Agricultural colony

“ The sinking hopes of those, who depended on the tillage of the soil, have been considerably revived by the late permission to distil spirits from grain in the colony; and there cannot be a doubt, that agricultural industry will thence receive a new impulse; but the benefits derivable from this permission, are of a limited nature.
It will, no doubt, increase the demand for grain, and, consequently, its production; and it will have the very important effect of shielding the colonists from, or at least of mitigating the effects of, a failure of crops. ”

“ There the colonist has no expence to incur in clearing his farm: he is not compelled to a great preliminary out-lay of capital, before he can expect a considerable return; he has only to set fire to the grass, to prepare his land for the immediate reception of the plough-share; so that, if he but possess a good team of horses, or oxen, with a set of harness, and a couple of substantial ploughs, he has the main requisites for commencing an agricultural establishment, and for ensuring a comfortable subsistence for himself and family. ”

“ Today it not only represents the most important agricultural industry of the Colony, having long since surpassed rubber as the premier product, but it has an almost bewildering variety of uses. It is food, drink and shelter. Out of the trunk the native extracts his wine; from the fruit, and this includes the kernel, are obtained oil for soap, salad dressing and margarine; the leaves provide a roof for the native houses; the fibre is made into mats, baskets or strings for fishing nets, while the wood goes into construction. Even the bugs that live on it are food for men. ”

“ The great scarcity of working cattle, has very materially retarded the progress of the settlers in their agricultural pursuits, and has prevented the colony from arriving at that state of improvement and prosperity which it otherwise would have done. When a sufficient quantity of bullocks and sheep can be obtained to satisfy the wants of the settlers, and a portion of those settlers can be established on the Avon River, as graziers, the colony will be in a fair way for supplying itself with all the necessaries of life, produced on its own soil. ”

“ Consequently, hired agricultural labor is almost impossible to secure, and each man is compelled to rely on the labor of himself and his family to cultivate his land. As a result, the typical agricultural unit becomes the small holding, occupied and tilled by a single family. The system is further established by the fact that the products of such a region are well adapted to this form of culture. This is the typical “farm” organization which gives its name to this class of colony. ”

“ But, although great possibilities exist in this and other industrial directions, serious development had only just commenced when the present war broke out, and the central resource of the Colony was still sheep and cattle raising, together with a fair amount of straight agricultural work such as the cultivation of maize, oats, barley, potatoes and vegetables of various kinds. ”

“ On one tenure or another the whole colony gradually comes into cultivation.
The predominance of the agricultural interest is long threatened and at length shaken by the rise of the industrial stage. It is partly evolved from the pastoral and agricultural stages and partly independent. Nor do these stages at once and necessarily give rise to collective industry. In all young colonies where the population is scanty and processes are simple there are no division and no association of labor. ”

“ The sheep-farmer ought to have a good homestead in an agricultural part of the Colony, (this, in my opinion, is indispensable to his success,) where he may grow grain sufficient not only to render him almost independent of bad seasons and high prices, but, generally, to give him a few hundred bushels of surplus wheat and maize with which to buy tea, sugar, and clothing. Hundreds of sheep-farmers have of late been ruined by having to purchase the actual [160] necessaries for their stations on credit. ”

“ The great concussion which the agricultural interests thus sustained at the epoch when the productive powers of the colony exceeded the consumptive, and the continued shocks to which they have been exposed ever since, have not unfortunately affected the agricultural prosperity alone, but have shaken to the foundation the commercial edifice also. ”

“ As for the second class of settlers, the growers of grain and other field produce for the colonial market, as they consist generally of industrious emancipated convicts, or of free emigrants, originally of the class of agricultural labourers, who have previously lived as hired servants on estates in the colony ”

“ The majority of them are farmers, lured by the prospects of government bounty in lands, by the reported fertility of the soil, and by the desire to be first among those who are planting our institutions on the Pacific coast. Among them are artisans of every trade, comprising with farmers the very best material for a new colony. ”

“ An increase of labourers by emigration would only increase the production of wheat, and in the absence of a market still further reduce prices. In other words, the quantity of wheat-land cultivated would be larger, while consumers would increase only in a trifling degree. Hence to talk of more immigration was idle. It was necessary, he contended, for the success of any recently established colony that its merchants should be sufficiently numerous to relieve the agricultural and manufacturing population. ”

“ At first each family of colonists worked on its own farm, and managed its own cattle, but it was found that the land was uncultivated, and the cattle died for want of attention or food; and in 1828 the society took back the cattle, and employed all the colonists indiscriminately in the general cultivation of the land of the colony. ”

“ I have spoken to some practical farmers, who have not the slightest doubt that the colony posseses every capability, both for agriculture and grazing, and though the pasture lands on this side of the hills are not extensive, there is an unlimited tract behind them, and at no great distance. ”

“ As a whole, however, the people of the Colony have been very comfortable in their circumstances, and the bulk of the white settlers, outside of the villages, occupy large and prosperous cattle farms in which little of the soil is cultivated, and where the work is largely performed by coloured labourers. ”

“ It occupies a man twenty days to break up an acre with a hoe, from its wild state, though this could be done easily with cattle. But, as I have already observed, we have few of them, and the neighbouring colonies will not send them, either from jealousy or fear; and individually we cannot afford to charter vessels and import them, and we are not yet strong enough to form a company. What can we then do?—two or three hundred head of cattle, and two or three thousand sheep, would be purchased by us, if they were sent by Government at a fair rate; and this would establish the colony. ”

