In the advanced farms stock are watered from tanks fed by subsoil water raised by windmills. Wherever there are no permanent springs these mills, Mr. Willcocks thinks, might be made compulsory. He says: “I have seen stock drinking from shallow pools which contained mud rather than water, and in which dead sheep were festering. It might be possible to legislate that, if a reservoir is constructed, it must be fenced round and protected from entry by stock. The reservoir dam should be pierced by a pipe discharging into a trough, from which cattle should be given to drink.” This would protect the water from pollution and save the cattle from contracting rinderpest and spreading it all over the country.
The farms have a general area of some 12,000 acres each, with about twelve acres of cultivated land per farm. This means about one acre of arable land to a thousand acres of pastoral land. The cultivated area is divided thus—one acre of fruit or vegetable garden to about eleven acres under wheat, Indian corn, lucerne, and oat-hay. Here, the veldt will carry one sheep—these are principally merinos—or a goat, to four acres; or one ox to sixteen acres.[10]
North of Britstown the pan and vale formation begins, a formation consisting of alternate ridges of rounded dolomite hills and flat depressions which are either vales or pans. Vales have outlets for the water which collects in them, pans usually have none. Some are natural reservoirs of great capacity. The pans, when not brack, are the natural reservoirs of the country. Mr. Willcocks has shown how both pans and vales may be dealt with to the best advantage, and how the direct storage of water and the indirect storage of it should be effected.
Still touring in the Cape Colony, he turned his attention to the Kat, Kabossi, Keishma, Klipparts, and other streams near the sea, which have a perennial discharge with a minimum of about 100 cubic feet per second, yet which are scarcely utilised. On this subject he reported: “The value of this water near the sea will never be appreciated till the idea is abandoned that cereals are the only crops worth growing and that manures are not necessary. The attempt to grow cereals year after year without manure and without rotation of crops has made the wheat crops so liable to rust that agriculture is discounted everywhere near the sea. Wherever perennial water of any kind can be obtained in the important stock districts of the Eastern Provinces, lucerne, at least, might be planted to the utmost limits of the water.”
Pure Negretti Merino Ram
Locusts are ubiquitous; but these in the footganger stage might be easily destroyed before they could develop into the pest they now are. Mr. Willcocks thus describes a mode of dealing with them: “At the foot of some low hills in the karoo bush I came across great numbers of the footgangers. They were jet black, and were very easily distinguished. Indeed it appeared as though some giant had just walked over the veldt and sprinkled it with great splashes of jet-black ink. If I had been a Kaffir, and had known that a reward would have been given for the location of locusts in this stage, it would have been a simple matter to have gone to the nearest magistrate and reported the appearance of the footgangers. A few men, with washing soap and water and sprays could have killed many millions in a few hours.” He proposes that the States should combine and annually devote £20,000 to the extermination of these creatures before they take wing and become uncombatable. The idea is an excellent one; but the method of carrying it into effect will need to be “slim” in its strictures, otherwise the remedy, in homeopathic fashion, may be productive of the disease! In India, for instance, where several annas are offered for every deadly snake destroyed, these pests are occasionally cherished and bred as a comfortable source of income. In the Deccan, a few years since, a nest of these reptiles was discovered near the writer’s bungalow, and the farming process was explained by an Anglo-Indian friend. Every dead snake being worth three or four annas, it was to the interest of the enterprising native to rear as many as possible, so that when hard up he could slay one of his “stock” and receive the coveted reward!
The Aliwal North, Herschel, and New England districts lie between 4500 and 6000 feet above sea-level, and have a rainfall of some thirty inches per annum. A good Indian corn crop may be counted on every year, and wheat in five years out of six. Only a third of the cultivable area is put under cultivation, though the grasses are good and one acre can support a sheep. Agriculture is generally backward, rotations of crops and manuring being unknown. Turnips and swedes for winter feeding of stock have been raised with success.