The railway from Chimoyo to the sea had in 1895 one of the narrowest gauges in the world (two feet), and its tiny locomotives and cars wore almost a toy air. It has since been widened to the three feet six gauge of the other South African lines. The construction was difficult, for the swampy lands along the coast are largely under water during the rains, but the gain to the country has been enormous. Not only has the railway abridged the toilsome and costly ox transport of goods from Beira to the edge of the high country—a transport whose difficulty lay not merely in the badness of the track through ground almost impassable during and after the rains, but also in the prevalence of the tsetse-fly, whose bite is fatal to cattle. It has enabled travellers to cross in a few hours one of the most unhealthy regions in the world, most of which is infested by fevers in and after the wet season, and the lower parts of which are so malarious that few who spend three nights in them, even in the dry season, escape an attack. The banks of the rivers and other damper spots will continue to breed this curse of maritime Africa, although things will doubtless improve when the country grows more settled, and the marshes have been drained, and the long grass has been eaten down by cattle; for when the tsetse-fly has ceased to be dangerous cattle may come in. It appears that the fly kills cattle not by anything poisonous in its bite, but because it communicates to them a minute parasite which lives in the blood of some kinds of game, and which is more pernicious to cattle than it is to the game. Accordingly, when the game vanishes, the fly either vanishes also or becomes comparatively harmless. Already places once infested by it have by the disappearance of the game become available for ranching. Recent researches seem to have shown that malarial fevers in man are also due to an animal parasite: and this discovery is thought to damp the hope, which I remember to have heard Mr. Darwin express, that the fever-stricken regions of the tropics might become safe by ascertaining what the fever microbe is and securing men against it by inoculation. Those, however, who hold that this parasite is carried into the blood of man by a mosquito seem to entertain some hope that drainage may in some places almost expunge the mosquito. The railway was made entirely by native labour gathered from the surrounding regions, and the contractors told me they had less difficulty with the Kafirs than they expected. It paid, however, a heavy toll in European life. Not one of the engineers and foremen escaped fever, and many died. The risk for those employed on the line is of course now much slighter, because the worst spots are known and there are now houses to sleep in.

Shortly after leaving Chimoyo the train ran through a swarm of locusts miles long. It was a beautiful sight. The creatures flash like red snowflakes in the sun; the air glitters with their gauzy wings. But it is also terrible. An earthquake or a volcanic eruption is hardly more destructive and hardly more irresistible. The swarms may be combated when the insect walks along the ground, for then trenches may be dug into which the advancing host falls. But when it flies nothing can stop it. It is noteworthy that for eighteen years prior to the arrival of the British pioneers in 1890 there had been no great swarms. Since that year there have been several; so the Kafir thinks that it is the white man's coming that has provoked the powers of evil to send this plague as well as the murrain.

We ran down the one hundred and eighteen miles from Chimoyo to Fontesvilla during the afternoon and night, halting for three or four hours for dinner at a clearing where an inn and store have been built. The pace was from ten to fifteen miles an hour. After the first twenty miles, during which one still has glimpses of the strange isolated peaks that spring up here and there from the plain, the scenery becomes rather monotonous, for the line runs most of the way through thick forest, the trees higher than those of the interior, yet not of any remarkable beauty. For the last twenty-five miles the railway traverses a dead and dreary flat. The gentle rise of the ground to the west conceals even the outlying spurs of the great range behind, and to the north and south there is an unbroken level. The soil is said to be generally poor, a very thin layer of vegetable mould lying over sand, and the trees are few and seldom tall. It is a country full of all sorts of game, from buffaloes, elands, and koodoos downward to the small antelopes; and as game abounds, so also do lions abound. The early morning is the time when most of these creatures go out to feed, and we strained our eyes as soon as there was light enough to make them out from the car windows. But beyond some wild pig and hartebeest, and a few of the smaller antelopes, nothing could be discerned upon the pastures or among the tree clumps. Perhaps the creatures have begun to learn that the railroad brings their enemies, and keep far away from it. A year after our visit the murrain, to which I have already referred, appeared in this region, and wrought fearful devastation among the wild animals, especially the buffaloes.

The railway now runs all the way to the port of Beira, but in October, 1895, came to an end at a place called Fontesvilla, on the Pungwe River, near the highest point to which the tide rises. We had therefore to take to the water in order to reach Beira, where a German steamer was timed to call two days later; and our friends in Mashonaland had prepared us to expect some disagreeable experiences on the river, warning us not to assume that twelve or fourteen hours would be enough, even in a steamer, to accomplish the fifty miles of navigation that lie between Fontesvilla and the sea. They had been specially insistent that we should remain in Fontesvilla itself no longer than was absolutely necessary; for Fontesvilla has the reputation of being the most unhealthy spot in all this unhealthy country. We were told that the preceding year had been a salubrious one, for only forty-two per cent. of the European residents had died. There may have been in these figures, when closely scrutinized, some element of exaggeration, but the truth they were intended to convey is beyond dispute; and the bright young assistant superintendent of the railroad was mentioned, with evident wonder, as the only person who had been more than three months in the place without a bad attack of fever. Fontesvilla has not the externals of a charnel-house. It consists of seven or eight scattered frame houses, with roofs of corrugated iron, set in a dull, featureless flat on the banks of a muddy river. The air is sultry and depressing, but has not that foul swamp smell with which Poti, on the Black Sea, reeks, the most malarious spot I had ever before visited. Nor was there much stagnant water visible; indeed, the ground seemed dry, though there are marshes hidden among the woods on the other side of the river. As neither of the steamers that ply on the Pungwe could come up at neap tides, and with the stream low,—for the rains had not yet set in,—the young superintendent (to whose friendly help we were much beholden) had bespoken a rowboat to come up for us from the lower part of the river. After waiting from eight till half-past ten o'clock for this boat, we began to fear it had failed us, and, hastily engaging a small two-oared one that lay by the bank, set off in it down the stream. Fortunately after two and a half miles the other boat, a heavy old tub, was seen slowly making her way upward, having on board the captain of the little steam-launch, the launch herself being obliged to remain much lower down the river. We transferred ourselves and our effects to this boat, and floated gaily down, thinking our troubles over.

The Pungwe is here about one hundred yards wide, but very shallow, and with its water so turbid that we could not see the bottom where the depth exceeded two feet. It was noon; the breeze had dropped, and the sun was so strong that we gladly took refuge in the little cabin or rather covered box—a sort of hen coop—at the stern. The stream and the tide were with us, and we had four native rowers, but our craft was so heavy that we accomplished less than two miles an hour. As the channel grew wider and the current spread itself hither and thither over sand banks, the bed became more shallow, and from time to time we grounded. When this happened, the native rowers jumped into the water and pushed or pulled the boat along. The farther down we went, and the more the river widened, so much the more often did we take the bottom, and the harder did we find it to get afloat again. Twelve miles below Fontesvilla, a river called the Bigimiti comes in on the right, and at its mouth we took on board a bold young English sportsman with the skin of a huge lion. Below the confluence, where a maze of sand banks encumbers the channel, we encountered a strong easterly breeze. The big clumsy boat made scarcely any way against it, and stuck upon the sand so often that the Kafirs, who certainly worked with a will, were more than half the time in the water up to their knees, tugging and shoving to get her off. Meanwhile the tide, what there was of it, was ebbing fast, and the captain admitted that if we did not get across these shoals within half an hour we should certainly lie fast upon them till next morning at least, and how much longer no one could tell. It was not a pleasant prospect, for we had no food except some biscuits and a tin of cocoa, and a night on the Pungwe, with pestiferous swamps all round, meant almost certainly an attack of fever. Nothing, however, could be done beyond what the captain and the Kafirs were doing, so that suspense was weighted by no sense of personal responsibility. We moved alternately from stern to bow, and back from bow to stern, to lighten the boat at one end or the other, and looked to windward to see from the sharp curl of the waves whether the gusts which stopped our progress were freshening further. Fortunately they abated. Just as the captain seemed to be giving up hope—the only fault we had with him was that his face revealed too plainly his anxieties—we felt ourselves glide off into a deeper channel; the Kafirs jumped in and smote the dark-brown current with their oars, and the prospect of a restful night at Beira rose once more before us. But our difficulties were not quite over, for we grounded several times afterwards, and progress was so slow that it seemed very doubtful whether we should find and reach before dark the little steam-launch that had come up to meet us.

