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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 12 (March 1, 1935)

This fortunate Land—A Contrast

This fortunate Land—A Contrast.

We have had some experience of a dry spell this summer, which by reason of its unusualness we call a drought. Short supply of water and a hot summer have combined to make things uncomfortable, and in some places disastrous for farmers. But while such privations and losses as some of our country people have suffered in the drought and the fires are serious and call for sympathetic assistance, there is the offset of a certain quick recovery. This land of ours is never long without a bounteous rainfall. Think of those countries which for many months at a time never see rain and yet where the workers on the land carry on heroically.

Here, by way of consolatory comparison, is a cattle-man's description of his land and life, published recently in an American journal:

“Our ranch lies in extreme Western Texas. we own thirty-eight sections—24,320 acres—of land. We generally range, by leases, from eighteen to thirty sections more—some sand and some hard land. There are no running streams and no lakes; the country has no outside drainage, though the Pecos River flows through an alkali valley only fifteen miles away. Stock water comes from wells 250 to 300 feet deep, lifted to surface tanks by mills that whirl in the hard-blowing winds. The country is gently rolling, covered with scrub mesquite rarely as high as a man on horseback. The range is principally grama and bunch needle grass, though mesquite beans sometimes supplement these, and winter weeds are as much looked for as grass. Yet as poor and dry as this land is, we have that pride in its possession that is to be expected of people who have for long loved and lived close to the soil. And though state land across our pasture, fences leases for much less than the taxes and interest on ours, we have bought for assurance of tenure; somehow feeling that ownership of land and settled life are stabilising moral factors in a mechanical, mobile world. This ranch is in a desert country—a plough has never touched our land. During the last two years we have had less than five inches of rain.”

Try to picture life in such a land, ye complaining New Zealanders! Imagine a region without running water, without a lake. Those people, raising stock in such a land are the best type of pioneers; they deserve better fortune. New Zealand to them would be a farmer's paradise. Yet they stick it out in a country and climate that would terrify, horrify our New Zealanders. Let us be thankful we are where we are!