Though I do not attempt to present in this book an account of the agricultural and mineral resources of South Africa, some words must be said regarding its economic prospects—that is to say, regarding the natural sources of wealth which it possesses, their probable development, and the extent to which that development will increase the still scanty population. The political and social future of the country must so largely depend on its economic future that any one who desires to comprehend those political problems to the solution of which the people are moving, must first consider what sort of a people, and how large a people, the material conditions which nature furnishes are likely to produce.

The chief charm of travel through a new country is the curiosity which the thought of its future inspires. In South Africa, a land singularly unlike any part of Europe or of North America, this curiosity is keenly felt by the visitor. When he begins to speculate on the future, his first question is, Will these wildernesses ever become peopled, as most of North America and a large part of Australia have now been peopled, and if so, what will be the character of the population? Will South Africa become one of the great producing or manufacturing countries of the world? Will it furnish a great market for European goods? Will it be populous enough and rich enough to grow into one of the Powers of the southern hemisphere?

Let us begin by recalling the physical features of the country. Most of it is high and dry; all of it is hot. The parts which are high and dry are also healthy, and fit for the races of Europe to dwell in. But are they equally fit to support a dense population?

South Africa has three great natural sources of wealth: agricultural land, pasture-land, and minerals. The forests are too scanty to be worth regarding: they are not, and probably never will be, sufficient to supply its own needs. Fisheries also are insignificant, and not likely ever to constitute an industry, so we may confine ourselves to the three first named.

Of these three agriculture is now, and has hitherto been, by far the least important. Out of an area of two hundred and twenty-one thousand square miles in Cape Colony alone, probably not more than one one-thousandth part is now under any kind of cultivation, whether by natives or by whites; and in the whole country, even if we exclude the German and Portuguese territories, the proportion must be even smaller. There are no figures available, so one can make only the roughest possible conjecture. As regards more than half of the country, this fact is explained by the dryness of the climate. Not only the Karroo region in the interior of Cape Colony, but also the vast region stretching north from the Karroo nearly as far as the west-coast territories of Portugal, is too arid for tillage. So are large parts of the Free State, of the Transvaal, and of Matabililand. Where there is a sufficient rainfall, as in many districts along the south and south-east coasts, much of the country is too hilly and rough for cultivation; so that it would be well within the mark to say that of the whole area mentioned above far less than one-tenth is suitable for raising any kind of crop without artificial aid. Much, no doubt, remains which might be tilled, and is not tilled, especially in the country between the south-eastern edge of the great plateau and the sea; and that this land lies untouched is due partly to the presence of the Kafir tribes, who occupy more land than they cultivate, partly to the want or the dearness of labour, partly to the tendency, confirmed by long habit, of the whites to prefer stock-farming to tillage. The chief agricultural products are at present cereals, i.e., wheat, oats, maize, and Kafir corn (a kind of millet), fruit and sugar. The wheat and maize raised are not sufficient for the consumption of the inhabitants, so that these articles are largely imported, in spite of the duties levied on them. There is a considerable and an increasing export of fruit, which goes to Europe,—chiefly to the English market—in January, February, and March, the midsummer and autumn of the southern hemisphere. Sugar is grown on the hot lands of Natal lying along the sea, and might, no doubt, be grown all the way north along the sea from there to the Zambesi. Rice would do well on the wet coast lands, but is scarcely at all raised. Tea has lately been planted on the hills in Natal, and would probably thrive also on the high lands of Mashonaland. There is plenty of land fit for cotton. The tobacco of the Transvaal is so pleasant for smoking in a pipe that one cannot but expect it to be in time much more largely and carefully grown than it is now. Those who have grown accustomed to it prefer it to any other. With the exception of the olive, which apparently does not succeed, and of the vine, which succeeds only in the small district round Cape Town that enjoys a true summer and winter, nearly all the staples of the warmer parts of the temperate zone and of subtropical regions can be grown in some district or other of the country.

