THE CAPITAL REQUIRED. 27 



to make a start in a small way, especially if he has 

 had any other farm experience. 



The difficulty is, how can a young man acquire 

 this experience? To send him out to a colony 

 without friends or relatives to go to, with the vague 

 instructions to make his way in the world, is cruel. 

 Occasionally such a one may tumble on his legs by 

 great good luck, but the chances are infinitely against 

 him.. If he has capital he will be sure to invest it 

 foolishly. We all know what " buying a pig in a 

 poke^^ means; how rarely the purchaser does not find 

 out afterwards he had better have left it alone ; and 

 yet everything the man without experience buys is a 

 '' pig in a poke." 



The only chance for a man emigrating to the Cape 

 to Ostrich-farm is to be well supplied with letters of 

 introduction, if possible from relatives of well-to-do 

 people living at the Cape ; even then he will find it 

 no easy matter to get on a good farm, where farming 

 is conducted on a large scale. He must then be 

 prepared to pay £100 premium the first j^ear, beside 

 being ready to buckle-to and work hard at anything 

 — no matter what it is — to which he is set. Board 

 and lodging he will, of course, get free, usually living 

 in the house with the master. It is this latter that 

 constitutes the objection farmers have to cadets, and 