Ever since my childish imagination had been captivated by the picture of Africa's sunny fountains rolling down their golden sand, the idea of traversing a tropical forest on the bosom of a great African river had retained its fascination. Here at last was the reality, and what a dreary reality! The shallow, muddy stream, broken into many channels, which inclosed low, sandy islets, had spread to a width of two miles. The alluvial banks, rising twenty feet in alternate layers of sand and clay, cut off any view of the country behind. All that could be seen was a fringe of thick, low trees, the edge of the forest that ran back from the river. Conspicuous among them was the ill-omened "fever tree," with its gaunt, bare, ungainly arms and yellow bark—the tree whose presence indicates a pestilential air. Here was no luxuriant variety of form, no wealth of colour, no festooned creepers nor brilliant flowers, but a dull and sad monotony, as we doubled point after point and saw reach after reach of the featureless stream spread out before us. Among the trees not a bird was to be seen or heard; few even fluttered on the bosom of the river. We watched for crocodiles sunning themselves on the sandspits, and once or twice thought we saw them some two hundred yards away, but they had always disappeared as we drew nearer. The beast is quick to take alarm at the slightest noise, and not only the paddles of a steamer, but even the plash of oars, will drive him into the water. For his coyness we were partly consoled by the gambols of the river-horses. All round the boat these creatures were popping up their huge snouts and shoulders, splashing about, and then plunging again into the swirling water. Fortunately none rose quite close to us, for the hippopotamus, even if he means no mischief, may easily upset a boat when he comes up under it, or may be induced by curiosity to submerge it with one bite of his strong jaws, in which case the passengers are likely to have fuller opportunities than they desire of becoming acquainted with the crocodiles.

Among such sights the sultry afternoon wore itself slowly into night, and just as dark fell—it falls like a stage curtain in these latitudes—we joyfully descried the steam-launch waiting for us behind a sandy point. Once embarked upon her, we made better speed through the night. It was cloudy, with a struggling moon, which just showed us a labyrinth of flat, densely wooded isles, their margins fringed with mangrove trees. Exhausted by a journey of more than thirty hours without sleep, we were now so drowsy as to be in constant danger of falling off the tiny launch, which had neither seats nor bulwarks, and even the captain's strong tea failed to rouse us. Everything seemed like a dream—this lonely African river, with the faint moonlight glimmering here and there upon its dark bosom, while the tree tops upon untrodden islets flitted past in a slow, funereal procession, befitting a land of silence and death.

At last, when it was now well past midnight, a few lights were seen in the distance, and presently we were at Beira. As we touched the shore we were told that the German steamer had already arrived, two days before her time, and was to start in the morning at ten o'clock. So we made straight for her, and next day at noon sailed for Delagoa Bay.

Beira stands on a sand-spit between the ocean and the estuary of the Pungwe River. Though the swamps come close up to it, the town itself is tolerably healthy at all seasons, because the strong easterly breeze blows from the sea three days out of four. Before 1890 there was hardly even a house, and its quick growth is entirely due to its having been discovered to possess the best harbour on the coast, and to be therefore the fittest point of departure from the sea for the territories of the British South African Company.

In old days the chief Portuguese settlement on this part of the coast was at Sofala, a few miles farther to the south, which had been visited by Vasco da Gama in A.D. 1502, and where the Portuguese built a fort in 1505. It was then an Arab town, and famous as the place whence most of the gold brought down from the interior was exported. Now it has shrunk to insignificance, and Beira will probably become the most important haven on the coast between Delagoa Bay, to the south, and Dar-es-Salaam, the head-quarters of German administration, to the north. It may, however, be rivalled by Pemba Bay north of the Zambesi, from which it is proposed to run a railway to the south end of Lake Nyassa. The anchorage in the estuary behind the sand-spit is spacious and sheltered, and the outrush of the tide from the large estuary keeps down, by its constant scour, accumulations of sand upon the bar. The rise of tide at this part of the coast, from which Madagascar is only four hundred miles distant, is twenty-two feet, and the channel of approach, though narrow and winding (for the coast is shallow and there are shoals for six or eight miles out), is tolerably well buoyed and not really difficult. The railway terminus is placed at a point within the harbour where the sand-spit joins the mainland.

The journey which I have described, with all its difficulties, first on the river between Beira and Fontesvilla, and then again on the track between Chimoyo and Mtali, has since my visit become a thing of the past. Early in 1896 the railway was opened from Fontesvilla to Beira, so that the tedious and vexatiously uncertain voyage up or down the Pungwe River is now superseded by a more swift if less exciting form of travel. And the permanent way was rapidly laid from Chimoyo northward, so that trains were running all the way from the sea to Fort Salisbury by the middle of 1899. Should the resources of Mashonaland turn out within the next few years to be what its more sanguine inhabitants assert, its progress will be enormously accelerated by this line, which will give a far shorter access to South Central Africa than can be had by the rival lines that start from Cape Town, from Durban, and from Delagoa Bay.

[Footnote 52: This chief was the restive chief mentioned on the last preceding page. He joined in the rising of 1896, and was, I believe, taken prisoner and shot.]

[Footnote 53: It was here only, on the banks of a stream, that I observed the extremely handsome arboraceous St.-John's-wort (Hypericum Schimperi), mentioned in Chapter IV.]

[Footnote 54: It is in the midst of this scenery that new Mtali has been built.]

[Footnote 55: Law Reports for 1893, A. C., p. 602.]

[Footnote 56: It is in these woods that the honey bird is found, whereof the tale is told that it hunts about for the nests of wild bees in the hollows of trees, and when it has found one, flies close to a man so as to attract his notice, then flutters in front of him to the nest, and waits for him to take the honey out of the hollow (which it cannot itself reach), expecting and receiving a share of the spoil.]



CHAPTER XVII

OBSERVATIONS ON THE RESOURCES AND FUTURE OF MATABILILAND AND MASHONALAND

In the last chapter I have brought the reader back to the sea from the inland country we have spent three chapters in traversing. Now, while the German steamer is threading her way to the open ocean through the shoals that surround the entrance to the harbour of Beira, the traveller as he gazes on the receding shore tries to sum up his impressions regarding the economic prospects as well of Mashonaland as of the other territories of the British South Africa Company. I will shortly state these impressions.

The regions over which the British flag flies between the Transvaal Republic to the south and the territories of Germany and of the Congo State to the north, fall into three parts. The first is the country north of the Zambesi. The easternmost section of this northerly region is Nyassaland, of which I need say nothing, because it has been admirably described by the distinguished officer (Sir H. H. Johnston) who administered it for some years. The central and western sections, which are under the control of the Company, are still too little known for an estimate of their value to be formed. Though some parts are more than 4000 feet above sea-level, most of the country lies below that line, which is, roughly speaking, the line at which malarial fevers cease to be formidable. Most of it, therefore, is not likely to be fit for European colonization, and the heat is of course such as to put European labour out of the question. Considerable tracts are, however, believed to be fertile, and other tracts good for pasture, while there is some evidence of the existence of gold and other minerals. The least valuable region is believed to be that north of the Middle Zambesi, where there are some dry and almost barren districts. Taking it all in all, it is a country well worth having; but its resources will have to be turned to account entirely through black labour; and as it is not likely to attract any Europeans, except gold-prospectors, until the unoccupied lands south of the Zambesi have been fully taken up, its development belongs to a comparatively distant future.

The second region—that which lies south of the Upper Zambesi, north-west of Matabililand—is equally little known, and, so far as known, is not attractive. Most of it is comparatively low; much of it is arid; some parts, especially those round Lake Ngami, are marshy and therefore malarious. It is thinly peopled, has not been ascertained to possess any mineral wealth, and lies far from any possible market. Parts of it may turn out to afford good pasture, but for the present little is said or thought about it, and no efforts have been made to develop it.

The third region comprises Matabililand and Mashonaland, that is, the country between the Transvaal Republic and the valley of the Middle Zambesi, all of which is now administered by the Company. What there is to say about its prospects may be summed up under three heads—health, wealth, and peace. It is on these three things that its future welfare depends.

Health.—A large part of the country, estimated at nearly 100,000 square miles, belongs to the Upper South African plateau, and has an elevation of at least 3000 feet above the sea; and of this area about 26,000 square miles have an elevation of 4000 feet or upward. This height, coupled with fresh easterly breezes and dry weather during eight months in the year, gives the country a salubrious and even bracing climate. The sun's heat is tempered, even in summer, by cool nights, and in winter by cold winds, so that European constitutions do not, as in India, become enervated and European muscles flaccid. It is not necessary to send children home to England when they reach five or six years of age; for they grow up as healthy as they would at home. Englishmen might, in many districts, work with their hands in the open air, were they so disposed; it is pride and custom, rather than the climate, that forbid them to do so. So far, therefore, the country, is one in which an indigenous white population might renew itself from generation to generation.