The introduction of irrigation would enormously enlarge the area of tillage, for some of the regions now hopelessly arid, such as the Karroo, have a soil of surprising fertility, which produces luxuriant crops when water is led on to it. Millions of acres might be made to wave with corn were great tanks, like those of India, constructed to hold the rains of the wet season, for it is not so much the inadequacy of the rainfall as the fact that it is confined to three or four months, that makes the country arid. Something might also be hoped from the digging of artesian wells dug like those which have lately been successfully bored in Algeria, and have proved so infinitely valuable to parts of Australia. Already about three hundred thousand acres are cultivated with the aid of irrigation in Cape Colony. At present, however, it has been deemed hardly worth while to execute large irrigation works or to bore wells.[88] The price of cereals has sunk so low over all the world that South Africans find it cheaper to import them than to spend capital on breaking up waste lands; and there is plenty of land already which might be cultivated without irrigation if there were settlers coming to cultivate it, or if Kafir labour was sufficiently effective to make it worth the while of enterprising men to undertake farming on a large scale. The same remarks apply generally to the other kinds of produce I have mentioned. As population grows, and the local demand for food increases, more land will be brought under the plough or the hoe. Some day, perhaps, when the great corn-exporting countries of to-day—North America, La Plata, central India, southern Russia—have become so populous as to have much less of their grain crops to spare for other countries, it will become profitable to irrigate the Karroo, on which the Kafir of the future will probably prove a more efficient labourer than he is now. But that day is distant, and until it arrives, agriculture will continue to play a very subordinate part in South African industry, and will employ a comparatively small white population.

Ever since the last years of the seventeenth century, when the settlers were beginning to spread out from the Cape Peninsula towards the then still unknown interior, the main occupation of the colonists, first of the Dutch and afterwards of both Dutch and English, has been the keeping of cattle and sheep. So it remains to-day. Nearly all the land that is not rough mountain or waterless desert, and much that to the inexperienced eye seems a waterless desert, is in the hands of stock-farmers, whose ranges are often of enormous size, from six thousand acres upward. In 1893 there were in Cape Colony about 2,000,000 cattle, in Natal 725,000, in the Orange Free State 900,000, and in Bechuanaland the Bamangwato (Khama's tribe) alone had 800,000. Of these last only some 5,000 are said to have survived the murrain, which worked havoc in the other three first-mentioned territories also. In 1896 there were in Cape Colony alone 14,400,000 sheep and 5,000,000 Angora and other goats. The number of sheep might be largely increased were more effective measures against the diseases that affect them carried out. All the country, even the Kalahari desert, which used to be thought hopelessly sterile, is now deemed fit to put some sort of live stock upon, though, of course, the more arid the soil, the greater the area required to feed one sheep. To the traveller who crosses its weary stretches in the train, the Karroo seems a barren waste; but it produces small succulent shrubs much relished by sheep, and every here and there a well or a stagnant pool may be found which supplies water enough to keep the creatures alive. Here six acres is the average allowed for one sheep. Tracts of rough ground, covered with patches of thick scrubby bushes, are turned to account as ostrich farms, whence large quantities of feathers are exported to Europe and America. In 1896 the number of ostriches in Cape Colony was returned as 225,000. The merino sheep, introduced about seventy years ago, thrives in Cape Colony, and its wool has become one of the most valuable products of the country. In the Free State both it and the Angora goat do well, and the pasture lands of that territory support also great numbers of cattle and some horses. The Free State and Bechuanaland are deemed to be among the very best ranching grounds in all South Africa.

Although, as I have said, nearly all the country is more or less fit for live stock, it must be remembered that this does not imply either great pecuniary returns or a large population. In most districts a comparatively wide area of ground is required to feed what would be deemed in western America a moderate herd or flock, because the pasture is thin, droughts are frequent, and locusts sometimes destroy a large part of the herbage. Thus the number of persons for whom the care of cattle or sheep in any given area provides occupation is a mere trifle compared to the number which would be needed to till the same area. Artesian wells might, no doubt, make certain regions better for pastoral purposes; but here, as in the case of agriculture, we find little prospect of any dense population, and, indeed, a probability that the white people will continue to be few relatively to the area of the country. On a large grazing farm the proportion of white men to black servants is usually about three to twenty-five; and though the proportion of whites is, of course, much larger in the small towns which supply the wants of the surrounding country, still any one can see with how few whites a ranching country may get along.

The third source of wealth lies in the minerals. It was the latest source to become known—indeed, till thirty-two years ago, nobody suspected it. Iron had been found in some places, copper in others; but neither had been largely worked, and the belief in the existence of the precious metals rested on nothing more than a Portuguese tradition. In 1867 the first diamond was picked up by a hunter out of a heap of shining pebbles near the banks of the Orange River, above its confluence with the Vaal. In 1869-70 the stones began to be largely found near where the town of Kimberley now stands. This point has been henceforth the centre of the industry, though there are a few other mines elsewhere of smaller productive power. The value of the present annual output exceeds £4,000,000, but it is not likely to increase, being, in fact, now kept down in order not to depress the market by over-supply. Altogether more than £100,000,000 worth of diamonds have been exported. The discovery of diamonds, as was observed in an earlier chapter, opened a new period in South African history, drawing crowds of immigrants, developing trade through the seaports as well as industry at the mining centres, and producing a group of enterprising men who, when the various diamond-mining companies had been amalgamated, sought and found new ways of employing their capital. Fifteen years after the great diamond finds came the still greater gold finds at the Witwatersrand. The working of these mines has now become the greatest industry in the country, and Johannesburg is the centre toward which the import trade converges.

