GENTLEMAN-FARMING IN lOWA.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2459, 4 February 1881, Page 2

GENTLEMAN-FARMING IN lOWA.

ANOTHER TIC I’U RE OF THE RUGBY

SETTLEMENT.

lowa, the scene; ; of Tom Hughes’ (hf ‘.‘.Tom Brownes School Days”) new settlement ik’ thus described by a cor respondent, who writes to the “Pall Mall Budget” under date Nov. 11 and 20: —“The English give moat varied accounts of this settlement, Le Mars. Some are.quite enthusiastic; hut the climate is a little trying all must admit. The winter has set in unusually hard and early this year. The ‘ blizzard,’ a fortnight ago, was quite unprecedented in severity and suddenness. Deep drifts of snow are still to be found in the hollows. We went one day for a drive to see the country and inspect our 300 acres of holding. It was bitterly cold, with a sharp north wind in our faces. The prairie here is not Hat, but undulating, without a tree, excepting the small groves of very young timber round each farm. Nothing hut Indian corn and brown grass to be seen, with a little wooden house and barn clotted about here and there, and ael raj 7 haystack. We must have covered nearly fifty miles. Our little hotel is crowded in tiie evening with people working in the town, and the stc.idior English set wiio have not yet fixed on farms. The rowdy lot, for there are some bad specimens among the decayed gentlemen who have come out here, frequent a beer saloon called the House of Lords.. The emigrants as a rule are very inexperienced, but wellmeaning, willing, and industrious. Before the English arrived the farmers here were about ruined by bad crops and hop failures, but this year has been good for all crops, except hay. Everybody, from the driver upwards, ad dressed us as “ you boys,” not from familiarity, but custom. The C.’s and a few of their friends take fanning pupils at £IOO premium and three dollars a week for board. This is the most profitable kind of farming here. The pupils learn little, but help in the work, and are more comfortably 7 housed than on the American farms. Two yjuths of good family arrived yesterday. The roads arc not so bad as I had expected, considering that they consist of mere “ nits,” in the prairie. In some places thousands of acres have been burned by prairie fires, and this gives the land a bleak, miserable appearance. The soil is very fertile, and turns up quite black. This hotel is crammed,’and D. and I think ourselves lucky in getting a bed between us. A train arrives at midnight, and we often hear passengers kicking at the hotel door for admittance in the early hours of the morning. The poor wretches are never let in. 28th : There are nineteen degrees of frost here to-day. We started out to visit a farm, but were driven back by the icy wind. Such severe weather in November is unusual. The English church is an odd place, for the service is held in a music hall : the Hon. Captain Moretou officiated, as sisted by another layman. The gallant officer (retired) is very Low Church. At the hotel the diet consists principally of pork and potatoes cooked with grease. On E.’s farm, where D. is a, pupil, wc get a little variety. The pigs, or ‘ hargs,’ as they are called in lowa form a prominent feature on these farms. They are generally Berkshire, and active little animals. They wander about everywhere, rooting up Mr. E.’.s attempt at a garden, and even trying to force their way into the house. There is just now a coal ‘ famine ’ here—none to be had. A couple of. car-loads arrived at the station one morning, and there was almost a fight over them. The railway and coal companies have run up the prices, and there seems no immediate prospect of large supplies. Farmers have been sending for fifteen miles round for coals'" in vain. Of course they can burn corncobs, or even corn ; but the former give little heat, and the latter is rather a wasteful way of producing warmth. These farmhouses are desperately cold till the stoves are lighted. The prairie wolves are beginning to make quite a noise at night. An Englishman shot one last week, and obtained the Government bounty

three dollars —for the skin. 13ut we have not had much sport, as the game is so wild at this time of the year. I shot a wild duck, and D. a prairie chicken, and we saw a couple ■of beavers. A young married couple with a baby arrived at C.’s the other day, but a forty miles’ drive through the prairies, in the cold, seems to have damped their ardour. It is queer to see the happy-go lucky way in which the English come out here, without any idea of what they would have to do. The quarters of farming-pupils are close. At the E.’s the house consists of a bedroom and kitchen on the ground floor, where the family and boarders take their meals, and above in the roof is a clean little attic where D., another Englishman, and a lad of sixteen sleep. When Igo there we shall be four—rather close quarters.”