"You were very wise to enclose your rabbits there," Mr. Wolston remarked. "There will be thousands of them some day, and they would have eaten up every field in the Promised Land! In Australia, where I come from, these creatures threaten to become a worse plague than the locusts in Africa, and if the most stringent measures are not taken against the depredations of the breed, the entire surface of Australia will be consumed."[2]
During these latter months of the year 1816 it was obvious more than once that Fritz and Frank were badly missed, although the Wolstons did not spare their efforts. The harvest season was always a very busy one. An immense amount of work was involved in the proper farming of the fields of maize and tapioca and of the rice plantation beyond the marsh near Flamingo Bay, in the cropping of the fruit trees, both the European species and the indigenous species, such as bananas, guavas, cacaos, cinnamons, and others, in the extraction and preparation of sago, and finally in the harvesting of the grain, wheat, rice, buckwheat and barley, and the cutting of the sugar-canes, which grew in such abundance on the farm fields of Sugar-cane Grove. All this made heavy work for four men, although the three women helped them bravely. And it would all have to be begun over again in a few months, for the soil was so prolific that there was no danger of its being exhausted by two crops every year.
On the other hand, it was important that Mme. Zermatt, Mrs. Wolston, and Hannah should not give up entirely their domestic work. And for this reason, while Mr. Wolston and M. Zermatt and his two sons went off to work out of doors, they most commonly remained at Rock Castle.
Fertile as the soil of the Promised Land was, however, there was yet the possibility that its yield might be prejudicially affected by an excessive drought during the summer. What was lacking was a system of irrigation suitably carried all over the surface of this area of several hundred acres. The only water-courses were the Jackal and Falconhurst Rivers to the east, and to the west the Eastern River, which ran into the south end of Nautilus Bay. This defect had struck Mr. Wolston, and one day, the 9th of November, after the midday meal, he brought the conversation round to this subject.
"Nothing would be easier," he said, "than to fix up a water-wheel, using the Jackal River fall a mile and a half above Rock Castle. There are two ship's pumps among the material you took out of the Landlord, my dear Zermatt. Well, the wheel, once it is fixed, could work them with quite sufficient force, could pump the water up into a reservoir and carry it through pipes as far as the fields at Wood Grange and Sugar-cane Grove."
"But the pipes," said Ernest; "how can we make them?"
"We would do on a big scale what you have already done on a small scale to bring water from Jackal River to the kitchen garden at Rock Castle," Mr. Wolston replied. "Instead of using bamboos, we would use trunks of the sago-tree, cleared of their pith. An installation like that would not be beyond our powers."
"Splendid!" Jack declared. "When we have made our land more fertile still it will produce more; it will produce too much, and we shall not know what to do with our crops, for after all, there is no market yet at Rock Castle."
"There will be one, Jack," M. Zermatt replied, "as there will be a town by and by, and then several towns, not only in the Promised Land, but all over New Switzerland. We must look ahead, my son."
"And when there are towns," Ernest added, "there will be inhabitants whose food supply must be secured. So we must get out of the soil all that it is capable of yielding."