ALGERIA - Charles MANDET (Fourietist lawyer, director of the - Lot 448

ALGERIA - Charles MANDET (Fourietist lawyer, director of the Pépinière d'Aumale in Algeria then colonist of the Nassef Khodja farm, at Kadous in Algeria) / Set of 8 autograph letters signed, totaling 27 p in-8, Poitiers (6 letters of 1863 and 1864) and Nassef Khodja (2 letters of 1865), to his trusted man M. Pirel, about his business in Algeria: raising funds for investment, problem with his tenant farmers, recovery of his rents, study of drafting a new lease of 170 ha for one of the tenant farmers; huge brush fire at Nassef Khodja with a most violent siroco, the vines are affected; a grasshopper invasion was reported, but the farm staff managed to scare them away by making noise with stoves and watering cans, and the crops were saved; a farmer hung so many tobacco stalks to dry under the roof of the sheepfold, that planks had to be bought, otherwise the roof threatened ruin; another incident: they had trouble putting it out, but fortunately it rained; "the current crisis is not making business easy, not to mention the fires and the upsurge in insurrection, which unfortunately coincides with the rumors of abandonment in the South"; he is pleased with one of his farmers who has 250 ewes on the farm, and other livestock, which make him a lot of manure that he spreads on the land, "which can only improve it and, more and more, take on value" / Enclosed: autograph attestation signed in July 1862, concerning accounts between his father and himself, he presents himself as director of the Pépinière d'Aumale (1 p small in-4, trace of insect pests)