Wealth.—It was the hope of finding gold that drew the first British pioneers to these regions; it is that hope which keeps settlers there, and has induced the ruling Company to spend very large sums in constructing railways, as well as in surveying, policing, and otherwise providing for the administration of the country. The great question, therefore, is, How will the gold-reefs turn out? There had been formed before the end of 1895 more than two hundred Development Companies, most of them gold-mining undertakings, and others were being started up till the eve of the native outbreak in March, 1896. Very many reefs had been prospected and an immense number of claims registered. The places in which actual work had been done in the way of sinking shafts and opening adits were, of course, much fewer, yet pretty numerous. Most of these were in Manicaland, near Mtali, or to the north and west of Fort Salisbury, or to the south-east of Gwelo, in the Selukwe district. No one of these workings was on a large scale, and at two or three only had stamping machinery been set up, owing, so I was told, to the practically prohibitive cost of transport from the sea. Accordingly, there were very few, if any, workings where enough ore had been extracted and treated to warrant any confident predictions as to the productivity of the claim. Numerous as the claims are, the value of all, or nearly all, remained uncertain.

It must be remembered that in these mining districts the gold occurs in quartz-reefs. Comparatively little is found in alluvial deposits, which in California and Australia and the Ural mountains have often been more important than the quartz-reefs. None at all is found diffused equally through a stratum of rock, as in the Transvaal. Now, quartz-reef mining is proverbially uncertain. The reefs vary not only in thickness, but also in depth, and it is not yet certain that any go very far beneath the surface. So, too, even when the reef itself is persistent in width and in depth, its auriferous quality varies greatly. What is called the "shoot" of gold may be rich for some yards, and then become faint or wholly disappear, perhaps to reappear some yards farther. Thus there must be a good deal of quartz crushed at different points before it can be determined what number of pennyweights or ounces to the ton a given reef, or a given part of a reef, is likely to yield.

In this uncertainty and deficiency of practical tests, people have fallen back upon the ancient workings as evidence of the abundance of the precious metal. I have already mentioned how numerous these workings are over the country, and how fully they appear to confirm the stories as to the gold which was brought down in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to Sofala and the other Portuguese ports. It is argued that if gold was so extensively worked in time past by rude races possessing only primitive methods and few tools, the reefs must have been rich, and that it is extremely improbable that all, or nearly all, the gold should have been already extracted. The old workings were open, excavated down from the surface, and they usually stopped when water was reached. Is there not every reason to think that in many places the reefs go deeper, and that our improved scientific appliances will enable us to extract far more of the metal than the old miners could get by their simple breaking and washing of the quartz? No doubt the old workings were carried on by labour incomparably cheaper than could now be obtained; but against this may be set the greater efficiency of the machinery which will be at the disposal of the miner when transportation facilities have been provided.

Arguments of this kind are resorted to only because the data which experiment has hitherto supplied are insufficient. I found much difference of opinion in the country itself regarding the value of the reefs. Some mining engineers took a less sanguine view of the reefs they had examined than did the general public in Fort Salisbury or Bulawayo, and (it need hardly be said) a much less sanguine view than the prospectuses of the companies conveyed to investors at home. On the other hand, results had been actually obtained in some other places which promised extremely well if the rest of the reef proved equal to the portion sampled. Men of what is called in America "a conservative temper" seemed to think that there is "payable gold," probably plenty of gold, in the country, and that out of the many companies formed to work the claims a fair, but by no means a large, proportion will turn out sound undertakings. I doubt if it will be possible to say anything more positive until stamping batteries have been erected and a considerable quantity of quartz has been treated. This process can hardly begin till the railways to Bulawayo and Mtali have been opened, and those interested may therefore have to wait till 1899 or 1900 before they can feel sure as to the value of their properties.[57]

Other minerals besides gold have been found. There is iron in many places, copper in others. Coal has been proved to exist, of good if not first-rate quality, on the edge of the Zambesi Valley south of the Victoria Falls, and further east, to the north of Gwelo, and if the gold-reefs turn out well it will certainly be worked. Indeed, railways have now (1899) been decided on to connect Bulawayo and Gwelo with these coal basins. It may be added that a railway is now being constructed from Bulawayo to Gwelo and Fort Salisbury, and that there is a prospect of another being pushed on to the Zambesi and the boundary of northern Rhodesia at the south end of Lake Tanganyika. A line is also to be made from Bulawayo south-east into the Gwanda mining district for a distance of 110 miles.

Regarding the pastoral and agricultural capabilities of the country there need be little doubt. All of it, except those lower grounds to the north and south-east which are infested by the tsetse-fly, is fit for cattle; some parts, such as the Matoppo Hills in Matabililand and still more the Inyanga plateau in Mashonaland (mentioned in the last preceding chapter), offer excellent pasture. The "high veldt" of central Matabililand is no less available for sheep. Most of the cattle that were on the land have perished in the recent murrain. But this plague will pass by and may not return for many years, perhaps for centuries, and the animals that will be brought in to restock the country will probably be of better breeds. The quality of the soil for the purposes of tillage has been tested by Europeans in a few places only. Much of it is dry; much of it, especially where the subjacent rock is granitic, is thin or sandy. Still, after allowing for these poorer tracts, there remains an immense area of land which is fit to raise cereals and some subtropical crops such as cotton. The immediate question is not, therefore, as to the productive capacities of the country, but as to the existence of a market for the products themselves. Nearly all staple food-stuffs have of late years become so cheap in the markets of Europe and North America, owing to the bringing under cultivation of so much new land and the marvellous reduction in the cost of ocean carriage, that in most of such articles Mashonaland, even with a railway to the sea, could not at present compete successfully in those markets with India and South America and the western United States. It is therefore to consumers nearer at hand that the country must look. If gold-mining prospers, population will rapidly increase, and a market will be created at the agriculturists' own door. If, on the other hand, the reefs disappoint the hopes formed of them, and the influx of settlers is too small to create any large demand, tillage will spread but little, and the country will be left to be slowly occupied by ranchmen. Thus the growth of population and the prosperity of every industry will depend upon the extent to which gold-mining can be profitably developed. Of course I speak only of the near future. However rich some of the reefs may turn out, they will be exhausted within a few decades, and the country will have to depend on its other resources. However unremunerative the reefs may prove, these other resources will in the long run assure to it a settled white population and a reasonable measure of prosperity. But these are days in which we all have learned to take short views of life for nations and countries as well as for our individual selves, and unquestionably the more or less of gold in its quartz will for this country make all the difference between its speedy and its slow development.

Peace.—Thirdly, there remains the question whether the natives can be kept quiet. The first occupation of Mashonaland was so tranquil, the first conquest of the Matabili so swift and easy, that everybody perceives that some further trouble ought to have been expected before British control could be deemed secure. Now there has been a second struggle and a pacification if not a victory. Has the suppression of the revolt given permanent security? Are the natives at last aware that the superiority of intelligence and organization on the part of the whites more than counterbalances their own immense preponderance in numbers, a preponderance of fully one hundred to one? No one will speak confidently on this point who remembers how implicit and how vain was the confidence felt in 1895 that the natives were contented and submissive. There was some little risk of trouble in the spring of 1899 among the Matabili, but the unrest became known in time, and is believed to have subsided. On the whole, there is reason to think that if the natives are ruled in a prudent and friendly spirit, making due allowance for their often unreasonable alarms and suspicions, no fresh rising need be feared. The chief aim of the ruling officials should be to draw and not to drive them to labour, and to keep in check those white adventurers who hang about the frontiers of civilization and sometimes ill-use or defraud the Kafir in a way which makes him hostile to the next whites, however well intentioned, who come into his neighbourhood. It may be some years yet before the natives will seek work at the mines to the extent desired, for they dislike underground labour. They were reported in 1899 to be still deaf to the mine-owners' blandishments, although the average wage is L2 a month; and the want of labour is assigned as a cause why many mines said to be promising have made little progress. But policy, as well as humanity and justice, forbids any resort to compulsion. Though it is quite true that the native hates to see the white men come in, disturb his old way of life, and take the best land, still I doubt if anything less than some positive grievance, such as forced labour or the taking of cattle, will be likely to rouse him to another attack on the strangers. Should such an attack occur, it would be less formidable than that of 1896. The tribal system, already weakened, tends among the Matabili to dissolve still further, as was seen by the absence of notable leaders and the general want of plan and co-operation in the late conflict. Among the Mashonas each village is independent, so that a combined effort is still less to be feared.[58] Moreover the completion of the two railways to Bulawayo on the western and Fort Salisbury on the eastern side of the country now enables reinforcements to be rapidly sent up from the coast, and has removed the only danger that really threatened the whites in 1896—their isolation from help and from supplies of ammunition and of food.

