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158 TRAVELS IN 
is not any part of tliis extensive settlement that is capable of 
such improvement as the country which is contiguous to 
Plettenberg s Ba}^ and I should hope that the British Govern- 
ment, when the colony is once permanently annexed to the 
Empire, as I am confident, sooner or later, must be the case, 
v/iW adopt a plan similar to that which a single individual in 
Holland had in contemplation, and had actually taken mea- 
sures to carry into execution, when the war breaking out, un- 
fortunately put an end to the laudable undertaking. He ob- 
tained from the Dutch Government a grant of the whole 
district of Plettenberg's Bay, on condition of paying a certain 
annual rent. This district he meant to divide into one hundred 
portions, on each of which was to be placed an industrious 
family to be sent out from Europe, either Dutch or Germans, 
to be furnished with stock, utensils, implements of husbandry, 
and every article that was requisite for carrying on the useful 
trades, and to cultivate the soil ; but they were not to be al- 
lowed to purchase or to employ a single slave. Every kind of 
labor was to be performed by themselves and by Hottentots, 
whom they were directed to encourage. How easily might a 
hundred industrious families be found in the United Kingdom, 
ready to embrace so favorable an opportunity of exercising 
their capital, their skill and activity, in so fine a climate, and 
so fertile a tract of country. 
It would be no small advantage to the boors, who dwell 
some hundred miles from the sea-coast, to carry back in their 
waggons a quantity of salted fish, which might be prepared to 
any extent at all the bays ; this article would not only furnish 
them with an agreeable variety to their present unremitting 
consumption of flesh meat three times a day, but would serve 
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