CAPTAIN RUNCIMAN'S LECTURE. (Continued.)

Waikato Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1601, 7 October 1882, Page 2

CAPTAIN RUNCIMAN'S LECTURE. (Continued.)

Niuiit just began to come on as wo began to ascend the Rocky Mountains, and we had got to the sum in it by Jay dawn. The scenery was grand, all the hollows filled with snow. It was well on m the day 01 c we got out into the open country, which is very barren, growing merely a species of sage bush and that not plentii fully. As we proceeded the whole country became entirely denuded of vegetation w ith alkali all over the surface. When nearing the Salt Lake we saw men collecting salt. There were heaps of salt about 5 feet high, and about 12 feet wide, 3, 4, and 5 chains long, alongside of a siding ready to be put into the trucks All the country around there looked very desolate and barren, but as soon as we got away from the alkali country and into some part of the plains of Nebraska, it was as level and beautiful as anything you can imagine, all covered with short natural grasses, and here and there e.ittle and sheep, not in great numbers, a few horses and a few antelopes. Then we came into a country where settlers were beginning to take up and form homesteads. Where they had put in bits of crops they really looked well. The wheat had the appearance of 20 to 25 bushels per acre ; and the barley 25 to 30 bushels. The rye stood above all the rest, showing a big crop, and the maize was young, but looking really well, and it giew as far as the eye could reach on either side of the line. I began to ask t myself the question " what have I been doing so many years tearing away, clearing and draining New Zealand swamps, Sec, with land like this clear, level, dry, and ready for the plough to be got at a nominal price per acre, which will grow crops like what I see on it?" But when I commenced to have the whole subject analysed it would not stand the test against New Zealand with all her faults. Then after passing through that countiy we got into the State of lowa, which k-< quite another class of country ; a rolling country which had been wholly covered with bush and cleared ; leaving belts and clumps which give it a \ovy beautiful appearance. The trees here are almost wholly deciduous, for scores of miles not a pine is to bo seen, and the trees having just got their new leaves on gave the whole landscape a soft, beautiful hue. The railway line \u i were on passes across nearly the middle of lowa, and across the ends of the States of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, a distance of some 700 or 800 miles, and all held in small tenements of from SO to 100 acres, and all in cultivation, a large proportion of it under crop, wheat and maize being the principal. What little pasture land I saw presented a very dirty appearance, and covered with a tall weed which the cattle would not eat, and, as I have told you before, the cattle and sheep Avithin eye-shot of the line are all of a very poor quality. The homesteads seem well built and commodious, and every 6 or 7 miles along the line yon run through busy, bustling townships, showing numerous manufactories in everyone of them, and all between conveys an idea of one continuous panorama of suburban residences. A great portion of the sides of the railway line is planted with potatoes, &c, looking only middling. The whole of this country I am now describing to you is slightly rolling, and a great deal of the land is pretty heavy, ami if it were in our country, would be exceedingly wet in winter. The crops, as a rule, were fairly good, and almost ready to harvest ; as a rule,, the pastures were vory thin, poor, short and dirty. The whole country seems to have a rocky or slate bottom. The grasses composing the pastures are few, almost entirely timothy, a little cocksfoot (" orchard grass" as they call it), and in some places a little blue Kentucky grass, and a grass . called red top. Rye-grass is unknown, I did not see a blade in the country. Those who know it 3ay that it would not do. White clover does very poorly ; red clover does fairly well — that is from a New Zealand standpoint. Other grasses and clovers may be there, but I never saw them, except a little lucerne I saw doing well on the low banks by a stream. I may here say I procured a bushel of blue Kentucky grass as I passed through that State, which I will be most happy to distribute to all who desire a little. I may say it ,very much resembles our twitch pr couch grass (poaprateiinhj, but it certainly 'lias not the running propensity of the twitch, ami it bears a high reputation, on the lighter lauds, The red

