I travelled from the Diamond Fields to Bloemfontein and thence through Smithfield to the Orange River at Aliwal North. I also made a short excursion from Bloemfontein. In this way I did not see the best district of the country which is that which was taken from the Basutos,--where the town of Ladybrand now is,--which is good agricultural land, capable of being sown and reaped without artificial irrigation. The normal Dutch farmer of the Republic, such as I saw him, depends chiefly upon his flocks which are very small as compared with those in Australia,--three or four thousand sheep being a respectable pastoral undertaking for one man. He deals in agriculture also, not largely, but much more generally than his Australian brother. In Australia the squatter usually despises agriculture, looking upon it as the fitting employment for a little free-selector,--who is but a mean fellow in his estimation. He grows no more than he will use about his place for his own cattle. The flour to be consumed by himself and his men he buys. And as his horses are not often corn-fed a very few acres of ploughed land suffices for his purpose. The Dutch patriarch makes his own bread from the wheat he has himself produced. The bread is not white, but it is so sweet that I am inclined to say I have never eaten better. And he sells his produce,--anything which he can grow and does not eat himself. The Australian woolgrower sells nothing but wool. The Dutch Boer will send peas twenty miles to market, and will sell a bundle of forage,--hay made out of unripened oats or barley,--to any one who will call at his place and ask for it. A strong Boer will probably have thirty, forty or perhaps fifty acres of cultivated land round his house,--including his garden. And he will assuredly have a dam for holding and husbanding his rain water. He would almost better be without a house than without a dam. Some spot is chosen as near to his homestead as may be,--towards which there is something, be it ever so slight, of a fall of ground. Here a curved wall or stoned bank is made underlying the fall of ground, and above it the earth is hollowed out,--as is done with a haha fence, only here it is on larger and broader dimensions,--and into this artificial pond when it is so made the rain water is led by slight watercourses along the ground above. From the dam, by other watercourses, the contents are led hither and thither on to the land and garden as required,--or into the house. It is the Boer’s great object thus to save enough water to last him through any period of drought that may come;--an object which he generally attains as far as his sheep, and cattle, and himself are concerned;--but in which he occasionally fails in reference to his ground. I saw more than one dam nearly dry as I passed through the country, and heard it asserted more than once that half a day’s rain would be worth a hundred pounds to the speaker.