But when the bargain is not fairly carried out—when the cost of the help given is constantly asserted to have exceeded that of the service rendered in return, the man and the horse become, and in no great length of time either, mere bond slaves at the beck of the storekeeper; whose debt can at last be liquidated only by the seizure of the house and bit of land, the cost of building and clearing of which was the original cause of the two men entering into compact with one another.
Instances of this character were of not unfrequent occurrence, and they seemed to us to account for a course of conduct on the part of many of the poorer class of settlers which had, at first, seemed strange. Instead of taking advantage of the facilities offered them by Government for acquiring homes of their own by clearing and building for themselves in the bush, men of this class, who had saved a little money, often preferred to pay a high rental to some of the large landowners for small and unproductive farms, which had been in cultivation for years and were almost worn out. They seemed to think that it mattered not in the least whether the land was new or old, provided that it was cleared and ready for ploughing, and to believe that the rent would easily be paid out of the crops, which they expected to raise with the very roughest cultivation and without a particle of manure. They therefore laid out the money in their possession upon a couple of horses and a cart, and looked, not to their land, but to the sandalwood trade for their profits.
If a man of this class happened to get hold of a small farm which had not been quite worked out, and was lucky enough also to have two or three good and fruitful seasons