What, then, are the general conclusions to which this rapid survey leads? I will summarise them.

1. Though parts of the country will remain malarious, great areas will be sufficiently healthy to enable a large white population to grow up and maintain itself on the soil in vigour of mind and body. In this sense it will be a "white man's country."

2. The black population is, however, likely to remain by far the more numerous element, partly because it is better fitted for the malarious and the hottest regions, and partly because here, as elsewhere in South Africa, it is by the blacks that nearly all manual labour will continue to be done. In this sense, that of numerical preponderance, the country, and of course especially the parts of it which lie near to and north of the Zambesi, will be a "black man's country."

3. The material progress of the country, and the more or less rapid increase of its white population, will depend, in the first instance, on the greater or less success with which gold-mining is prosecuted. If the reefs turn out well, growth will be rapid; if not, it will be slow. But in the long run the soil and the climate will be the main factors in material and social prosperity. These give abundant grounds for hope. The rainfall is larger than in the interior of Cape Colony, and much of the soil will therefore be more productive. Therewith other industries will spring up; and some of them will remain even when mining has declined.

4. The political future will depend upon the growth of population, as that depends upon the development of material resources. Should there be a large and steady influx of white settlers, there must before long come a demand for self-governing institutions. To concede these institutions will be in the well-established line of British Colonial policy, and the question will then arise whether the country, or the more settled parts of it, should form a separate Colony or be incorporated with Cape Colony (as British Bechuanaland recently was). That one found in 1895 very little disposition among the white settlers to grumble at the administration seemed chiefly due to the great personal popularity of the genial Administrator, Dr. L. S. Jameson.

5. In 1898 the government and administration of the region south of the Zambesi, i.e., Matabililand and Mashonaland, theretofore in the hands of the British South Africa Company, were re-settled by an Order in Council (Southern Rhodesia Order in Council, October 20th, 1898). It vests authority in an Administrator appointed by the Company (with the approval of the Secretary of State for the Colonies), a Resident Commissioner, appointed by the Secretary of State and reporting directly to him, an Executive Council of four persons appointed by the Company, together with the senior and any other Administrators and the Resident Commissioner, and a Legislative Council consisting, besides the Commissioner and Administrators, of nine members, five appointed by the Company, and four elected by the registered voters in electoral districts. The Resident Commissioner, though entitled to be present and speak at meetings, has no vote. Legislative Ordinances may be vetoed by the High Commissioner for South Africa or by the Secretary of State. The police (a force of 1,200 is now maintained) are under the orders of the High Commissioner. There are various provisions for the protection of the natives, and the recognition of native law; and it is provided (Sec. 47) that any "customs duties to be levied are not to exceed the duties levied at the commencement of the Order by the South African Customs Union Tariff, or by the Customs Union Convention of May, 1898, whichever are higher."

This form of government is evidently provisional, and questions must arise in the future, regarding the political constitution to be given to this region and the relations of the Company to it, which will present much difficulty.

The country lying north of the Zambesi has been divided into two districts, North East Rhodesia and North West Rhodesia, each of which is placed under an Administrator appointed by the Company, the extreme North Western strip, towards the Portuguese territory, remaining meantime under the more direct authority of the High Commissioner. It is understood that these areas also are to be regulated by Orders in Council.

6. Leaving out of sight the still unsettled problem of the mineral wealth of these territories, they are in other respects one of the most promising parts of South Africa. I have remarked that as regards pasture and agriculture they are superior to the inland parts of Cape Colony. They are in these points also superior to the Transvaal, and still more plainly superior to the neighbouring possessions of Germany and Portugal. Portuguese East Africa is fever-stricken. German East Africa is in many places barren and almost everywhere malarious. German South-west Africa is largely desert, much of it an arid and irreclaimable desert.

To the English race in South Africa the acquisition of these regions, or at least of the parts south of the Zambesi, has been an immense political and economic advantage. It has established their predominance and provided a security against any serious attempt to dislodge them. A philosophic observer without predilections for any one state or people would, it is conceived, hold that the English race is more likely to serve what are termed the interests of civilization in this part of Africa than is any other race. The Portuguese have neither energy nor capital. The Germans, with energy and with capital, have not the requisite practice in independent colonization, nor perhaps the taste for it. The South African Dutch Boers, who have within the last seventeen years been more than once on the point of occupying the country, are, with all their good qualities, a backward people, who, had they prevailed, would have done little more than squat here and there over the country with their cattle, and carry on an incessant desultory war with the natives. Whether it is really desirable that the waste lands of the world should be quickly brought under settled order and have their resources developed with all possible speed, is a question on which much might be said. But assuming, as most men, perhaps too hastily, do assume, that this sudden development is desirable, the English are the people most likely to carry it out effectively, and the strong and strenuous man who, with little encouragement from the government of his country, founded the British South Africa Company and acquired these territories for his countrymen, took one of the most fateful steps that statesman or conqueror has ever taken in the African continent.

[Footnote 57: The above was written in 1897. The subsequent extension of the railway from Mafeking to Bulawayo stimulated production, and in July, 1899, there were 115 stamps at work on the gold reefs, and the total value of the gold produced in Matabililand and Mashonaland (including the Tati concessions) was given by the Bulawayo Chamber of Mines as L192,679 for the preceding ten months. The average wages paid to natives were L2 a month. Some reefs are stated to have been worked to a depth of 500 feet.]

[Footnote 58: This very isolation and independence of the small native communities in Mashonaland retarded the pacification of the country during 1896-97. There were hardly any influential chiefs with whom to treat. But since 1897 it has been perfectly quiet.]



CHAPTER XVIII

THROUGH NATAL TO THE TRANSVAAL

There are two ways of reaching the Witwatersrand goldfields, now the central point of attraction in South Africa, from the south-east coast. One route starts from Delagoa Bay, a place of so much importance as to deserve a short description. It is a piece of water protected from the ocean by Inyack Island, and stretching some twenty miles or more north and south. At the north end, where two rivers discharge their waters into it, is an almost landlocked inlet, on the east side of which stands the town of Lourenco Marques, so called from the Portuguese captain who first explored it in 1544, though it had been visited in 1502 by Vasco da Gama. The approach to this harbour is long and circuitous, for a vessel has to wind hither and thither to avoid shoals; and as the channel is ill-buoyed, careful captains sometimes wait for the tide to be at least half full before they cross the shallowest part, where there may be only twenty feet of water at low tide. Within the harbour there is plenty of good deep anchorage opposite the town, and a still more sheltered spot is found a little farther up the inlet in a sort of lagoon. The town, which is growing fast, but still in a rough and unsightly condition, runs for half a mile along the bay front, while behind a suburb is built up the slope of a hill facing to the west. The site looks healthy enough, though it would have been better to plant the houses nearer to the high point which shields the anchorage. But behind the town to the east and north there are large swamps, reeking with malaria; and the residents have, therefore, though of course much less in the dry season, to be on their guard against fever, which, indeed, few who remain for a twelvemonth escape. The Portuguese Government is unfortunately hard pressed for money and has not been able to complete the projected quays, nor even to provide a custom-house and warehouses fit to receive and store the goods intended for the Transvaal, which are now discharged here in large quantities. In November, 1895, everything was in confusion, and the merchants loud in their complaints. Business is mostly in English and German, scarcely at all in Portuguese, hands. With better management and the expenditure of a little money, both the approach to the harbour and the town itself might be immensely improved; and although the country round is not attractive, being mostly either sandy or marshy, the trade with the Transvaal goldfields seems so certain to develop and maintain itself that expenditure would be well bestowed. It has often been suggested that Great Britain should buy or lease the place (over which she has a right of pre-emption), but the sensitive pride of Portugal might refuse any offer. Nevertheless, it needs no great boldness to foretel that some day it will come into British hands.

