Bad As The Above Treatment Of The Miners Appears, It Is
Gladly Accepted Of By Them; For The Condition Of The Labouring
Agriculturists Is Much Worse.
Their wages are lower, and
they live almost exclusively on beans.
This poverty must be
chiefly owing to the feudal-like system on which the land is
tilled: the landowner gives a small plot of ground to the
labourer for building on and cultivating, and in return has
his services (or those of a proxy) for every day of his life,
without any wages. Until a father has a grown-up son, who
can by his labour pay the rent, there is no one, except on
occasional days, to take care of his own patch of ground.
Hence extreme poverty is very common among the labouring
classes in this country.
There are some old Indian ruins in this neighbourhood,
and I was shown one of the perforated stones, which Molina
mentions as being found in many places in considerable
numbers. They are of a circular flattened form, from five to
six inches in diameter, with a hole passing quite through the
centre. It has generally been supposed that they were used
as heads to clubs, although their form does not appear at all
well adapted for that purpose. Burchell [3] states that some
of the tribes in Southern Africa dig up roots by the aid of a
stick pointed at one end, the force and weight of which are
increased by a round stone with a hole in it, into which the
other end is firmly wedged.
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