BORING THROUGH ROCK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18173, 19 August 1922, Page 2 (Supplement)

BORING THROUGH ROCK.

STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM. TENJIGITY "WELL REWARDED. Olive Schreitter wrote as a novel "The Story of an African Farm." Here is a true story of an African farm, telling how, by sheer strength of will;- two brothers, undeterred by nature, turned a • baTren stretch of- country into a smiling, cropyielding homestead. \The story deal» with two Dutch in the Somerset East district of South Africa. . These enterprising men, after a spell of profitable mining experience on thei Rand, answered the call of the land, and with their earnings and their experience ' they went back to farming. They bought 5000 acres of excellent ground north of Port Elizabeth, running along the Great Fish River,-'where every prospect was pleasing and only irrigation waa vile—or rather, non-existent. With a bounteous river flanking a farm water-supply should present no difficulties to "farmers; but -it did to these two brothers, for between ; the farm and the life-giving strewn lay a Bolid wedge of rock SOO yards wide. For all the use it •was to the fanners the river might as well have been in another continent. The rock was a barrier aa formidable as a mountain range as long as it remained unconquered,. But the challenge pre-

' ———— I t I scnted by the problem of the dry land on the one hand, and the precious, wasting water on the wrong side of the rocky barrier on- the other . hand, summoned these farmers to efforts, strenuous, and ultimately, successful. These- Dutchmen determined to turn their mining skill to account in a novel direction. They mined the solid reef separating the farm from the water for which-it gasped. One brother began at the river end of the rock; the other on the farm side of the obstacle. They bored' and mined toward each other. " They had no help from the Govwnmen.t; they had no professional experts" 4o direct their energies, for instead of mining for gold or diamondu they were mining for the water of life. Thirty (Months of Toll. For thirty months they toiled at their task, and a few weeks ago daylight flashed through a tunnel in rock which had been a solid substance for millions of years., The brothers met in the tunnel, midway, only a few inches wide of a perfectly straight cut; from farm to river. They had' made a tunnel through the obstruotive rock 1550 ft. Jong, 6ft. high, and 7ft. wide, a channel through which to lead a regulated flow of water, from yiver to .farm.' '"..;'■ ' While this work was proceeding, the men and their helpers constructed a dam across the river 130 ft. long, to give a sufficient depth of water, and a syphon to conduct the water to the tunnel. Now the rich pOßsibUitieß of the farm became actualities. It needed only water to make a waste blossom like the rose.,' , Moses struck the rock and made the water flow, and these Dutchmen struck the wik and brought the river through*