The other port which now competes for the Transvaal trade with Delagoa Bay is Durban, the largest town in the British Colony of Natal. It stands on a sandy flat from which a spit of land runs out into the sea between the open ocean and the harbour. The harbour is commodious, but the bar on the channel connecting it with the ocean formerly made it unavailable except for vessels of light draft. Although much had been done by the Colony to deepen the channel, the largest steamers were (in 1895) still forced to lie out in the ocean a mile or two away, and as there is usually a swell, in which the little steam-tenders pitch about pretty freely, the process of disembarkation is trying to many passengers. There is, however, good reason to hope that the bar difficulties may ultimately be overcome, as they have already been greatly reduced: and the harbour, once you are within it, is perfectly sheltered.

Durban is a neat and, in some parts, even handsome town, incomparably superior to Lourenco Marques, with wide and well-kept streets, to which the use of slender jinrickshas (drawn by active Zulus or Indians) instead of cabs, as well as the number of white-clad coolies in the streets, gives a curious Eastern touch, in keeping with the semi-tropical vegetation. The climate is sultry during three months, but very agreeable for the rest of the year. Many of the whites, however,—there are 14,000 of them, and about the same number of Kafirs and immigrants from India, live on the hill of Berea to the north of the town, where the sea breeze gives relief even in the hottest weather. This suburb of Berea is one of the prettiest spots in South Africa. The name, of which the origin seems to have been forgotten by the citizens of to-day, comes from a missionary settlement planted here in very early days, and called after the Berea mentioned in Acts xvii. 10, 11. It has been skilfully laid out in winding roads, bordered by tasteful villas which are surrounded by a wealth of trees and flowering shrubs, and command admirable views of the harbour, of the bold bluff which rises west of the harbour, and of the ocean. The municipality bought the land, and by selling or leasing it in lots at increased prices has secured a revenue which keeps local taxation at a very low figure, and has enabled many town improvements to be made and many enterprises to be worked for the benefit of the citizens. Durban has been a pioneer of what is called, in its extremer forms, municipal socialism; and enjoys the reputation of being the best managed and most progressive town in all South Africa. It possesses among other things a fine town-hall with a lofty tower, built by the exertions of the present mayor, a deservedly respected Scotch merchant.

East of Durban a low and fertile strip of country stretches along the coast, most of which is occupied by sugar plantations, tilled by coolies brought from India, because the native Kafir does not take kindly to steady labour. North of the town the country rises, and here the patient industry of other Indians has formed a great mass of gardens, where sub-tropical and even some tropical fruits are grown in great quantities, and have now begun to be exported to Europe. Across this high ground, and through and over the still higher hills which rise farther inland, the railway takes its course, often in steep inclines, to the town of Pietermaritzburg, eighty miles distant, where the Governor dwells, and a small British garrison is placed. Durban was from the first an English town, and the white people who inhabit it are practically all English. Maritzburg was founded by the emigrant Boers who left Cape Colony in the Great Trek of 1836, and descended hither across the Quathlamba Mountains in 1838. Its population is, however, nowadays much more British than Boer, but the streets retain an old-fashioned half-Dutch air; and the handsome Parliament House and Government Offices look somewhat strange in a quiet and straggling country town. Its height above the sea (2500 feet) and its dry climate make it healthy, though, as it lies in a hollow among high hills, it is rather hotter in summer than suits English tastes. The surrounding country is pretty, albeit rather bare; nor is the Australian wattle, of which there are now large plantations in the neighbourhood, a very attractive tree.

This seems the fittest place for a few words on the public life of Natal, the British Colony which has been the latest to receive responsible self-government. This gift was bestowed upon it in 1893, not without some previous hesitation, for the whole white population was then about 46,000, and the adult males were little over 15,000. However, the system then established seems to be working smoothly. There is a cabinet of five ministers, with two Houses of Legislature, an Assembly of thirty-seven, and a Council of eleven members, the former elected for four years at most (subject to the chance of a dissolution), the latter appointed by the Governor for ten years. No regular parties have so far been formed, nor can it yet be foreseen on what lines they will form themselves, for the questions that have chiefly occupied the legislature are questions on which few differences of principle have as yet emerged. All the whites are agreed in desiring to exclude Kafirs and newcomers from India from the electoral franchise. All seemed in 1895 to be agreed in approving the tariff, which was for revenue only; and Natal had then one of the lowest among the tariffs in force in British Colonies. (The ordinary ad valorem rate was five per cent.) In 1898, however, Natal entered the South African Customs Union previously consisting of Cape Colony, the Orange Free State, Basutoland, and Bechuanaland, and the tariff of that Union, as fixed in 1898, was higher and to some extent protective. Even between the citizens of English and those of Dutch origin, the latter less than one-fourth of the whole, and living chiefly in the country, there has been but little antagonism, for the Dutch, being less numerous than in Cape Colony, are much less organized. Among the English, British sentiment is strong, for the war of 1881 with the Transvaal people not merely re-awakened the memories of the Boer siege of Durban in 1842, but provoked an anti-Boer feeling, which was kept in check only by the necessity of conciliating the Transvaal government in order to secure as large as possible a share of the import trade into that country. As the Natal line of railway is a competitor for this trade with the Cape lines, as well as with the line from Delagoa Bay, there is a keen feeling of rivalry toward Cape Colony, which is thought to have been unfriendly in annexing the native territories of Griqualand East and Pondoland, which lie to the west of Natal, and which the latter Colony had hoped some day or other to absorb. When her hopes of territorial extension were closed on that side, Natal began to cast longing eyes on Zululand, a hilly region of rich pastures which is at present directly administered by the Imperial Government, and which contains not only some gold-reefs of still unascertained value, but also good beds of coal. Ultimately in 1897, the home government consented to allow Natal to absorb both Zululand and the Tonga country all the way north to the Portuguese frontier.

The political life of Natal flows in a tranquil current, because the population is not merely small, but also scattered over a relatively wide area, with only two centres of population that rise above the rank of villages. The people, moreover, lead an easy and quiet life. They are fairly well off, occupying large cattle-farms, and with no great inducement to bring a great deal of land under tillage, because the demand for agricultural produce is still comparatively small. Not much over one-fortieth part of the surface is cultivated, of which about two hundred thousand acres are cultivated by Europeans, of course by the hands of coloured labourers. Sugar is raised along the coast, and tea has lately begun to be grown. The Natalians have, perhaps, become the less energetic in developing the natural resources of their country because thrice in their recent history the equable course of development has been disturbed. In 1870 many of the most active spirits were drawn away to the newly-discovered diamond-fields of Kimberley. In 1879 the presence of the large British force collected for the great Zulu war created a sudden demand for all sorts of food-stuffs and forage, which disappeared when the troops were removed; and since 1886 the rapid growth of the Witwatersrand gold-fields, besides carrying off the more adventurous spirits, has set so many people speculating in the shares of mining companies that steady industry has seemed a slow and tame affair. At present not many immigrants come to Natal to settle down as farmers; and the Colony grows but slowly in wealth and population. Nevertheless, its prosperity in the long run seems assured. It is more favoured by soil and by sky than most parts of Cape Colony. It has an immense resource in its extensive coal-fields. Its ocean trade and railway traffic are increasing. In proximity to these coal-fields it has deposits of iron which will one day support large industrial communities. And its inhabitants are of good, solid stuff, both English, Dutch, and German, for there are many German immigrants. No British Colony can show a population of better quality, and few perhaps one equally good.