I need not repeat the description given in a previous chapter (Chapter XVIII) of the Rand mining district. The reader will remember that it differs from all the other gold-fields of South Africa in one essential feature—that of the comparative certainty of its yield. Accordingly, in considering the future of South African gold, I will speak first of those other gold-fields and then separately of the Rand district.

Gold has been found in many places south of the Zambesi. It occurs here and there in small quantities in Cape Colony, in somewhat larger quantities in Natal, Zululand, and Swaziland, in the eastern and north-eastern districts of the Transvaal, at Tati in northern Bechuanaland, and in many spots through Matabililand and Mashonaland. In all (or nearly all) these places it occurs in quartz reefs resembling those of North America and Australia. Some reefs, especially those of the northern region between the Limpopo and Zambesi, are promising, and great quantities of gold have in times long past been taken out of this region. As already explained (Chapter XVII), it seems probable, though not certain, that in many districts a mining industry will be developed which will give employment to thousands, perhaps many thousands, of natives, and to hundreds, perhaps many hundreds, of white engineers and foremen. Should this happen, markets will be created in these districts, land will be cultivated, railways will be made, and the local trades which a thriving population requires will spring up. But the life of these gold reefs will not be a long one. As the gold is found in quartz rock, and only to a small extent in gravel or other alluvial deposits, the mining requires capital, and will be carried on by companies. It will be carried on quickly, and so quickly with the aid of the enormously improved scientific appliances we now possess, as to exhaust at no distant period the mineral which the rocks contain. I saw in Transylvania in 1866 a gold mine which was worked in the days of the Romans, and was being worked still. But mining now is as different from the mining of the ancients or of the middle ages as a locomotive engine is from an ox-waggon, such are the resources which chemical and mechanical science place at our disposal. Accordingly, the payable parts of the quartz reefs will have been drained of their gold in a few years, or, at any rate, in a few decades, just as many of the silver lodes of Nevada have already been worked out and abandoned. There will then be no further cause for the existence of the mine-workers at those points, and the population will decline just as that of Nevada has declined. These South African districts will, however, be in one point far better off than Nevada: they possess land fit everywhere for ranching, and in many places for tillage also. Ranching will, therefore, support a certain, though not large, permanent population; while tillage, though the profitable market close by will have been largely reduced by the departure of the miners, will probably continue, because the land will have been furnished with farmhouses and fences, perhaps in places with irrigation works, and because the railways that will have been constructed will enable agricultural products to reach more distant markets, which by that time may possibly be less glutted with the cereals of North and South America. Accordingly, assuming that a fair proportion of the quartz reef gold-fields turn out well, it may be predicted that population will increase in and round them during the next ten years, and that for some twenty years more this population will maintain itself, though of course not necessarily in the same spots, because, as the reefs first developed become exhausted, the miners will shift to new places. After these thirty or possibly forty years, that is to say, before the middle of next century, the country, having parted with whatever gold it contains, will have to fall back on its pasture and its arable land; but having become settled and developed, it may count on retaining a reasonable measure of prosperity.

This forecast may seem to be of a highly conjectural nature. Conjectural it must be, if only for this reason: that the value of most of the quartz reefs referred to is still quite uncertain. But one cannot visit a new country without attempting to make a forecast of some kind; and the experience of other countries goes to show that, while deposits of the precious metals are, under our present conditions, no more an abiding source of wealth than is a guano island, they may immensely accelerate the development of a country, giving it a start in the world, and providing it with advantages, such as railway communication, which could not otherwise be looked for. This they are now doing for Matabililand and Mashonaland, countries in which it would not at present be worth while to construct railroads but for the hopes attaching to the mines. This they may do for Zululand and Swaziland also, should the reefs in those districts prove profitable.

