Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/146

 renters on his land; he calls that "the lazy, shiftless way." He says the people here do not know the meaning of hard work; that they work only five days a week, and have very short hours, whereas he has always worked long hours every day; and it agrees with him, for he is stout, and looks exactly like a prosperous business man. He owns thousands of sheep and cattle; and if I did not make an error in my notes, he told me he made $175,000 from his land last year. I remember the statement particularly because he had just been telling me about an income tax lately imposed, and which hit him hard. One tract of his land, 2,500 acres, cost him $150,000, counting an irrigation plant which he built; but lately he refused $225,000 for it. He predicts that as soon as Americans find out the opportunities for making money here, they will come in flocks. He told me of one piece of land that is worth $400 an acre, and which has been producing corn at the rate of 100 bushels per acre for sixty-five years, without manuring. This is choice land in a choice district, and perhaps the statement is exaggerated, as we exaggerate when we talk of forty bushels of wheat per acre, or seventy of corn. The country through which we were passing looked very dry, but the American said it was good land; the famous chocolate land of Australia, so named because the soil has a reddish cast. "We have been having a drouth for two months," he said, "and the dry weather is good for the land." He talked a good deal about "sour" and "sweet" soil. I said the expressions were new to me, and my companion laughingly replied that he was forgetting all he ever knew about America; he made me