage-houses. As the property which I wished to release from the tenants lay on the right or opposite bank of the Elbe, I had the forester’s lodge at Bejchor transformed into a dwelling for myself, and added stables and carriage-houses. Here I built later the Castle of Horskyfeld.
About the year 1770, the Raab system had become very popular in Bohemia. This consisted in letting all the buildings and farms on the large estates for a long period and permitting settlements and villages to gradually grow upon them, the proprietor retaining only the forests, ponds and pastures in his own hands. The ponds were set dry by cutting through their dams and then let out with the pastures in small lots of one to two acres without provision for drainage, snow, or spring-water. They were therefore never built upon and generally degenerated into swamp and waste land. They were also entirely robbed of their fertility, since most of the tenants were simply squatters, and on ten, twenty or forty acres of land had only a couple of wretched cows for ploughing and producing manure ; nevertheless they continued to sow until little or nothing would grow. In this condition the land was put to grass, but could of course pro-