upon it as the fitting employment for a little free-selector,—who is but a mean fellow in his estimation. He grows no more than he will use about his place for his own cattle. The flour to be consumed by himself and his men he buys. And as his horses are not often corn-fed a very few acres of ploughed land suffices for his purpose. The Dutch patriarch makes his own bread from the wheat he has himself produced. The bread is not white, but it is so sweet that I am inclined to say I have never eaten better. And he sells his produce,—anything which he can grow and does not eat himself. The Australian woolgrower sells nothing but wool. The Dutch Boer will send peas twenty miles to market, and will sell a bundle of forage,—hay made out of unripened oats or barley,—to any one who will call at his place and ask for it.
A strong Boer will probably have thirty, forty or perhaps fifty acres of cultivated land round his house,—including his garden. And he will assuredly have a dam for holding and husbanding his rain water. He would almost better be without a house than without a dam. Some spot is chosen as near to his homestead as may be,—towards which there is something, be it ever so slight, of a fall of ground. Here a curved wall or stoned bank is made underlying the fall of ground, and above it the earth is hollowed out,—as is done with a haha fence, only here it is on larger and broader dimensions,—and into this artificial pond when it is so made the rain water is led by slight watercourses along the ground above. From the dam, by other watercourses, the contents are led hither and thither on to the land and garden as required,—or into