Besides the railway question, which is bound up with the problem of the port of Durban and its bar, the question which has most interest for the people of Natal is that of the coloured population, Kafir and Indian. The Kafirs, mostly of Zulu race, number 460,000, about ten times the whites, who are estimated at 50,000. Nearly all live under tribal law in their own communities, owning some cattle, and tilling patches of land which amount in all to about 320,000 acres. The law of the Colony wisely debars them from the use of European spirits. A few of the children are taught in mission schools,—the only educational machinery provided for them,—and a very few have been converted to Christianity, but the vast majority are little influenced by the whites in any way. They are generally peaceable, and perpetrate few crimes of violence upon whites; but however peaceable they may have shown themselves, their numerical preponderance is disquieting. A Kafir may, by the Governor's gift, obtain the electoral suffrage when he has lived under European law for at least seven years; but it has been bestowed on extremely few, so that in fact the native does not come into politics at all. The Indian immigrants, now reckoned at 50,000, are of two classes. Some are coolies, who have been imported from India under indentures binding them to work for a term of years, chiefly on the sugar plantations of the coast. Many of these return at the expiration of the term, but more have remained, and have become artisans in the towns or cultivators of garden patches. The other class, less numerous, but better educated and more intelligent, consists (besides some free immigrants of the humbler class) of so-called "Arabs"—Mahommedans, chiefly from Bombay and the ports near it, or from Zanzibar—who conduct retail trade, especially with the natives, and sometimes become rich. Clever dealers, and willing to sell for small profits, they have practically cut out the European from business with the native, and thereby incurred his dislike. The number of the Indians who, under the previous franchise law, were acquiring electoral rights had latterly grown so fast that, partly owing to the dislike I have just mentioned, partly to an honest apprehension that the Indian element, as a whole, might become unduly powerful in the electorate, an Act was in 1894 passed by the colonial legislature to exclude them from the suffrage. The home government was not quite satisfied with the terms in which this Act was originally framed, but in 1897 approved an amended Act which provides that no persons shall be hereafter admitted to be electors "who (not being of European origin) are natives or descendants in the male line of natives of countries which have not hitherto possessed elective representative institutions founded on the parliamentary franchise, unless they first obtain from the Governor in Council an order exempting them from the provisions of this Act." Under this statute the right of suffrage will be withheld from natives of India and other non-European countries, such as China, which have no representative government, though power is reserved for the government to admit specially favoured persons. In 1897 another Act was passed (and approved by the home government) which permits the colonial executive to exclude all immigrants who cannot write in European characters a letter applying to be exempted from the provisions of the law. It is intended by this measure to stop the entry of unindentured Indian immigrants of the humbler class.

I have referred particularly to this matter because it illustrates one of the difficulties which arise wherever a higher and a lower, or a stronger and a weaker, race live together under a democratic government. To make race or colour or religion a ground of political disability runs counter to what used to be deemed a fundamental principle of democracy, and to what has been made (by recent amendments) a doctrine of the American Constitution. To admit to full political rights, in deference to abstract theory, persons who, whether from deficient education or want of experience as citizens of a free country, are obviously unfit to exercise political power is, or may be, dangerous to any commonwealth. Some way out of the contradiction has to be found, and the democratic Southern States of the North American Union and the oligarchical Republic of Hawaii (now (1899) annexed to the United States), as well as the South African Colonies, have all been trying to find such a way. The problem has in 1899 presented itself in an acute form to the United States, who having taken hold of the Philippine Isles, perceive the objections to allowing the provisions of their Federal Constitution to have effect there, but have not yet decided how to avoid that result. Natal, where the whites are in a small minority, now refuses the suffrage to both Indians and Kafirs; while Cape Colony, with a much larger proportion of whites excludes the bulk of her coloured people by the judicious application of an educational and property qualification. The two Boer Republics deny the supposed democratic principle, and are therefore consistent in denying all political rights to people of colour. The Australian Colonies have taken an even more drastic method. Most of them forbid the Chinese to enter the country, and admit the dark-skinned Polynesian only as a coolie labourer, to be sent back when his term is complete. France, however, is more indulgent, and in some of her tropical Colonies extends the right of voting, both for local assemblies and for members of the National Assembly in France, to all citizens, without distinction of race or colour.

Maritzburg is a cheerful little place, with an agreeable society, centred in Government House, and composed of diverse elements, for the ministers of state and other officials, the clergy, the judges, and the officers of the garrison, furnish a number, considerable for so small a town, of capable and cultivated men. There are plenty of excursions, the best of which is to the beautiful falls of the Umgeni at Howick, where a stream, large after the rains, leaps over a sheet of basalt into a noble cirque surrounded by precipices. Passing not far from these falls, the railway takes its course northward to the Transvaal border. The line climbs higher and higher, and the country, as one recedes from the sea, grows always drier and more bare. The larger streams flow in channels cut so deep that their water is seldom available for irrigation; but where a rivulet has been led out over level or gently sloping ground, the abundance of the crop bears witness to the richness of the soil and the power of the sun. The country is everywhere hilly, and the scenery, which is sometimes striking, especially along the banks of the Tugela and the Buffalo rivers, would be always picturesque were it not for the bareness of the foregrounds, which seldom present anything except scattered patches of thorny wood to vary the severity of the landscape. Toward the base of the great Quathlamba or Drakensberg Range, far to the west of the main line of railway, there is some very grand scenery, for the mountains which on the edge of Basutoland rise to a height of 10,000 feet break down toward Natal in tremendous precipices. At the little town of Ladysmith a railway diverges to the Orange Free State, whose frontier here coincides with a high watershed, crossed by only a few passes. A considerable coal-field lies near the village appropriately named Newcastle, and there are valuable deposits near the village of Dundee also, whither a branch line which serves the collieries turns off to the east at a spot called Glencoe, south of Newcastle. Travelling steadily to the north, the country seems more and more a wilderness, in which the tiny hamlets come at longer and longer intervals. The ranching-farms are very large,—usually six thousand acres,—so there are few settlers; and the Kafirs are also few, for this high region is cold in winter, and the dry soil does not favour cultivation. At last, as one rounds a corner after a steep ascent, a bold mountain comes into sight, and to the east of it, connecting it with a lower hill, a ridge or neck, pierced by a tunnel. The ridge is Laing's Nek, and the mountain is Majuba Hill, spots famous in South African history as the scenes of the battles of 1881 in the Transvaal War of Independence. Few conflicts in which so small a number of combatants were engaged have so much affected the course of history as these battles; and the interest they still excite justifies a short description of the place.

Laing's Nek, a ridge 5500 feet above the sea and rising rather steeply about 300 feet above its southern base, is close to the Quathlamba watershed, which separates the streams that run south into the Indian Ocean from those which the Vaal on the north carries into the Orange River and so to the Atlantic. It is in fact on the south-eastern edge of that great interior table-land of which I have so often spoken. Across it there ran in 1881, and still runs, the principal road from Natal into the Transvaal Republic,—there was no railway here in 1881,—and by it therefore the British forces that were proceeding from Natal to reconquer the Transvaal after the outbreak of December, 1880, had to advance to relieve the garrisons beleaguered in the latter country. Accordingly, the Boer levies, numbering about a thousand men, resolved to occupy it, and on January 27 they encamped with their waggons just behind the top of the ridge. The frontier lies five miles farther to the north, at the village of Charleston, so that at the Nek itself they were in the territory of Natal. The British force of about one thousand men, with a few guns, arrived the same day at a point four miles to the south, and pitched their tents on a hillside still called Prospect Camp, under the command of General Sir George Colley, a brave officer, well versed in the history and theory of war, but with little experience of operations in the field. Undervaluing the rude militia opposed to him, he next day attacked their position on the Nek in front; but the British troops, exposed, as they climbed the slope, to a well-directed fire from the Boers, who were in perfect shelter along the top of the ridge, suffered so severely that they had to halt and retire before they could reach the top or even see their antagonists. A monument to Colonel Deane, who led his column up the slope and fell there pierced by a bullet, marks the spot. Three weeks later (after an unfortunate skirmish on the 8th), judging the Nek to be impregnable in front, for his force was small, but noting that it was commanded by the heights of Majuba Hill, which rise 1500 feet above it on the west, the British general determined to seize that point. Majuba is composed of alternate strata of sandstone and shale lying nearly horizontal and capped—as is often the case in these mountains—by a bed of hard igneous rock (a porphyritic greenstone). The top is less than a mile in circumference, depressed some sixty or seventy feet in the centre, so as to form a sort of saucer-like basin. Here has been built a tiny cemetery, in which some of the British soldiers who were killed lie buried, and hard by on the spot where he fell, is a stone in memory of General Colley. The hill proper is nearly nine hundred feet above its base, and the base about six hundred feet above Laing's Nek, with which it is connected by a gently sloping ridge less than a mile long. It takes an hour's steady walking to reach the summit from the Nek; the latter part of the ascent being steep, with an angle of from twenty to thirty degrees, and here and there escarped into low faces of cliff in which the harder sandstone strata are exposed.

