Page:Satyagraha in South Africa.pdf/27

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Geography
7

Africa, artesian wells are sunk, and water needed for irrigating fields is pumped up by windmills and steam-engines. Agriculture receives much encouragement from Government. Government sends out agricultural experts to advise the cultivators, maintains model farms where experiments are carried on for their benefit, provides them with good cattle and seed, bores artesian wells for them at very little cost and permits them to repay this amount by instalments. Similarly Government erects barbed wire fences to protect their fields.

As South Africa is to the south, and India to the north, of the equator, climatic conditions there are just the reverse of what they are here. The seasons occur in a reverse order. For example, while we have summer here, South Africa is passing through winter. Rainfall is uncertain and capricious. It may occur any time. The average annual rainfall rarely exceeds twenty inches.