Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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Reaching the home of a farmer named Vasson, he found himself in the midst of a scene quite patriarchal. All the plain before the house was white with sheep and lambs, drinking at the “dam” or in long troughs. The dam is an indispensable institution in a country where springs are scarce, and where a river is a prodigy. It is the new settler’s first work, even before erecting his house, to find a hollow space, and dam it up, so as to make a reservoir. He then proceeds to make the best sun-dried bricks he can, and to erect his cottage, usually of two, and rarely more than three, rooms. Not unfrequently, there is a garden, hardly worthy of the name, where a few potatoes and onions are raised. The farmers, more especially the Dutch, are “the heaviest and largest in the world.” At an early age their drowsy habits and copious feeding run them into flesh. “Three times a day the family gorges itself upon lumps of mutton, fried in the tallowy fat of the sheep’s tail, or else—their only change of diet—upon the tasteless fricadel—kneaded balls of meat and onions, likewise swimming in grease. Very few vegetables they have, and those are rarely used. Brown bread they make, but scarcely touch it. Fancy existing from birth to death upon mutton scraps, half boiled, half fried, in tallow! So doth the Boer. It is not eating, but devouring, with him. And fancy the existence! always alone with one’s father, mother, brothers, and sisters; of whom not one can do more than write his name, scarce one can read, not one has heard of any event in history, nor dreamed of such existing things as art or science, or poetry, or aught that pertains to civilisation.” An unpleasant picture, truly, and one to which there are many exceptions. It was doubtful whether Mr. Vasson could read. His farm was several thousand acres. The ancient law of Cape Colony gave the settler 3,000 morgen—something more than 6,000 acres. He was not obliged to take so much, but, whatever the size of his farm might be, it must be circular in shape; and as the circumference of a property could only touch the adjoining grants it follows that there were immense corners or tracts of land left waste between. Clever and ambitious farmers, in these later days, have been silently absorbing said corners into their estates, greatly increasing their size.