AFRICAN DROUGHT

Manawatu Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 2565, 24 December 1924, Page 9

AFRICAN DROUGHT

CONDITION OF THE LAND

A writer in the Pastoral Review dealing with the report of the South African Drought Commission, after describing the original condition of the country says:—“Man came along with his flockg and herds, overstocked the country, provided no additional sustenance, allowed his stock to oat off the pastures, applied his ravaging axe to the bush, and set fire regularly to the grass in the dry seasons, so baring the earth that when the rains came in due course there was nothing iCo hold back the waters, and these simply rushed straightway down the hills and over the plains, carrying soil, carving out sluits and dongas, creating unprecedented floods and although the vegetation would spring up, there was insuffleent moisture in the soil to sustain life; but before it would wilt and perish starving stock had gnawed it to the roots, and even the marvellous recuperative character of the Karoo veld has been unable to stand up to such treatment and has died out. As the vegetation died so did the rivers cease to run regularly. Watering places became scarcer, and stock had perforce to travel farther and farther afield for water, making matters •worse by trampling and loosening the veld, and so it is that these parts of the country are becoming nothing but howling deserts.”