So much for the quartz reefs. As has been observed, the gold mines of the Witwatersrand differ in the much greater certainty of their yield and in the much greater quantity of auriferous rock which they have been ascertained to contain. It is probable that gold of the value of £700,000,000 remains to be extracted from them. Already a population of at least 150,000 white men has collected in what was in 1885 a barren wilderness; already about £15,000,000 of gold per annum is being extracted. It is practically certain that this production and population will go on increasing during the next few years, and that the mines will not be worked out before the middle of next century at earliest. For the next fifty years, therefore, the Rand district will be the economic and industrial centre of South Africa and the seat of the largest European community. What will it be after those fifty or perhaps sixty years, when the banket beds have been drained of their gold to a depth of 5,000 feet, the greatest at which mining seems to be practicable? It is possible that the other industries which are rising as ancillary to mining may for a while and to a reduced extent hold their ground. Probably, however, they will wither up and vanish. The land will remain, but the land of this highest part of the Transvaal, though fit for pasture, does not lend itself to tillage. The probabilities, therefore, are that the fate of Nevada will in time descend upon the Witwatersrand—that the houses that are now springing up will be suffered to fall to ruin, that the mouths of the shafts will in time be covered by thorny shrublets, and that soon after A.D. 2000 has been reached this busy hive of industry and noisy market-place of speculation will have again become the stony solitude which it was in 1880. For all practical purposes, however, an event a hundred years away is too distant to be worth regarding. The world will in A.D. 2000 be so different from what it is now that the exhaustion of the Rand gold-field may have a different bearing from any which we can now foresee. Johannesburgers themselves are not disquieted by thoughts of a future that is even half a century distant. The older sort will not live to see it, and the younger sort expect to have made their fortunes long before it arrives. Still it must be remembered that, so far as minerals go, South Africa is now living, not on her income, but on her capital, and that in twenty-five years half or more of the capital may be gone.

There are other metals in the country besides the precious ones. The presence of extensive coal-beds in the Transvaal and Natal has been a circumstance of the first importance for the profitable working of the Rand gold-beds, and may encourage the growth of some kinds of manufacture.[89] Iron is abundant both in the Transvaal and in Mashonaland, and has been found in many other districts, often in the neighbourhood of coal. It is not worked now, because all iron goods can be obtained more cheaply from Europe; but it may one day grow into an industry, as copper-mining already has in Little Namaqualand on the west coast.

The mention of coal and iron brings us to another branch of the subject—the possibility of establishing manufactures which may become a source of wealth and the support of an industrial population. At present the manufactures are insignificant. All the textile goods, for instance, nearly all the metal goods, and by far the larger part even of the beer and spirits (intended for the whites) and mineral waters consumed in the country come from Europe. The Boers in the two Republics and the Boer element at the Cape have neither taste nor talent for this kind of industry, and such capital as exists is naturally attracted to mining enterprises. Nevertheless, it may be thought that as capital accumulates things will change, and that the English part of the population in the two British Colonies will take to manufactures, as it has done in Australia. Let us see whether this is probable.

To enable South African manufacturers to compete on a large scale with the established manufacturing countries, such as those in north-western Europe or north-eastern America, three things are needed—a large market, cheap sources of mechanical power, cheap and efficient labour. Of these the first is at present wanting, and even should the growth of the Rand mining district raise the white population of the two Colonies and two Republics from something over 700,000 to 1,200,000, that number of consumers will still be too small to encourage the expenditure of any large capital in endeavouring to produce articles which the immense manufacturing establishments of Europe, working for populous markets, can turn out more cheaply. As to mechanical forces, there are no rivers to give water-power; and though Natal, Zululand, and the Transvaal provide coal, the quality of the mineral is inferior to that obtainable in South Wales or Belgium or Pennsylvania. But the most important conditions for success are those connected with labour. In South Africa skilled labour is dear because scarce, and unskilled labour is dear because bad. As was explained in a preceding chapter, all rough, hard work is done by natives; not that white men could not, in the more temperate regions, perfectly well do it, but because white men think it beneath them and only fit for blacks. Now black labour is seldom effective labour. The mixed race called "Cape boys" are good drivers, and quite fit for many kinds of railway work. They are employed in the building trades and in sawmills, and to some extent in such trades as bootmaking. The Kafirs of the eastern province and of Natal are more raw than the "Cape boys." They make good platelayers on railways, and having plenty of physical strength, will do any sort of rough work they are set to. But they have no aptitude for trades requiring skill, and it will take a generation or two to fit them for the finer kinds of carpentry or metal-work, or for the handling of delicate machinery. Besides, they are often changeable and unstable, apt to forsake their employment for some trifling cause. Their wages are certainly not high, ranging from ten to twenty shillings a month, besides food, for any kind of rough outdoor work. Miners are paid higher, and a Malay mason will get from thirty to forty shillings a week; but a white labourer at twice the price would, for most kinds of work, be cheaper. Nor is it easy to get the amount of native labour that may be needed, for the Kafir prefers to till his own patch of ground or turn out his cattle on the veldt. The scale for white workmen is, of course, far higher, ranging from £2 10s. to £8 a week, according to the nature of the work and the competence of the artisan. Such wages are nearly double those paid in England, treble those paid in some manufacturing districts of Germany or Belgium, higher even than those paid in the United States. It is therefore evident that, what with the badness of the cheaper labour and the dearness of the better, a manufacturer would, in South Africa, be severely handicapped in competing with either Europe or the United States. Protectionists may think that a high tariff on foreign manufactured goods would foster industrial undertakings in these Colonies. Such a tariff would, however, need to be fixed very high to give the local factory a chance—so high, indeed, that it would excite serious opposition from the consumer. And, in point of fact, there has been hitherto no cry for a tariff to protect home manufactures, because so few people are at present interested in having it. Such protection as exists is directed to food-stuffs, in order to please the agricultural classes, and induce a wider cultivation of the soil; and the tariff on other goods is almost solely for revenue.

