Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/343

 brown sugar to sprinkle over it. Most of them have gardens, and Mr. Meek loans them oxen and plows for cultivating them. A young native boy who herds cattle gets seventy-two cents a month. The native workmen employed on the Meek farm have their porridge ground and cooked by a native employed for the purpose, who never gives them too much, because the work of grinding corn in a handmill is a considerable task, and this task falls to the cook. The natives on the farm go to church once on Sunday, but they seem to attend the services as a means of seeing and being seen rather than because they are religious. A railroad is building toward Mr. Meek's farm, and lately he refused $20 an acre for it. I am somewhat confused about the yield of corn per acre in South Africa, as the people always say a field yields so many bags per morgen; a morgen being a little over two acres, and a bag holding a little less than three bushels. But it may be safely stated that the yield of corn in no part of South Africa is equal to the yield in the corn belt in our section. Disastrous drouths are also very common; corn has been almost a failure for the past three seasons. I have not seen a good field of corn in South Africa. But Mr. Meek is a very prosperous farmer, because of his sheep, cattle and horses. He also milks a good many cows, and sends the cream to the railroad, "five hours" from his farm: distances are always computed here by hours, and not by miles. Five miles from his farm-house is a country village without a railroad, and there he does his "trading." He is making an exhibit of stock at the Johannesburg fair, and his wife and daughter are very anxious to know whether they took