It is difficult to assess the worth of this tour to the country as a whole because the results are in so many ways intangible. Nevertheless the expenditure of several thousand pounds of public money demands at least an attempt at an evaluation.
On the economic front, it was perhaps in the field of agriculture that the most positive benefits were obtained. The results of centuries of good farming practice are obvious all over England and the trained eye of the Basuto farmers missed very little; young, fat stock, and animals bred for a particular purpose: strength in the Percheron, speed in the race-horse, wool or meat in sheep, milk or meat in cattle; animals suited to their environment, be it the bare, cold hills of Scotland or the lush, mild downs of the South.
Pigs at six months, twice the weight of a full grown Basuto pig after several years. Cattle ready for the abattoirs in eighteen months, and so on. Fields, all enclosed, with grass such as they had never seen; crops with yields they could hardly credit and trees, trees everywhere, of every variety, for building, furniture, industry or ornament.
And then the British farmer himself, quietly getting down to work with one or two assistants to tackle his many acres, obviously immersed in his job and making a good living. Something of a mechanic too, with his many machines, for milking, ploughing, sowing, harrowing, manuring, drying and bagging.
But always his own master able, within certain well understood limits, to do as he pleased with his farm: put up more fences, sell a few trees, raise a loan on his crop, buy more land and, eventually, when he was old and tired, hand it on to his son or, if he had not one, sell it and live comfortably on the proceeds.