The British general started on the night of Saturday, February 26, from Prospect Camp, left two detachments on the way, and reached the top of the hill, after some hard climbing up the steep west side, at 3 A.M., with something over four hundred men. When day broke, at 5 A.M., the Boers below on the Nek were astonished to see British redcoats on the sky-line of the hill high above them, and at first, thinking their position turned, began to inspan their oxen and prepare for a retreat. Presently, when no artillery played upon them from the hill, and no sign of a hostile movement came from Prospect Camp in front of them to the south, they took heart, and a small party started out, moved along the ridge toward Majuba Hill, and at last, finding themselves still unopposed, began to mount the hill itself. A second party supported this forlorn hope, and kept up a fire upon the hill while the first party climbed the steepest parts. Each set of skirmishers, as they came within range, opened fire at the British above them, who, exposed on the upper slope and along the edge of the top, offered an easy mark, while the Boers, moving along far below, and in places sheltered by the precipitous bits of the slope, where the hard beds of sandstone run in miniature cliffs along the hillside, did not suffer in the least from the irregular shooting which a few of the British tried to direct on them. Thus steadily advancing, and firing as they advanced, the Boers reached at last the edge of the hilltop, where the British had neglected to erect any proper breastworks or shelter, and began to pour in their bullets with still more deadly effect upon the hesitating and already demoralized troops in the saucer-like hollow beneath them. A charge with the bayonet might even then have saved the day. But though the order was given to fix bayonets, the order to charge did not follow. General Colley fell shot through the head, while his forces broke and fled down the steep declivities to the south and west, where many were killed by the Boer fire. The British loss was ninety-two killed, one hundred and thirty-four wounded, and fifty-nine taken prisoners; while the Boers, who have given their number at four hundred and fifty, lost only one man killed and five wounded. No wonder they ascribed their victory to a direct interposition of Providence on their behalf.

The British visitor, to whom this explanation does not commend itself, is stupefied when he sees the spot and hears the tale. Military authorities, however, declare that it is an error to suppose that the occupants of a height have, under circumstances like those of this fight, the advantage which a height naturally seems to give them. It is, they say, much easier for skirmishers to shoot from below at enemies above, than for those above to pick off skirmishers below; and this fact of course makes still more difference when the attacking force are accustomed to hill-shooting, and the defenders above are not. But allowing for both these causes, the attack could not have succeeded had Laing's Nek been assailed from the front by the forces at Prospect Camp, and probably would never have been made had the British on the hill taken the offensive early in the day.

We reached the top of the mountain in a dense cloud, which presently broke in a furious thunderstorm, the flash and the crash coming together at the same moment, while the rain quickly turned the bottom of the saucer-like hollow almost into a lake. When the storm cleared away, what a melancholy sight was this little grassy basin strewn with loose stones, and bearing in its midst the graves of the British dead enclosed within a low wall! A remote and silent place, raised high in air above the vast, bare, brown country which stretched away east, south, and west without a trace of human habitation. A spot less likely to have become the scene of human passion, terror and despair can hardly be imagined. Yet it has taken its place among the most remarkable battlefields in recent history, and its name has lived, and lives to-day, in men's minds as a force of lamentable potency.

Crossing Laing's Nek,—the top of which few future travellers will tread, because the railway passes in a tunnel beneath it,—one comes out on the north upon the great rolling plateau which stretches to the Zambesi in one direction and to the Atlantic in another. Four or five miles further, a little beyond the village of Charleston, one leaves Natal and enters the South African Republic; and here is the actual watershed which divides the upper tributaries of the Orange River from the streams which flow to the Indian Ocean. The railway had just been completed at the time of our visit, and though it was not opened for traffic till some weeks later, we were allowed to run over it to the point where it joins the great line from Cape Town to Pretoria. The journey was attended with some risk, for in several places the permanent way had sunk, and in others it had been so insecurely laid that our locomotive and car had to pass very slowly and cautiously. The country is so sparsely peopled that if one did not know it was all taken up in large grazing-farms, one might suppose it still a wilderness. Here and there a few houses are seen, and one place, Heidelberg, rises to the dignity of a small town, being built at the extreme south-eastern end of the great Witwatersrand gold-basin, where a piece of good reef is worked, and a mining population has begun to gather. The country is all high, averaging 5000 feet above sea level, and is traversed by ridges which rise some 500 to 1000 feet more. It is also perfectly bare, except for thorny mimosas scattered here and there, with willows fringing the banks of the few streams.

Great is the contrast when, on reaching Elandsfontein, on the main line of railway, one finds one's self suddenly in the midst of the stir and bustle of industrial life. Here are the tall chimneys of engine-houses; here huge heaps of refuse at the shafts of the mines mark the direction across the country of the great gold-reef. Here, for the first time since he quitted the suburbs of Cape Town, the traveller finds himself again surrounded by a dense population, filled with the eagerness, and feeling the strain and stress, of an industrial life like that of the manufacturing communities of Europe or of North America. Fifteen years ago there was hardly a sign of human occupation. The Boer ranchman sent out his native boys to follow the cattle as they wandered hither and thither, seeking scanty pasturage among the stones, and would have been glad to sell for a hundred pounds the land on which Johannesburg now stands, and beneath which some of the richest mines are worked.

The Witwatersrand (Whitewatersridge) is a rocky ridge rising from one to two or three hundred feet above the level of the adjoining country and running nearly east and west about thirty miles. Along its southern slope the richest reefs or beds containing gold (except that near the village of Heidelberg) have been found; but the whole gold-basin, in various parts of which payable reefs have been proved to exist and are being worked, is nearly one hundred and thirty miles long by thirty miles wide. It is called a basin because the various out-cropping reefs represent approximately the rim of a basin, and dip to a common centre. But there are many "faults" which have so changed the positions of the reefs in different places as largely to obliterate the resemblance indicated by the term. It would be impossible to give either a geological account of the district or a practical description of the methods of working without maps and plans and a number of details unsuitable to this book; so I will mention merely a few salient facts, referring the curious reader to the elaborate treatise of Messrs. Hatch and Chalmers published in 1895.

The Rand gold-mining district at present consists of a line of mines both east and west of Johannesburg, along the outcrop of the principal reefs. It is about forty-six miles long, but "gold does not occur continuously in payable quantities over that extent, the 'pay-ore' being found in irregular patches, and (less frequently) in well-defined 'pay-shoots' similar to those which characterize quartz-veins."[59] There are also a few scattered mines in other parts of the basin. On this line there are two principal reefs—the Main Reef, with its so-called "leader," a thin bed just outside, and parallel to it, and the South Reef, with several others which are at present of much less importance. The term "reef" means a bed or stratum of rock, and these Rand reefs are beds of a sort of conglomerate, consisting of sandy and clayey matter containing quartz pebbles. The pebbles are mostly small, from the size of a thrush's egg up to that of a goose's egg, and contain no gold. The arenaceous or argillaceous stuff in which they lie embedded is extremely hard, and strongly impregnated with iron, usually in the form of iron pyrites, which binds it together. It is in this stuff, or sandy and ferreous cement, that the gold occurs. The Boers call the conglomerate "banket" (accented on the last syllable), which is their name for a kind of sweetmeat, because the pebbles lying in the cement are like almonds in the sugary substance of the sweetmeat. The gold is pretty equably diffused in the form of crystals or (less often) of flakes—crystals of such extremely small size as to be very rarely visible to the naked eye. Here and there, however, the banket is traversed by thin veins of quartz rock, and nuggets, mostly quite small, are occasionally found in this quartz.

The "Main Reef series" consists of several parallel beds of varying size and thickness, which have not been correlated throughout their entire length; at some points two may be workable; at others three. The Main Reef bed varies from one to twenty feet in thickness; its "leader," which is richer in gold, from three inches to three feet; and the South Reef, also generally rich, from three inches to six feet. The Main Reef proper, however, is of too low an ore grade to be profitably worked under present economic conditions, though at two or three mines a percentage of it is milled in conjunction with the richer ore from the other beds.

Where these beds come to the surface, they are inclined, or "dip," as geologists say, at an angle of from 60 deg. to 30 deg., and the shafts are now usually sunk to follow the line of dip. But as they are followed down into the earth, the angle diminishes to 30 deg. or 25 deg., and it appears certain that at a still greater depth they will be found to lie nearly horizontal. This fact is extremely important, because it promises to make a much larger part of the beds available than would be the case if they continued to plunge downward at a high angle, since in that case they would soon attain a depth at which mining would be impossible, because the heat would be too great, and probably unprofitable also, because the cost of raising the ore would be extremely heavy. The greatest depth to which workings have been carried is about 2400 feet, but skilled engineers think it possible to work as deep as 5000 feet, though labour becomes more difficult above the temperature of 100 deg. Fahrenheit, which is reached at 3000 feet beneath the surface. No difficulty from temperature has been felt at 2,400 feet, and the water is found to give little trouble; indeed a very experienced engineer (to whose courtesy I am indebted for these facts) tells me that he thinks most of the water comes from the surface, and can be taken up in the upper levels of the mine which is being worked at the depth mentioned. I have given these details in order to show how enormous a mass of ore remains to be extracted when the deep workings, which are still in their infancy, have been fairly entered upon. But a still more remarkable fact is that the auriferous banket beds appear, so far as they have been followed by deep borings, to retain, as they descend into the earth, not only their average thickness, but also their average mineral quality. Here is the striking feature of the Rand gold-beds, which makes them, so far as we know, unique in the world.

