CHAPTER III.
AGRICULTURE.
Even to-day the land of Georgia is cultivated in the most primitive fashion. There, as elsewhere, feudal dependence and the prevalence of short leases impeded the development of agriculture. The implements of Georgian agriculture reminded German observers, only a short time ago, of Biblical times.
In 1905, Paul Hoffmann wrote, in his book on "German Colonies in Transcaucasia," as follows:—
"Only in recent times have modern ploughs been widely used in Transcaucasia, and the colonists are still partly assisted by the wooden ploughs of the Georgians."
If this is the case with the German colonists, who represent a higher type of agriculture, it applies still more to the Georgian peasants themselves. The plough does not penetrate the soil very deep, and requires an uncommonly strong team, five to ten pairs of buffaloes. Merzbacher saw ploughs drawn by twenty-four animals, which needed seven men to guide them. What an expenditure of energy to secure a scanty result. Thrashing is managed with a thrashing sledge, provided with a flint, which appeared to Merzbacher to be a relic of the stone age.
The methods of soil cultivation are as primitive as the implements used. Rotation of crops and artificial manuring are quite unknown. The tillage resembles the system which existed in Germany at the time of Charles the Great. The same crop, whether wheat or barley, is planted year in and year out in the same field, sometimes three years in succession, until the harvest
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