THE BOER WAR.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 6, 7 February 1901, Page 29

THE BOER WAR.

| NOTES AND POINTS OF INTEREST TO CATHOLIC READERS.

FARMING IN RHODESIA. The endeavor of the British South African Chartered Company, who are promiscuously advertising in the Sydney papers, to secure Australian settlers for Rhodesia (says the Freeman' t Journal) is not likely to meet with great success when the real worth of the company's offer becomes known. Interesting reference to the subject ia contained in a letter recently received by Mr. E. Coffiu, from Sergeant-Major William Spooner, who left Melbourne in the last Bushmen's Contingent as a lance corporal. The writer tmmmariaea the company's terms in the following manner : — ' A settler is given an area of abont 3000 acres on which be has to pay survey fees, etc. He receives £2 5s per annum, in consideration of which he becomes a military subject. He also receives 5s a day for such parades as he may attend. Fifty head of cattle are handed to him, and he contracts to either work the purchase money off on the shares system, or to pay it off in instalments.' These conditions, sayß the writer, may sound very tempting to a Victorian farmer, but to the initiated they are but a delusion, Granting that Rhodesia is a cattle country, it mußt be remembered that the animals die from every known and unknown disease. Bullocks die in the yoke, and cows die while being milked. Cattle* raising, whioh was a 'going concern ' before the rebellion of 1896 and the rinderpest, has been reduoed to a struggling stage. It will, he adds, be many years before the oountry is anything like adequately Btocked. In another portion of the letter the writer states that the southern part of Rhodesia is well watered and adapted to stockraising, and in a less degree is suited for agriculture. Cattle, sheep, and goatß wonld do very well if it were not for the dire disease! from which they euffer. Horses also are very liable to oontraot mortal complaints unless properly stabled, 90 per oent. dying before being in the country 12 months. Pigs thrive well, and bo far have shown no disease. Poultry, on the other hand, are subject to a complaint called ' poultry cholera.' To the writer's personal know* ledge, one farmer lost 60 full-grown fowls in a night. Experiments that have been made up give hope of the ultimate disoovery of a means of preventing the high mortality amongst animals and birds by means of inooulation. In regard to agriculture, mealies (which realise 23s and upwards per bag), Kaffir corn and other native cereals, as well as potatoes and pumpkins, grow in the rainy season without irrigation. Potatoes sell at 3d to 8d per lb, in a good market. Wheat grows well under irrigation. Grass is very good, but dries up on the highlands towards the end of May. The first rains fall in October, and are usually succeeded by a month or six weeks of fine weather. The rains recommence in November or December, and continue, with occasional dry spells, until the end of March or April. The temperature is very hot in summer — anything up to lßOdeg in the shade. WAS IT A COMPLIMENT? Mr. Michael Davitt tells some curious stories of General De Wet with whom he discussed the campaign. After hearing many caustic opinions, M. Davitt asked him what he thought of General French, ' Ah,' said De Wet, with a change of tone, 'he is the one Boer General in the British Army.' TAXING THE CAPITALISTS. The Transvaal war (says the Catholic Tintet) is apparently by no means over, and if the guerillas are as formidable to us as Franoe found them to be in Spain, Mexico, and Algeria, and Spain lately in Cuba, and as America now finds them to be in the Philippines, the war may drag on for years. Already there is a huge bill to pay, and the nation naturally expects that the Transvaal capitalists shall be made to help to pay it. Of course these gentlemen object, but we think the people of the country, which has sacrificed blood and lives, will sternly demand that the mine-holders shall be taxed to meet the expenditure already incurred. The capitalists would be delighted if the Chancellor of the Exchequer laid no embargo on the gold output, and if the Secretary for the Colonies granted them cheap native labor. We trust, and the nation trusts, that both these officials will do their duty, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach must get as much money as he can from the mines, in order to pay the bill now due for the maintenance of the army which secured possession of them. And Mr. Chamberlain must prevent the miserable natives from being exploited by crafty companies whioh desire forced labor, little disguised from slave labor, in order to cheapen prices. The people of Great Britain will not tolerate any system of control over the native population of South Africa that would hand those de* fenceless people to the tender mercies of capitalists who value them merely for the work they can be made, willingly or unwillingly, to perform. AN ESTIMATE OF GENERAL BULLER. There was something blunt and frank about General Buller's despatches, and there is an honest ring about his speeches (says the Belfast Weekly) that contrasts well with Lord Robert's magniloquent dispatches over the occasional capture of a baker's dozen of Boers. Why Bnller has returned is perhaps not quite olear to the man in the street, but the man who is not in the street knows, according to the New Age, that he returns because Mr. Rhodes desires it. General Buller has very many friends, but he is an honest man, and Mr. Rhodes does not find an honest man very valuable as an Imperial asset. When at last the history of this war comes to be written one of the very few names that will come out with credit will be that of the man who frankly confessed to defeat, who spoke generously of a brave enemy, and who refused to rehabilitate himself by ' faking ' a despatch. It was a greater thing to do and a harder thing to do than the relief of Ladysmith.