Everywhere else gold-mining is a comparatively hazardous and uncertain enterprise. Where the metal is found in alluvial deposits, the deposits usually vary much in the percentage of gold to the ton of soil which they yield, and they are usually exhausted in a few years. Where it occurs in veins of quartz-rock (the usual matrix), these veins are generally irregular in their thickness, often coming abruptly to an end as one follows them downward, and still more irregular and uncertain in the percentage of gold to rock. For a few yards your quartz-reef may be extremely rich, and thereafter the so-called "shoot" may stop, and the vein contain so little gold as not to pay the cost of working. But in the Witwatersrand basin the precious metal is so uniformly and equally distributed through the auriferous beds that when you have found a payable bed you may calculate with more confidence than you can anywhere else that the high proportion of gold to rock will be maintained throughout the bed, not only in its lateral extension, which can be easily verified, but also as it dips downwards into the bowels of the earth. It is, therefore, not so much the richness of this gold-field—for the percentage of metal to rock is seldom very high, and the cost of working the hard rock and disengaging the metal from the minerals with which it is associated are heavy items—as the comparative certainty of return, and the vast quantity of ore from which that return may be expected, that have made the Rand famous, have drawn to it a great mass of European capital and a large population, and have made the district the object of political desires, ambition, and contests which transcend South Africa and have threatened to become a part of the game which the great powers of Europe are playing on the chessboard of the world.

It is believed that the banket or conglomerate beds are of marine origin, but it does not follow that the gold was deposited pari passu with the deposition of the beds, for it may have been—and skilled opinion inclines to this view—carried into the conglomerate seams subsequently to their deposit. In this respect they resemble auriferous veins of quartz, though in these banket reefs the gold-bearing solutions would seem to have come up through the interstitial spaces of the conglomerate instead of in the more or less open fissures of the gold-bearing quartz-veins. The chemical conditions under which gold is thus deposited are still conjectural. Gold has long been known to exist in sea-water, in the form of an iodide or a chloride; and one skilful metallurgist at Johannesburg told me that he believed there was as much gold in a cubic mile of sea-water as the whole then annual output of the Rand, that is to say, nearly L8,000,000.

Had these deposits been discovered a century ago, few, if any of them, would have been worth working, because miners did not then possess the necessary means for extracting the gold from its intractable matrix. It is the progress of chemical science which, by inventing new processes, such as the roasting with chlorine, the treatment in vats with cyanide, and the application of electrical currents, has made the working profitable. The expenses of working out the gold per ton of ore sank from L1 15s. 5d. per ton in 1892 to L1 8s. 1d. in 1898, while the dividends rose from 8s. per ton to 13s. 2d.; and the proportion of gold won which was paid in dividends rose from 19 to 32 per cent. Further improvements in the processes of reduction will doubtless increase the mining area, by making it worth while to develop mines where the percentage of metal to rock is now too small to yield a dividend. Improvements, moreover, tend to accelerate the rate of production, and thereby to shorten the life of the mines; for the more profitable working becomes, the greater is the temptation to work as fast as possible and get out the maximum of ore. The number of stamps at work in milling the ore rose from 3740 in 1896 to 5970 in August, 1899. The total sum annually paid in dividends, which had in 1892 been L794,464, had in 1898 risen to L4,847,505.

The duration of the mines, as a whole, is therefore a difficult problem, for it involves the question whether many pieces of reef, which are now little worked or not worked at all, will in future be found worth working, owing to cheapened appliances and to a larger yield of gold per ton of rock, in which case the number of mines may be largely increased, and reefs now neglected be opened up when the present ones have been exhausted. The view of the most competent specialists seems to be that, though many of what are now the best properties will probably be worked out in twenty or thirty years, the district, as a whole, may not be exhausted for at least fifty, and possibly even for seventy or eighty, years to come. And the value of the gold to be extracted within those fifty years has been roughly estimated at about L700,000,000, of which at least L200,000,000 will be clear profit, the balance going to pay the cost of extraction. In 1896 the value of the Witwatersrand gold output was L7,864,341.[60] In 1898 it was L15,141,376; and in the first eight months of 1899 L12,485,032. Assuming a production of L15,000,000 a year, this would exhaust the field in about forty-six years; but it is, of course, quite impossible to predict what the future rate of production will be, for that must depend not only on the progress of mechanical and chemical science, but (as we shall presently see) to some extent also upon administrative and even political conditions. In the five years preceding 1896 the production had increased so fast (at the rate of about a million sterling per annum) that, even under the conditions which existed in 1895, every one expected a further increase, and (as already noted), the product of 1898 exceeded L15,000,000. With more favourable economic and administrative conditions it will doubtless for a time go still higher. The South African Republic now stands first among the gold-producing countries, having passed the United States, which stands a little behind her, Australasia being a good third, and the Russian Empire a bad fourth. The total annual output of gold for the whole world was in 1898 about L59,617,955.

Among the economic conditions I have referred to, none is more important than the supply and the wages of labour. On the Rand, as in all South African mines of every kind, unskilled manual labour is performed by Kafirs, whites—together with a few half-breeds and Indian coolies—being employed for all operations, whether within the mine or above the ground, which require intelligence and special knowledge.

The number of natives regularly employed was in 1896 47,000, the total employed altogether during the year 70,000. In 1898 these numbers had risen to 67,000 and 88,000 respectively. The average monthly wage of a native was in 1896 L3 0s. 10d. and in 1898 L2 9s. 9d. The number of whites employed was in 1896 7,430 (average monthly wage L24), in 1898 9,476 (average monthly wage L26). Whites would be still more largely employed if they would work harder, but they disdain the more severe kinds of labour, thinking those fit only for Kafirs. The native workmen are of various tribes, Basutos, Zulus, Shanganis, and Zambesi boys being reckoned the best. Most of them come from a distance, some from great distances, and return home when they have saved the sum they need to establish themselves in life. The dream of the mine manager is to cut down the cost of native labour by getting a larger and more regular supply, as well as by obtaining cheaper maize to feed the workmen, for at present, owing to the customs duties on food-stuffs, the cost of maize—nearly all of which is imported—is much higher than it need be. So white labour might be much cheapened, while still remaining far better paid than in Europe, by a reduction of the customs tariff, which now makes living inordinately dear. Heavy duties are levied on machinery and chemicals; and dynamite is costly, the manufacture of it having been constituted a monopoly granted to a single person. Of all these things, loud complaints are heard, but perhaps the loudest are directed against the rates of freight levied by the railways, and especially by the Netherlands Company, which owns the lines inside the Transvaal State itself.

Even apart from the question of railway freights, Johannesburg believed in 1895 that better legislation and administration might reduce the cost of production by twenty or thirty per cent., a difference which would of course be rapidly felt in the dividends of the mines that now pay, and which would enable many now unprofitable mines to yield a dividend and many mines to be worked which are now not worth working.[61] However this may be, an examination of the figures I have given will show how great has been the development of the industry during the last eight years, how largely the dividends have grown and how much the cost of production has been reduced. Thus in spite of the difficulties mentioned, the profits made have greatly increased, and the shareholder has fared well.

There is nothing in the natural aspect of the mining belt to distinguish it from the rest of the Transvaal plateau. It is a high, dry, bare, scorched, and windy country, and Johannesburg, its centre, stands in one of the highest, driest, and windiest spots, on the south slope of the Witwatersrand ridge, whose top rises some 150 feet above the business quarters. Founded in 1886, the town has now a population exceeding 100,000, more than half of them whites. In 1896 the census (probably very imperfect) showed within a radius of three miles 50,000 whites, 42,000 Kafirs, and 6000 Asiatics. Though it is rapidly passing from the stage of shanties and corrugated iron into that of handsome streets lined with tall brick houses, it is still rough and irregular, ill paved, ill lighted, with unbuilt spaces scattered about and good houses set down among hovels.