top grass is somewhat similar, but later. I could not get any seed of that, but it will be sent after mo. The samples of wheat, oats, and barley are, as a general rule, poor, as compared with ours, and I s.iw them over several thousand miles. I would strongly recommend our agricultural societies to send a few of our best samples ; I am sure they would be appreciated, and, it would be an acknowledgment of those two volumes, the annual reports of the State Department of Agriculture, which were kindly given to me. The secretary also told me that the Department would be only too happy to send the report annually if desired, and also would be glad to forward seed, or any information which they possessed, and which we might consider of value to us, for which, on behalf of our country, I expressed my gratitude, at the same time thanking him tor the samples of wheat which the Department had sent to us some three years ago, although I could not give him as favourable an account of them as I might have hoped to have done, as they had not proved so suitable to our soil and climate as some we had. I then had a general look through the Department, which is an enormous ftlace, and stocked with every conceivable thing, dead and living, pertain* ing to agriculture. It would take days to look through it carefully. I will now pass on through a corner of the States of Pennsylvania and Newv York into Canada, where I pulled up at the town of Stiatford, in the county of Firth, Western Ontario, that being one of, if not the principal, cheese centres in the Dominion. The route I went is very similar to that I have already described to you, only that the soil is somewhat lighter and sandier along the Lake shore and more barley is grown. After you get fairly away from the Lake into the inteiior in Upper Canada, peas take the place of the maize. Before passing into Canada — at Buffalo— l had the pleasure of seeing a small herd of pure-bred Durham (shorthorn) cattle called the Niagara herd, of winch there is a catalogue. They number about 30, all told. Several were imported from England, and they were the only things I had seen up to that time in the country that had any pretentious to breeding. There were home fairly good cattle amongst them, but they did not handle at all well. They were mostly hard and heavy skinned, and had very little style and no great amount of substance about them— not to be compared with Maclean and Co.'s or T. and y. Morrin's cattle. I now crossed at the wonderful Niagara Falls, which I will leave for others more capable to describe, and pass on to Stratford. A considerable portion of the country between the Falls and Stratford is of a poor description, broken and stoney, until nearing the latter place, when it improves very much, and by the timo I reached Stratford, the country all round was both good and beautiful, and the crops of all kinds were better. The harvest was fairly begun. Self-delivery (side) harvesters are the machines in common use ; the self-bindev is not in general use, and I only saw 5 or 6 at work the whole length of my trip, and would not be exaggerating when I say I saw hundreds of others at work. The self-binder is largely in use in the southern portions of the States, and will soon be m use in Canada. On my arrival at Stratford I went as I had been directed, to find Mr Ballanfcyne, who is member of the Provincial Parliament and chairman of the Western Dairyman's Association, that gentleman having the reputation of being the greatest authority on the manufacture of clieese in tiie Dominion of Canada. He was from home aud would not return till the morrow evening, but I at once resolved to wait. In the meantime I found a cousin of mine, whom I had expected to meet 70 or 80 miles further away. He is not a dairyman, but great in iron and milling machinery. I tound myself quite at home, for Mr Ballantyne was a personal friend of his. Next day my cousin drove me round some portion of the surrounding country, and in the evening we called on Mr Kallantyne after his return and explained my business. He at once very kindly arranged that he should drive me lound to several factories next day and explain to me all about their working, and in short give me any information Irequhed. lam very pleased to tell you he did this in the most painstaking way. After calling afc several farms as he went along, he took me to one of his own factories (Black Creek), and the one having the most perfect machinery in that neighbourhood. The machinery was a very decided improvement over many factories I had been through in the States, and the article produced was superior to much I bad seen. But in my opinion there was still room for improvement, more especially from a labor-sa\ ing point of view. Here I s.aw the g.mg-pre-s, which I was much pleased with. The cheeses in this factory weie made about 2 inches deeper than any factory I had previously visited, nob that Mr Ballantyne either recommended the 9 inch or condemned the 7 inch. He pointed out the economy of labor and space, but admitted other disadvantages wet c about equal. This factory receives the milk of somewhere about 1000 cows, which comes from a distance, at least on one side, of something over (i miles ; but generally not exceeding 4 miles. This 19 the first place where I found the whey fed fo pigs kept at the factory. There were something over 300 pigs, mostly all of good quality, and all thriving well. I was very pleased to see the system carried out practically, as most of you are aware we had been contemplating doing the same thing here. Since then I have seen 4or 5 other factories working the same way, and I am now fully persuaded that it is by far the best way of utilising the whey. The system adopted in some districts of taking the whey back to the farm to be utilised entails waste, but it is unnecessary at this time to enter upon this subject. After about 3 hours explanation on all the details, Mr Ballantyne turned his horses' heads homewards, but drove round another way over a large tract of capital country all in a very good state of cultivation. The whole district is just so slightly undulating as not to be a dead level, and the land a middling heavy loam on apparently sand-stone rock as bhowri in the many little rivulets we passed over. The crops here as a whole weie better than in most places I had been. Wheat, barley, oats, peas, and Hut (flax), were the most prevalent ; potatoes looked well, but in very small patches ; of turnips, Swedes are the only kind grown, and those only in very &mall patches, not looking well. A few small patches of carrots looked very well. At least three-fourths of that part of the country was either under crop or had been cut for hay. Here as elsewhere, timothy and red clover ar<* the principal grasses, and the cattle as a general rule were better bred than most I had seen. But here, as elsewhere, the pastures look poor and thin without that richness of appearance which our New Zealand pastures present. And then that deplorable Canadian thistle made the pastures almost useless in many places. Were that to get into our land with our temperate climate our country would be ruined. They can. hardly cope with it where they have only a short season of * growth. The thistle does not only take possession, but keeps it ; its roots run under ground and every bit of root 2 inches long will grow, and its seed will blow by the wiu'd nearly as far as the thistle we have. We have two spots of thistle growth in Waikato, one near Cambridge, aud one near Te Awa-

