AGRICULTURE.
The main occupations of settlers have been gold mining and farming.
Favourable reports of the country from an agricultural and pastoral point of view have on several occasions been furnished by deputations of experienced farmers appointed at public meetings, both in the Cape Colony and the Orange Free State, to inspect and report upon the land. As the result of these reports, large ‘treks’ of farmers from those countries have already proceeded, and will be followed shortly by others, to occupy tracts of land in Mashonaland.
A recent return from the Surveyor-General’s Office at Salisbury shows that farms representing a total area of 3,178 square miles or 2,000,000 acres have been granted and located, nearly one-half having been properly surveyed in addition. Grants of land for farms of 3,000 acres in extent at an annual quit rent of 3l. were obtainable during 1892, but so many applications were received that these practically free grants have been altogether suspended, and the price of land is fixed for the present at 9d. per acre subject to the annual quit rent.
Farming operations in Mashonaland should offer special advantages, owing to the proximity of the various gold-fields, which have always afforded markets at most remunerative rates for all farm produce, and will no doubt continue to do so in the future in an even greater degree.
The most important of the deputations above referred to upon inspection estimated that in the parts of the country visited there were at least 40,000 square miles well adapted for colonising purposes. When it is remembered that the area of Mashonaland and Matabeleland is 125,000 square miles, and that not one-half of this extent of country was seen by the deputation, it will be generally conceded that [[410]]their estimate, large as it is, admits of considerable amplification.
It may be incidentally mentioned, dealing with quite another part of the British South Africa Company’s territories, viz. the sphere north of the Zambesi, which amounts to upwards of 500,000 square miles, that most favourable reports of its mineral and agricultural resources have been furnished by such well-known travellers as Joseph Thomson and Alfred Sharpe.