The age-herald., 1900-05-04
PICTURESQUE FEATURES
 SOUTH AFRICAN WAR

WHeel out. lie nd1lS rom JOIlIi, 4NSW Brunswick-the old city of many fires over against the racing Fundy tide. The scent or the Wynberg pine needles makes him one jelly of homesiekness.
 Providence sends to his bedside one who knows his city, and street by street and suburb by suburb, from Castor in the Fo- rum to Mars without the walT'-from the fragrant lumber mills to Loch Lomond- Mylton goes over it all rejoicing.
 Yes, he knows, moreover, Dalhousie, Gaspe and all Baie Chaleur, and how he longs to see them!
 Two yards away a Yorkshire reservist points out to a man who is fashloning a canvas and wool belt that of all places un- der heaven there is none like to Bradford. He is married, with four children and a damaged shoulder; but all will be well when he returns to Bradford "in t steam er"
 Lascelles, Tasmanian mounted infantry. holds quite other views. He has come through much rough and tumble work, ending with abscess of the liver. That re- moved, they have put him to light duty at Maitland camp till he is fit to sit horse. His eyes are sunk and heavy, but he sees far He is the son of Hobart fruit grow er What about fruit-growing in this coun- try? Is himself an apple man, but under stands peaches and plums. Has noticed while in hospital that many apples sent to convalescents were full of codlin grub, which he considers far more serious than bocis. What about red scale and the other fruit pests? What about packing and freight rates? In Tasmania the wood for an apple crate costs threepence halfpenny, and the completed article less than ffvepence. On the other hand South Africa is nearer Lon don than Hobart. Lacelles works out the sum in his head, and emerges to say that he has dug up many samples of soil around Kimberley; has also looked over many farms up country as he rode through them
 Lacelles thinks that-Tasmania being a small place-a young man might do worse than settle here and grow up in a new country, eh? It is represented to Lacelles that he Is the kind of men we need badly. Yes, MT. Lacelles, this is the one land for the new man of colonial apprehension open-air men, used to large spaces and plain living thousands of them. Here is ything-horses, cattle, wool and fruit. Do you know any more young men of the same views-Manitoba ranchers, New Zea- land sheep men, fruit growers of the south? If so bring them along, and we will make such country as the world has never seen. LaceIes admits that he has talked to sev- eral friends about the wisdom of settling here after the war. They think well of it.
 In twenty minutes I have pledged the honor of the empire to the hilt on behalf of Lacelles & Co. If they mean business. ar-ar h irar ball hn raadn aacx fnp fhafr first start. I will lend them money on mortgage Cat least you will, and we shall get per cent.) I will slap down railways along the valleys where the fruit grows, so that no farm need haul her dried prunes more than five miles to the rail. Crhis is not so mad as it sounds, for such valleys are few).
 I will arrange low freights, if I have to go on my knees to a German shipping firm. I will break the Covent Garden fruit ring into flinders. I will erect cold storage ware- houses by the acre, and chilled fruit cars at 40 degrees uniform shall be as common as cattle tracks on all our lines I will develop under the care of half a dozen picked canal officers from India such a scheme of irrigation Git will not cost more than three millions to begin with), as shall beat the 'Bara Doab, Colorado, and the Queensland colonies combined.
 MT. Lascelles accepts everything calmly. He is young and has the divine faith. "In twenty years time" he says, and his eye, with budding stye on it glows.5 "Ah, but it's all a gamble" I make haste to qualify. "One has to take one's chances' "I'll take 'em,'' says Mir. Lascelles; and, when you come to think of 1t, a man who has been risking his life for few weeks is not going to be deterred by the prospect of one fruit farm, or half dozen, for that matter, failing on his hands.
 Meanwhile, will you please take note of a few schemes I have committed you to? Because in five years you will be lending money on them, and they will pay more than trappy gold reefs or South American tramways.
 The tents are full of boys who, with a little steering, would settle here. Nixon, of Vancouver, for instance, is in real es- tate and life insurance when he Is at home.
 He was also in the Canadian rush on the Paardeberg laager. Being a youth of cheerful and speculative temperament, he would be shrewd enough to pronounce on the chances of new country if any one brought him the facts and the figureS-and the fancieS.
 As it is he lies in bed with bullet through his leg and thinks about a Van couver girl. Collins, also a western man, in real estate, would be another splendid recruit. He shed his blood for the country with a vengeance, the bullet merely miss ing an artery He would stay in the coun- try If properly approached. He is sinfully proud of the fact that of $50 Canadians en- gagged in this business not more than 460 are at this date available And they were not cut down by sickness or cut off by patrols.
 We may assume then, that among the hospitals lie 300 Canadians of the very stamp and breed we require-young sound, clean intelligent, well educated, of which | 75 per cent hold have held land. Three hundred possible heads of sane and soaped families. And not man to show them
 maps and photos and plans to develop schemes to lure them to stay in South Africa. We shall let all these beautiful | men, and hundreds and hundreds more, go