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Agriculture, especially of the Middle West, is affected in all its parts by the exploitation of land. To a traveller from the Eastern States, the selling and re-selling of farm land, without fertilization or improvement by any of the successive owners, is a source of amazement.
The theft of slaves, the claiming of the runaway rewards, the later re-stealing and re-selling and final killing of the negro in order to destroy the evidence, are matters which Murrell reduced to a system that has no parallel in the criminal records of the country. But not even here did this daring outlaw pause.
We were in the way of hearing when land was to be sold at a cheap rate, either improved or unimproved, and by purchasing such land and re-selling to newly-arrived settlers, who became good customers, we profited considerably. We got the best of everything, and our desire was to supply those who bought of us with what we knew they would most require, and which would give them satisfaction.
The price of imported commodities, when converted at the current rate o exchange, is far in excess of the local price, so that many essential goods will not be imported at all by private agency, and must be provided by the government, which, in re-selling the goods below cost price, plunges thereby a little further into insolvency.
Birkbeck and Flowers purchased large tracts of land in this neighbourhood, for the purpose of re-selling or letting it to English or other emigrants. These two gentlemen were of the class called in England, "gentlemen farmers," and brought with them from that country very large capitals; a considerable portion of which, in addition to the money laid out on purchase, they expended on improvements.
The most detestable part of this traffic, however, is Seriff Houseman selling, in cold blood, such of these slaves as are Borneons, to Pangeran Usop, of Bruni, for 100 rupees for each slave, and Pangeran Usop re-selling each for 200 rupees to their relations in Bruni.
This was much more profitable formerly than it is at present; for Mohammed Aly having made these articles a monopoly, the people are now obliged to purchase the grain in Djidda, at the Pasha's own price, and to be contented with a moderate gain on re-selling it at Mekka.
At a little distance from the camp, Háj Marti, the right-hand man of the agent, was holding a veritable market with the surplus mona of the day, re-selling to the miserable country folk what had been wrung from them by the authorities.
Land has run up to prices fabulously high; and patches that six months ago were, perhaps, grudgingly purchased at the colonial price of 20 shillings the acre, are re-selling daily at a hundred times that amount.
Haldeman sold his thirty-second part of the same for a hundred thousand dollars; another partner sold his for forty-thousand dollars, the purchaser subsequently re-selling it for one hundred thousand dollars. Besides this, Mr. Haldeman became half owner of two hundred acres not yet developed, and he and his sons own about four hundred acres, supposed to be excellent oil land.
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