A NEW ZEALANDER'S EXPERIENCE OF THE CAPE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2061, 1 October 1880, Page 3

A NEW ZEALANDER'S EXPERIENCE OF THE CAPE.

Mr Riohard Weaver, a teamster of considerable means, who left this district last April for the Cape of Good Hope (aays tho "North Otago Times"), has returned to Duntroon a wiser and a poorer man. His experiences since he set out for fresh fields and pastures new have not been happy. _ The only good thing about the Cape it its olimate. The soil throughout his travels there, extending 700 miles northward, is poor and hungry ; the native grass is thin and wretched; neither wood nor water for a stretch of sometimes 100 miles; draught horses there are none worthy of the name, mules being used in their place ; the bullockß on the roads are of no size or weight, and long spans of fourteen or sixteen may be seen creeping along with little more than a ton behind them. AH these evils were trying in tho extreme to Mr Weaver, but the moßt exasperating of all was the Dutch element so apparent in the back country. Mr Weaver denounces Dutchmen as the meanest, stingiest, and most intensely selfish of all the | races of mankind. They would refuse a drink of water although one's tongue were hanging a foot from one's mouth, and in the strongest, tersest language, Mr Weaver declared to our informant the pleasure he would feel if he could shoot the lot. The Cape Railway Bill is thrown out; work there is none for white men, the darkies monopolising the labour market, or nearly so ; and Mr Weaver declares the purchase of land there is to be a delusion and a snare. Still, dissatisfied with the idea of returning to his beloved Waitaki without another attempt to retrieve his fortune, Mr Weaver took ship to Bydney to venture a trial of the famed Temora mines. Having sunk two shafts of 50 feet eaoh, and one of 140 feet, without getting even the colour of gold, he sickened at the thought of prolonging his adventures, and put himself on board the first steamer for Dunedin, resolving to lay his bones in dear old New Zaaland, the best of all the places he ever raw.