Thus Before
His Land Yields Him One Fraction, He Will Have Invested Eleven
Thousand Pounds, If He Clears The Whole Of His Purchase.
Many
persons lose sight of this necessary outlay when first purchasing
their land, and subsequently discover to their cost that their
capital is insufficient to bring the estate into cultivation.
Then comes the question of a road. The government will give him
no assistance; accordingly, the whole of his crop must be
conveyed on coolies' heads along an arduous path to the nearest
highway, perhaps fifteen miles distant. Even this rough path of
fifteen miles the planter must form at his own expense.
Considering the risks that are always attendant upon agricultural
pursuits, and especially upon coffee-planting, the price of rough
land must be acknowledged as absurdly high under the present
conditions of sales. There is a great medium to be observed,
however, in the sales of crown land; too low a price is even a
greater evil than too high a rate, as it is apt to encourage
speculators in land, who do much injury to a colony by locking up
large tracts in an uncultivated state, to take the chance of a
future rise in the price.
This evil might easily be avoided by retaining the present bona
fide price of the land per acre, qualified by an arrangement that
one-half of the purchase money should be expended in the
formation of roads from the land in question. This would be of
immense assistance to the planters, especially in a populous
planting neighborhood, where the purchases of land were large and
numerous, in which case the aggregate sum would be sufficient to
form a carriage road to the main highway, which might be kept in
repair by a slight toll.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 73 of 334
Words from 19260 to 19556
of 89475
