The Farms Of The Boers Consist Generally Of A Small Patch Of Cultivated Land
In The Midst Of Some Miles Of Pasturage.
They are thus less an agricultural
than a pastoral people.
Each farm must have its fountain;
and where no such supply of water exists, the government lands
are unsalable. An acre in England is thus generally more valuable
than a square mile in Africa. But the country is prosperous,
and capable of great improvement. The industry of the Boers augurs well
for the future formation of dams and tanks, and for the greater fruitfulness
that would certainly follow.
As cattle and sheep farmers the colonists are very successful.
Larger and larger quantities of wool are produced annually,
and the value of colonial farms increases year by year.
But the system requires that with the increase of the population
there should be an extension of territory. Wide as the country is,
and thinly inhabited, the farmers feel it to be too limited,
and they are gradually spreading to the north. This movement proves
prejudicial to the country behind, for labor, which would be directed
to the improvement of the colony, is withdrawn and expended in a mode of life
little adapted to the exercise of industrial habits. That, however,
does not much concern the rest of mankind. Nor does it seem much of an evil
for men who cultivate the soil to claim a right to appropriate lands
for tillage which other men only hunt over, provided some compensation
for the loss of sustenance be awarded.
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