This is his own account of it. "After the plague I paid a flying visit to my cousins at Tongaat, in Natal. I saw their store, but what attracted me most was the acre of garden ground at the back were some fruit trees were planted. These looked so beautiful, and the possibilities of the land appeared to be so great, that the idea appeared to me that my cousins were wasting their time in the store when so much beauty lay around them. They simply employed labour to cultivate the garden, and it was done poorly. Why could they not labour themselves and do it well? I had been reading Ruskin's "Unto This Last" on my way down, and the influence of the book clung to me. Surely such a dream might be realised.
Mr. Chhaganlal Gandhi, his brother, and another store-keeping cousin from Stanger were also present, and between them the idea was discussed.
The new dream induced by that acre of fruit trees and "Unto This Last" was this. The handful of men already employed in the issue of "Indian Opinion" should form the nucleus of a colony of workers. They should take land in the country, transfer the printing press to new buildings to be erected there, vow themselves to poverty, work for
