Book I. 



AGRICULTURE IN AFRICA. 



181 



the ear. I'his is termed tramping out. The winnowing is performed by tossing the 

 trampled grain and dung in the air with shovels, or by exposing it to the wind in a 

 sieve. 



1133. The agriculture of the Cape appears capable of much improvement, were the 

 farmers less indolent, and more ambitious of enjoying the comforts and luxuries of exist- 

 ence. Barrow is of opinion that there might be produced an abundance of corn, cattle, 

 and wine, for exportation ; but that, to effect this, " it will be necessary to procure a new 

 race of inhabitants, or to change the nature of the old ones." At the suggestion of 

 this writer, an attempt was recently made by government to settle a number of British 

 families in the district of the Albany, an immense plain 60 or 70 miles long, by about 

 30 broad ; but after remaining there a year, the greater number of them were obliged to 

 leave that district on account of its unsuitableness for arable culture. A considerable 

 part returned to England, others remained and became servants in the colony, and a 

 few who had some property left, took land in more favourable situations. Pringle, who 

 has given an account of this settlement (1824), describes the deplorable situation of the 

 greater number of 5000 individuals who had fixed themselves there, and ascribes their 

 calamities more to the nature of their situation than to any other cause. Other districts, 

 he contends, might have been chosen much better adapted for the plough and the spade, 

 while the low and fertile region of Albany might have been usefully occupied as a 

 sheep pasture. With all the deficiencies of the country and climate, he says, if things 

 are properly managed, the Cape is not a worse land to live in than any other English 

 colony. Comparing his own account, however, with the description of other colonies, 

 especially Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales, we should be disposed to differ 

 from him in opinion, and to prefer the latter settlements. (Pringle' s Present Stale of 

 Jllbany, South Africa, 12mo, 1824.) 



1134. Ill the interior of the country are many tribes of whom little or nothing is 

 known ; but some of which are every now and then brought into notice by modern 

 travellers. Some have been visited, for the first time, by the missionary Campbell ; 

 and the account he gives of their agriculture, manufactures, and customs is often very 

 curious. It is astonishing how 

 ingenious lie found some tribes 

 in cutlery and pottery ; and the 

 neatness and regularity of the 

 houses of others are equally re- 

 markable. In one place the 

 houses were even tasteful ; they 

 were conical, and enclosed by 

 large circular fences (^g. 150.) ; 

 and he found them threshing out the corn on raised circular threshing-floors (a), with 

 flails, much in the same manner as we do. 



1 1 35. The unimproved Hotten- 

 tots form their huts {Jig. 151.) of 

 mats bound on a skeleton of poles 

 or strong hoops. {Jig. 152.) Their 

 form is hemispherical ; they are 

 entered by a low door, which has 

 a mat shutter, and they are sur- 

 rounded by a reed or mat fence 

 to exclude wild animals and re- 

 tain fuel and cattle. Attempts 

 to introduce European fonus of 

 cottages have been made by the 

 missionaries, which, with a know- 

 ledge of the more useful arts, 

 will no doubt in time humanise and refine them. The missionary Kiishe conducted 

 Eurchell along the valley of Genadendal, .^.titt^fW^M^f^flfiii,^ 152 



to exhibit the progress which the Hotten- 

 tots, under his instruction, had made in 

 horticulture and domestic order. The val- 

 ley is a continued maze of gardens and 

 fruit trees. " The huts {Jig. 153.), un- 

 like those of Hottentot construction, are a 

 rude imitation of the quadrangular build- 

 ings of the colonist. They are generally 

 from ten to fifteen feet long, and from eight to ten wide, having an eai'then floor and 

 walls white-washed on their inside, composed of rough unhewn poles, filled up 



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