494" Foreign Notices • — Africa. 



do better here. Of these, many are totally unacquainted with rural affairs, 

 and belong to professions which are comparatively useless in this colony. 

 It is distressing to witness the difficulties which many of those persons 

 must encounter by entering into new occupations ; and where cultiva- 

 tion of the soil must necessarily form a great part of every one's pursuit, 

 there arises a difficulty of disposing of their superabundant produce. 



There are two descriptions of persons wanted here; viz. men of inde- 

 pendent property, not averse to a retued life, or such as do not pine after 

 the more refined amusements of Europe, and who may wish to provide 

 landed inheritance for their children, by purchase, which is the most 

 reasonable (grants are out of the question, and where possible are by no 

 means profitable or comfortable, and are mostly engendered and blazoned 

 in the brains and pages of your pamphleteers) ; and the honest, sober, and 

 industrious labourer. We neither want the gentleman farmer, nor the 

 artisan who wishes to raise himself to instantaneous wealth by some 

 magical power he is incapable of wielding. The gentleman farmer who 

 would expect to live on the produce of his estate, would (as several have 

 done) continue the same extravagant style of living which fictitious pros- 

 perity forced upon him at home ; and, from inexperience and mistaken 

 pride, he would here require his steward, farmer, and a long et cetera of 

 attendants, which high prices and country bankers allowed him for a short 

 period in England ; but all of which must be disbursed from very moderate 

 returns. All these circumstances must be duly considered, and particularly 

 so, as the prosperity of the colony depends upon its ability to furnish pro- 

 duce at a very low rate, which, in many instances, does not reimburse 

 the grower for his outlay. A great portion of the corn is purchased by the 

 merchants on speculation, and, in Cape Town, store hire is very expensive. 

 The merchant must watch a favourable opportunity to export ; and, as this 

 period may be protracted, he cannot be expected to afford a high price for 

 wheat. 



We are stunned here, by a constant outcry of the distresses of many 

 classes in England, and the consequent necessity of emigration. Tlie 

 whole of the emigrants who have lately arrived here to settle, or who have 

 passed on to Australia, speak, however, in a tone rather high and un- 

 guarded for distressed persons. Those possessed of a little property expect 

 as much attendance as Indian nabobs ; others with brazen impudence, the 

 fruits of sheer ignorance, look upon the Cape of Good Hope as a land of 

 savages. The servants and labourers, too often forgetting their proper 

 station, rather wish to spend their time in the sports of the field, than to 

 follow their lawful occupations with laudable industry ; and it is not unfre- 

 quent to see them, at their first landing, strolling about with fire-arms, 

 expecting to meet with wild beasts at every corner. These ridiculous 

 notions they have imbibed from reading the accounts of old times, or from 

 the petty compilations of persons who have visited Cape Town, or who 

 may have rode a few miles into the interior, and, having amused or dis- 

 gusted such of the inhabitants as understood them by their futile remarks 

 and childish questions, have been led in many instances to publish as facts, 

 the ludicrous jokes and well deserved sneers which have been passed on 

 themselves j or have repeated, with mischievous colouring, the diabolical 

 assertions of others who have preceded them. It is difficult to say whe- 

 ther such beings are more deserving of contempt or pity ; it must, however, 

 be regretted that their conduct tends much to mislead the unwary. 



We now hear but few very serious complaints from our settlers on the 

 frontier, who, from various causes, were constrained to remain on their 

 locations, and now, by persevering industry, appear to improve their cii-- 

 cumstances, having overcome their greater difficulty of settling a new 

 country, and obtained some knowledge of the soil and climate, an essential 

 which practice alone can bestow. The depredations of colonial Hottentots 



