A RHODESIAN DROUGHT.

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXIV, Issue 3341, 19 November 1934, Page 7

A RHODESIAN DROUGHT.

Among the peoples of the East the storing of water in tanks and the sinking of wells against the long rainless seasons has been practised for centuries; but the African native makes no preparation for the time of dryness. He does not profit by the lesson taught him by the timber, whose roots reach deep down to the subterranean supplies of moisture. If the stream or waterhole that supplies the village fails —It fails, and that Is all there Is to it. Each carrying her great red earthenware pot on her head, the women of the village are contentedly resigned to tramping daily to the nearest place where water may be found; and sometimes that may be as much as eight or ten miles distant. At times it may be a case of Hobson’s choice. But in numberless examples water could be found at the expenditure of a little digging. If the mud at the bottom of the community waterhole were scooped out, and a shallow well sunk for a few feet through the soft soil beneath, a satisfactory supply could easily be tapped. It is not a matter of tools, but of sheer laziness on the part of the menfolk of the village. Even if a comparatively deep shaft is necessary, the question of a possible collapse of the surrounding soil can be obviated by shoring the sides of the shaft with the rough bush timber that grows so plentifully around.

To illustrate what can be done in this way, on my own ranch I have sunk wells as much as fifty feet through the soil, and obtained an inexhaustible supply of water without the use of a single charge of dynamite. Yet a repetition of the act for the benefit of their own village was an idea which never occurred to the natives who dug those shafts. What has been good enough for their forefathers for untold generations remains good enough for them. — Wilfred Robertson In the “Review of * Reviews.”