1 88 A COLONY IN THE MAKING chap. 



our friends to adopt this last course. They must then 

 have a house ; and here to be penny wise is to be 

 pound foolish. A good house is essential to and 

 almost a guarantee of perfect health. If stone is easily 

 available let it be built of stone ; if not, of cedar-wood 

 with a shingle roof. In either case a nice little house 

 with a sitting-room, two bed-rooms, and a deep 

 verandah will cost, roughly, ^150. A kitchen, a hut 

 or two, and a rough store will be £50 more. While 

 the house is going up we will have two hundred acres 

 ploughed up by contract. There are plenty of con- 

 tractors, both Dutch and English, who will do this, 

 and the cost, unless the clearing is very heavy, to clear, 

 plough, and cross-plough will not exceed 30^. an acre, 

 or in all ^300. The advantage of contracting is this : 

 cultivated land should lie fallow through one rainy 

 season, and therefore by contracting a breathing-space 

 is given in which to buy ploughs and implements, 

 break oxen, and obtain labour. Ploughs, implements, 

 and a Scotch cart will come to ^100, twenty oxen at 

 £4. each will be a further £%o> and four good sows, 

 and a boar perhaps £25 more. A cattle boma and 

 rough pig-styes will bring the capital expenditure to 

 ^"685, or, as numerous small items such as furniture, 

 at first necessarily of the roughest, have been omitted, 

 say ^730. We have thus left ,£470 for living ex- 

 penses, twelve months' working expenses, and, if 

 possible, some small insurance against a bad season's 

 crop, a sum just, but barely, sufficient. Living ex- 

 penses will be managed comfortably, certainly not 

 luxuriously, on ^100 ; labour I put at £y a month, 

 and £2$ for the harvest month ; ^"200 will be kept in 

 reserve ; and the remaining £yo will surely go in 

 repairs and unforeseen contingencies. 