“ We are suffering great privations at the Settlement. Very little buffaloe meat has been obtained from the plains, and our principal subsistence is from grain boiled into soup. Few have either pepper, salt, flour, or vegetables. One of the Swiss was lately frozen to death on the plains; and a Meuron settler returning to the colony with a horse sledge of provisions perished also from the severity of the winter. ”

“ This person, on seeing the Toongabbie hills covered with a most promising crop of wheat, declared that be had never seen better in America, even at Rhode island, the garden of America; and on being shown some Indian corn of last year's growth, gave it as his opinion, that we wanted nothing but large herds of grazing cattle, to be a thriving, prosperous, and great colony, possessing within itself all the essential articles of life. ”

“ The settlers had come without wives and children, and each man worked not to acquire property for himself and his family but to further the general purposes of the colony. In planting corn, in felling trees, in repairing the fortifications, even in hunting or fishing, he was working for the community; whatsoever he could get by his own toil or by trade with the natives went straightway into the common stock, and the skilful and industrious fared no better than the stupid and lazy. ”

“ Not only do they supply the entire colony with the fruit and vegetables it requires, but they carry on a thriving trade with the manufacturing towns in the neighborhood. For fifty miles around the fruit and the flowers raised in the Bethel hothouses are in great request. In connection with the flower garden, a large building is set aside for drying seeds and storing bulbs, a most profitable undertaking. The colonists, in addition to raising their own vegetables, grow their own corn, feed their own cattle, and make their own butter and cheese. ”

“ It is, in the main, the stage of contemporary colonies. What brings it to an end? The soil gets exhausted, prices fall, and a succession of wet seasons in New Zealand or of dry seasons in Australia or South Africa sends the farmer into the money market. Nearly every province of almost every colony gets mortgaged up to the hilt. The foot of the land agent is on the neck of the farmer, who becomes his tenant or serf—adscriptus glebæ as much as the Old English villeins who were the ancestors of the farmer, or the Virginia villeins who repeated in the seventeenth century the Old English status. ”

“ On our way we passed many residences of great woolgrowers, owning as much as 20,000 acres of land each, but living, for the most part, in England, their affairs in the Colony being managed by agents. They keep only one man on each 5,000 acres. There is scarcely any agriculture, although the land is very suitable, but being taken up in this way, there is no room for population to increase, and the people have to emigrate. ”

“ Trade and Agriculture.—The chief wealth of the colony consists in the products of its forests and in ivory. The natives, in addition to manioc, their principal food, cultivate bananas, ground nuts and tobacco. On plantations owned by Europeans coffee, cocoa and vanilla are grown. European vegetables are raised easily. ”

“ A certain extent of ground is cultivated in common by the colonists, each head of a family being required to work on it three days in the year, at wages paid in a colonial paper money. The produce of this common land is employed in supplying the deficiencies of the harvests of the separate farms, and meeting the expenses of the school, the hospital, and the general Administration. The colonists are also allowed in summer to pasture their cattle in the common pastures of the colony. ”

“ Many of these flats have produced crops of wheat for sixteen years successively, without the aid of any kind of manure. It must, however, be owned, that a very slovenly system of farming has been generally pursued throughout the colony; and, in fact, is commonly observable in all colonies. The settlers are not only apt to rely too much upon the natural productiveness of the soil, but they are in general men whose attention has only lately been turned to agriculture, and who are almost entirely ignorant of practical farming in its most important details. ”

“ In clearing land the settlers have so far applied hand labor almost exclusively, but in the coming year horse power will be needed. Near the houses small potato patches and vegetable gardens have been planted. Field crops have been started, in a small and primitive way, and among these oats and feed grasses predominate. The sale of milk is the most important item of income of the settlers. Dairy farming is the company's aim in the development of the colony. ”

“ Lack of proper transport facilities has retarded the development of the Colony, as owing to the lack of transport animals nearly the whole of the carrying of produce is done by natives.
The prosperity of the Colony is entirely due to the exploitation of the natives; in fact the economic life of the country depends upon the natives' industry. ”

“ In this extensive territory, forming, as it were, a succession of terraces rising above each other, much barren land exists, interspersed with many spots of extreme fertility, producing, in their wild state, plants and flowers distinguished by the elegance of their forms and colours. The colony is capable of much improvement, and of maintaining a much larger population than that by which it is occupied. The principal of the rural occupants are wine-growers, corn-farmers and graziers ”

“ They were busy rebuilding and improving it, for the country all round is being brought into cultivation, and trade is brisk. The phenomena remind one of western North America, though the pace at which population grows and natural resources are developed is far slower. There is a German colony, of course with a large brewery, the chief manufacturing industry of the spot, and a somewhat smaller British mercantile colony. ”

“ Although the dense vegetation which covers the rich soil in this part of the colony, entirely precludes all possibility of its ever being made use of for the ordinary colonial productions, yet the time might arrive, in some future generation, when much of this kind of land might be checquered with plantations of rice, tobacco, indigo, cotton, sugar-cane, and mulberry trees. ”

“ Other articles will gradually succeed, as the Colony advances in population and prosperity; because there exists no fundamental impediment either in climate, voyage or distance, to opening an intercourse with the whole world. Linseed, tallow, hides, bristles, wool, fish, oils, &c. will become valuable exports, while it is probable the finest grain will be produced for its own maintenance. ”