HISTORICAL FOREWORD

PART I

THE DUTCH IN SOUTH AFRICA

SOUTH AFRICA, or Africa south of the Zambesi, may be described in a few sentences, so that its physical peculiarities are revealed, and it becomes clear to the mind's eye that it is practically one country by nature, and must eventually be one by government.

A high plateau of rolling, grass-covered land falls away abruptly on each sea-shore, and at the Cape or southernmost end, leaving a more or less swampy, malarial, and generally narrow margin between the tableland and the water. On the Indian Ocean coast lie Natal, and Portuguese East Africa; and on the Atlantic German South-west Africa, and Portuguese West Africa.

Except in Natal there are few white people in these states, and, whatever influence they are yet to exert upon the development of South Africa, they have not yet begun to form, or even to suggest, their own hereafter.

Of harbours there are, on the west only Capetown, Saldanha Bay, and Walfish Bay in German Africa— all English ports; and on the east coast Durban in Natal, and Delagoa Bay and Beira in the Portuguese strip.

South Africa displays monotonous sameness in the ever-recurring hills and prairies of the interior plateau. The only variation and relief to the eye is at the doorways, so to speak. All around the coast, walling in the great middle tableland, are mountain ranges rising higher and higher, until they sometimes soar to a height of six thousand feet at sixty miles from the sea, and to more than three thousand feet at half that distance inland.

In these bold ranges are to be found practically the only beauties of scenery which South Africa possesses. Basuto Land, which lies between a part of Natal and the Orange Free State, contains such glorious scenery as to have earned for it the flattering nickname of "the Switzerland of South Africa."

Part of the mountainous country a little farther north, inland from Delagoa Bay, is also spoken of by travellers as very grand and beautiful; and this is also true of Manica Land, between Portuguese East Africa and Matabeleland, in the British South African Company's domain.

The English and Dutch dominions, which compose the great tableland, are three thousand to five thousand

feet above the sea level, so that, in spite of the latitudes in which they lie, they possess a temperate climate. Their soil is very dry, with small rainfalls, and rivers which are either so full as to render them useless for navigation, or, during the major part of the year, nearly

dried up.

It is an empire of rolling land, desert in part, grassgrown in the main—an imperial cattle range, only as yet touched here and there for agriculture-one region for one people, or, at least, for uniform laws governing kindred interests.

The little pit at Kimberley on the edge of the Free State, where the diamonds are found, and the several tiny punctures in the Veldt whence the Transvaal gold is taken out, are of gigantic value, but are too small to affect the general rule that South Africa is all alike, a pastoral region needing water before it can be promoted to become a seat of agriculture.

It is a great, dry, almost burnt land, an empire of solitude and silence. It is said that though there are four million natives in the older colonies, the average traveller rarely sees anything of them, or any hint of them except their trails. As for the white people (of whom there are not a million in all these lands), their homes and villages are so small, and scattered so far apart, that they do not often intrude upon the view of the tourist.

There are but two cities of important size, and half a

dozen of some note as capitals or seaports, in that entire half-continent. "A vast solitude with a few oases of population," is what Mr. Bryce calls it; and he explains that this is because of the scanty means for sustaining life, and the few openings for industry unaided by capital, which the country offers.

In considering this newly opened continent it will be less confusing, and in all respects advantageous, to confine the matter to the four better developed and more important dominions; the Cape, and Natal, colonies of England, the Orange Free State, and the South African Republic of the Boers; calling hereafter the larger Boer republic "The Transvaal."

This is in good truth only its nickname, and in reality means "across the Vaal," the river which divides the two Boer states; but in this case the nickname has a character and fitness of its own, which is not to be found in the country's prosaic name, The South African Republic.

The oldest and largest English settlement, Cape Colony, is more than twice as large as Great Britain, and has a population of seven to the square mile. It contains 382,000 white men, and a million more than that number of natives. Of the white people more than half are of Dutch descent, and the rest are English.

Natal has less than 50,000 white inhabitants, and ten times as many natives. It is only about one-fourteenth

the size of Cape Colony, or about twice as large as Wales or Massachusetts, but it is far more varied in soil, climate, and future possibilities than the larger British colony.

The Orange Free State is rather more than a fifth of the size of Cape Colony, and is practically (like all these dominions except Natal) a great pasture land, with but little ground devoted to agriculture; and it boasts but one important town, Bloemfontein, its very prepossessing capital.

The Free State contains about 78,000 white people, and nearly twice as many natives the dominant race being nearly all of Boer stock.

The Transvaal is two-thirds the size of France, but with a population of less than a million, of whom not quite a quarter (245,000) are white people. The Boers are 65,000 strong, and hold in subjection 100,000 British and 80,000 persons of other European races.

In the main the Transvaal is pasture land which yields very poor, rank herbage for cattle, and its hills rise to such mountainous heights that it is subject to severe cold in winter, and fierce heat in summer. It presents nothing to the view which should make any one covet it, and is an almost treeless, wind-bothered, rolling prairie of greatly varying value. Until gold was found under its surface in 1885, the Boers, ever unsystematic, unorganised, and leaving all labour to the blacks, had only succeeded in producing a bankrupt