The conditions I have described may, and probably will, change as the industrial training of the natives improves and their aversion to labour declines under the pressure of increasing numbers and a reduction of the quantity of land available for them. But a review of the present state of things points to the conclusion that no great development of manufactures, and of a white population occupied in manufactures, is to be expected, at least for some time to come.

Three other observations must at this stage be made. Till very recently, South Africans had what the Psalmist desired—neither poverty nor riches. There were hardly any white paupers, because the substratum of population was black; and as few black paupers, because a Kafir needs nothing but food. On the other hand, there were no rich whites. The farmers, both agriculturists and ranchmen, lived in a sort of rude plenty, with no luxuries and very little money. Everybody was tolerably well off, nobody was wealthy. There were large stock-farms, as in Australia, but the owners of these farms did not make the immense gains which many Australian squatters and some American cattle-men have made. Accordingly, when capital was needed for the development of the mines it was obtained from home. A few successful residents did, no doubt, make out of the diamond fields large sums, which they presently applied to the development of the gold-fields. But by far the greater part of the money spent in opening up mines, both on the Witwatersrand and elsewhere, has come from Europe, chiefly from England, but to a considerable extent also from France, Germany and Holland. Accordingly nineteen twentieths at least of the profits made by the miners are paid to shareholders in those countries, and not expended in South Africa. Even among those who have made fortunes out of diamonds or gold by their personal enterprise on the spot, the majority return to Europe and spend their incomes there. The country, therefore, does not get the full benefit, in the way either of payments for labour (except, of course, labour at the mines) or of increased consumption of articles, out of its mineral products, but is rather in the position of Mexico or Peru in the seventeenth century, when the bulk of the precious metals won from the mines went to Spain as a sort of tribute. There are at this moment probably not more than a dozen rich men, as Europe counts riches, resident in the country, and all of these are to be found either at Johannesburg or at Cape Town. Most of them will after a time betake themselves to Europe. Nor is there any sign that the number of local fortunes will increase; for the motives which draw men away from Johannesburg to Europe are likely to continue as strong in the future as they are at present.

Secondly, as the whites are not—except at Johannesburg, where the lavishness of a mining population is conspicuous—large consumers of luxuries, so the blacks are poor consumers of all save the barest necessaries of life. It is not merely that they have no money. It is that they have no wants, save of food and of a few common articles of clothing. The taste for the articles which civilized man requires is growing, as the traders in Bechuanaland have already begun to find, but it grows slowly, and is still in a rudimentary stage. The demand which South Africa is likely to offer either for home-made or for imported products must, therefore, be measured, not by the gross population, but by the white population, and, indeed, by the town-dwelling whites; for the Dutch farmer or ranchman, whether in the British Colonies or in the Dutch Republics, has very little cash in his pocket, and lives in a primitive way. It is only the development of the mines that makes South Africa a growing market for European goods.