nrntu, and after seeing the condition which part of Canada has got into with them, and the small chance of exterminating them from any piece of ground, the damage they do the crops which can be handled only by machinery, I would gladly contribute to exterminate what thistles we have here. Some pastures I saw were just next thing to useless owing to the thistle, which in some places is almost driving the people out of their farms. Mr Ballantyne and I got back to Stratford by dusk, and he gave me a letter of introduction to another factory at Tavistock, which I was to go to early next morning, and be back to Stratford to go with Mr Ballantyne to a cheese market about 40 miles away. I did so, and found it almost a fur imiiUc of the Black Creek Factory. About 340 pigs were kept here, all of good fair quality, and thiiving well. 1 went to the cheese market I'dd at Lictowel, about 40 miles from Stratford, with Mr Ballantyne. We took a buggy thero, and drove to see another cheese factory where a young man was working, whom he could fully recommend to me if he could be induced to go to New Zealand, but the man did not care to go till after the end of their season— the end of November. We returned and attended the market which was held in a large hall. There were some 30 to 40 representatives from as many factories. And I was told that several hftuilred tons had changed hands within au hour and a half, and that the standard price fiom the best factories delivered into the railway cars was 11 to 11 one-tenth cetitsperlb. Themarketover, a general talk ensued, and a general questioning of me as to my country, <fee. To a very great extent, both there, and in many other places, I had been looked upon as a natuial curiosity coming from such an outlandish place, but cve.rywhere I was treated in the kindest possible way, and every facility was put in my way to get the information I wanted. Next day I went and saw through most of the agricultural machine, and other factories in .Stratford, from which I obtained catalogues, price lists, &c. Also, fiom Messrs Ballantyne and Harris a very large and valuable lot of reports and transactions of both Eastern and Western Ontario Dairymen's Associations, a part of which I left to come with the machinery, The following day I moved forward on my journey, went and visited what claims to be the largest herd of Durham (shorthorn) cattle in the world. Mr John Hope, the manager, received me in the kindest and most hospitable manner possible, and took me in and out through the whole of the enormous and magnificent buildings, most of which are brick end covered with slate. They arc beautifully arranged as to situation and convenience, being in rows parallel to one another with a considerable distance between. Each building is about 300 feet long, v ith a row of looseboxes up eacli side, and an 8 feet passage up the centre. Of couisc, being summer, hardly anything was in, except a few bulls, a few calves, and a few heifers, &c. The bulls, both young and old, were animals of vci y gi eat style, many of the one and two year olds were perfection. The sth Uukt* of Clarence, is I think, the mo&t stylish bull I ever saw, and certainly he hab the greatest amount of bubstance. After looking through all the cattle in and about the houses, Mr Hope took me thiough all the various buildings, which are lar«je and numerous. One immense building stands in the centre, and contains all the machinery of every kind required, the whole driven by a powerful steam engine, which also serves for bteaming purposes. Then under the entire length and width of this immense building is a cellar, for storing roots of all kinds, and is capable of holding many hundicds of tons. There is another large building, which contains all other farming implements, waggons, &c, everything in its proper place, no implements lying about the backs of fences or ditches, or where last used, overgrown with weeds ! The ploughs used here arc the general type used m Canada, which I don't like a bit. They are a sort of hybrid between the Yankee and the old Scotch, not doing honor to either. I don't hesitate to say, so far as ploughs and ploughing aie concerned, that everywhere I have been, both in the States and Canada, they might come to New Zealand and get a lesson that would be of service to them.

The pure-bred Clydesdale horse, Lowdeu Tain, the property of Mr \V. B. Lawson, Rangiriri, is advertised to travel the district this season. For pedigree and route see advertisement. A special train will be run from Waikato on the 7th November to Green Lane, to convey exhibits for the Auckland Agricultural Show on the Bth and 9th. Particulars in future issue. A notice by the Te Awamutu poundkeeper appears in another column. Mr \V. H. Bailey makes an important announcement to those indebted to him. Mr G. Aldridge will lecture at Le Quesne's Hall, Hamilton, on Sunday night on " Christ's teaching on future punishment." The annual meeting of the Hamilton Cricket Club will be held at the Royal Hotel, on Wednesday, the 11th inst. The Auckland Agricultural Company (Limited) invite tenders for certain drainage works at Waitoa. Tenders to be in by the 26th inst.