New-York tribune., 1909-10-31


ferior to the Greco Roman style.
Botanical Garden Demonstrations
MOT content with Mabiras native wealth,
hundreds of acres about MbangO and the
outlying stations are cleared and planted with
Para and Futumnia, with sisal cocoa, coffee,
croton oil plant, indigo, Citrone1a, cassava,
bananas, sweet potatoes, pines, papayaS crops
that, in the thick black loan that makes all
Uganda like to the most luXurlant garden weld
in profits to the acre two to four times that
realized in temperate zone farming
Nor is this work in any measure cropping or
experimental, for 1t Is under the direction OF
Ernest Brown, formerly an assistant in the
botanical gardens of Entebbe, where for years
careful study and demonstration has been
going on to prove what commercially valuable
tree and plant life thriveS best here. There It
has been proved that, while the CdStill0d cLdS-
tfcd of Central America apparently natures
WELL it yields no lateX; that Para trees four
years old may measure at three feet from the
ground up to eighteen and three-quarters
inches, and sixteen and One-quarter at SIN feet
seven year-old trees up to twenty-Seven and
one-half inches at three feet and twenty-three
and one-Quarter inches at SIX feet, and at the
latter age may be relied on for one-quarter of
pound to the tree, while after nine years they
are good for one pound; that sisal produces
three per cent. of net fiber against the prime
yield of three and one-half per cent. in German
East African coast plantations, where sisal
planters are netting profits up to eighty per
cent.
These are dry statistics, perhaps, at first
glance but vital to rubber and fiber manu-
facturers and users of our own country, vital
to our ever swelling surplus capital seeking safe
and profitable employment abroad, absorbing
to the thousands of the more adventurous of
our younger generation, sons of the men who
tackled and tanned the trans-Missour region,
and whose blood cries out for chance of like
exploits and opportunities
For myself. as an old pioneer of wild places,
and recalling how twenty-five Years ago We used
to hustle and compete for arid tracks of grazing
land at fifty cents to two dollars an acre in
Northwestern Texas and New Mexico, lands
valueleSs for anything but grazing, which
would carry no more than one head of cattle to
fifteen acres: how the farms of the Eastern and
Central States had to be hewn out of solid walls
of forest and in many places the soil delved for
among rocks, in climate where years work
had to be crowded into half a wear to keep man
and beast from periShing during the other half it
IS tremendously impressive to see in British East
Africa lands that will easily head of cat
tie TO each acre and keep them fat, or here IN
Uganda millions of acres under no heavier
growth than elephant grass, whose every
square foot IS rich and moist as the soil in a
nursery pot, and that, besides its high priced
tropical products, grows in big yields at one
point or another, according to altitude and
RAINFALL most of the grains, vegetables, and
fruits OF the temperate zone; lands available to
ali corners at two rupees (SiXty-SiX CentS) the
acre often at less while native labor is so album
dant at four to SIX rupees month that no white
man here ever turns a finger TO manual task
labor rightly handled that gives the employer
quite as much as the average dav labor AZ
home,-while good East Indian carpenters.
| lronworkcrS, wheelwrights. masons. etc, are
available at fifty to slXty-tive rupees (sixteen
dollars and siXty-SiX cents to twcntv-one dol
lars and slXty-SIX cents a month
To be sure II Is not all beer and Skittles here
Freight rates are Shockingly eXorbitant: but so
were they once on our own western roads. land
and other laws are crude and need a lot Of
mendlng; the Colonial Office is greedy and
| nore too considerate of the settler But against
al tins the local administrations here and in
British East, are doing all for the DEVELOPMENT
OF the country that could be expected so long
as the Colonial Office persists in entangling all
local ottclaldom in bewildering maze of East
Indian bureaucratic red tape, and settlers are
sending up persistent cries for saner laws sim
pier oihclal forms, cheaper freights. and more
rational taxation, not much longer to be denied
even by the mustiest and thriftiest OF the
crown s colonial bl1reauCrats