MR ABE BAILEY.

Feilding Star, Volume II, Issue 534, 30 March 1908, Page 4

MR ABE BAILEY.

A MAGNATE OF SOUTH AFRICA. Tho true El Dorado of South Africa is not in the Rand or Johannesburg, but in the soil of the country. This, at least, is the opinion of the South African financier, Mr Abo Bailey, according to an interview. Mr Abe Bailey's farms are situated in the north of Cape Colony, near Colesburg, and cover an area of about 200,000 i acres, of which he has about 3000 j acres in cultivation, and is contemplating an extension of the cultivated area to 15,000. "The windmill," says Mr Bailey, (( is one of the instruments by which the Karroo will be revolutionised. My neighbours have nicknamed me Windmill Bailey; but the example is spreading, and man^ of my neighbours have begun to put up windmills of their own, for there is nothing so •effective as an object lesson. I have 2000 acres growing lucerne, which is regularly and periodically irrigated. I hope before long to have 15,000 acres under lucerne. We take five or six crops off it every year, and after I had fed all my stock last year we had 650 tons of lucerne hay left on hand. It is marvellous what lucerne will 1 do. I estimate the value of my lucerne at £7 an acre — not bad for land which I bought seven years ago at 17s 6d an acre." Mr Bailey admits that he loves farming, a pursuit for which he has a veritable passion. He is rather proud of the variety of his stock, and on his farms may be found sheop, cattle, Angora goats, ostriches, and horses, all doing well, and the best of their kind. On being questioned as to the success he experienced in the breeding of horses, he answered : "We are doing splendidly with horses. I imported English thoroughbreds, and the result is amazing. The cross between the English thoroughbred and the Boer pony is a foal which unites the qualities of both its parents ; it has the wiriness and endurance of its mother, and it has the , height and the strength of its sire. It is astonishing the height to which horses grow when they are well fed. It was the starvation in winter time which dwarfed the South African horses. I have a splendid two-year-old thoroughbred which stands 17hds high ; I intend to bring it over to England, where I expect it will astonish a p;ood many people."