Thirdly, there is not much European immigration, except of artizans; and these go chiefly to the gold mines of the Rand. Few agriculturists come out, because farms have seldom been offered by any of the Governments on the same easy terms as those which prevail in Canada or New Zealand, and because the climate and the existence of a black population deter the agricultural classes of northern Europe. Although the Government of Cape Colony has little or no land obviously fit for tillage to dispose of, because all the untilled area not absolutely barren has been appropriated for stock-farms, still there are districts on the south coasts of Cape Colony, as well as in Natal and in the healthy uplands of Mashonaland, which Englishmen or Germans might cultivate with the assistance (in the hotter parts) of a little native labour, and which Italians or Portuguese might cultivate by their own labour, without native help. The Germans who were brought out in 1856 throve in body and estate on the farms which they tilled with their own hands near Grahamstown. Nevertheless, few agricultural immigrants enter, partly, no doubt, because so much of the land is held by a comparatively small number of persons, and reserved by them (as just observed) for pastoral purposes only. Neither do men go from Europe to start ranching, for the pastoral lands are taken up, except in those wilder regions where no one could thrive without some previous experience of the country. The settling of the newer parts of the country, such as those between the Zambesi and the tropic of Capricorn, is chiefly carried on by the Boers of the Transvaal, and, to a less extent, of the British Colonies; for the Boers retain their passion for trekking out into the wilderness, while the English, with few exceptions, like to keep within reach of one another and of civilisation. Accordingly, the country receives comparatively few recruits from rural Europe, and its agricultural population grows only by natural increase. There are probably more natives of India to-day tilling the soil in Natal alone than the whole number of agriculturists who have come from Europe in the last thirty years. Legislation which should attract such agriculturists by the offer of tillage farms of moderate size would be a great benefit to the Colonies.

We may now endeavour to sum up the facts of the case, and state the conclusions to which they point.

South Africa is already, and will be to an increasing extent, a country of great mineral wealth. It is only in the diamond-fields, especially those of Kimberley, and in the gold-fields of the Witwatersrand, that this wealth has yet been proved to exist, so far as regards precious stones and precious metals, but it may exist also in many other districts. It is not confined to precious stones and metals, and when these have been exhausted, copper, iron, and coal may continue to furnish good returns to mine-owners and plenty of employment to work-people. The duration of the gold-fields generally is uncertain, but those of the Witwatersrand will last for at least half a century, and will maintain for all that period an industrial population and a market for commodities which, though small when measured by the standard of the northern hemisphere, will be quite unique in Africa south of the equator.

South Africa is, and will continue to be, a great grazing country; for nearly all of its vast area is fit for live stock, though in large regions the proportion of stock to the acre must remain small, owing to the scarcity of feed. It will therefore continue to export wool, goats' hair, and hides in large quantities, and may also export meat, and possibly dairy products.

South Africa has been, is, and will probably continue to be for a good while to come, a country in which only a very small part of the land is tilled, and from which little agricultural produce, except fruit, sugar, and perhaps tobacco, will be exported. Only two things seem likely to increase its agricultural productiveness. One of these is the discovery of some preservative against malarial fever which might enable the lowlands of the east coast, from Durban northward, to be cultivated much more largely than they are now. The other is the introduction of irrigation on a large scale, an undertaking which at present would be profitable in a few places only. Whether in future it will be worth while to irrigate largely, and whether, if this be done, it will be done by companies buying and working large farms or by companies distributing water to small farmers, as the Government distributes water in Egypt and some parts of India, are questions which may turn out to have an important bearing on the development of the country, but which need not be discussed now.

South Africa has not been, and shows no sign of becoming, a manufacturing country. Water power is absent. Coal is not of the best quality. Labour is neither cheap nor good. Even the imposition of a pretty high protective tariff would not be likely to stimulate the establishment of iron-works or foundries on a large scale, nor of factories of textile goods, for the local market is too small to make competition with Europe a profitable enterprise. In these respects, as in many others, the conditions, physical and economic, differ so much from those of the British North American or Australian Colonies that the course of industrial development is likely to be quite different from what it has been there.

From these conclusions another of great importance follows. The white population will remain scanty in proportion to the area of the country. At present, it is, in the two British Colonies and the two Dutch Republics, only about one and a half persons to the square mile, while over the other territories it is incomparably smaller.

The country will probably remain, so long as present agricultural conditions continue, a wilderness, with a few oases of population scattered at long distances from one another. The white inhabitants will, moreover, continue to be very unequally distributed. At present, of a total population in the last-mentioned four States of about 730,000, more than one-fourth lives in the mining district of the Rand; one-sixth is found in the five principal seaports on the southern and south-eastern coast; the remaining seven-twelfths are thinly dispersed over the rest of the country in solitary farms or villages, or in a very few small towns, the largest of which, Kimberley, has only 10,000 inhabitants. The only towns that are growing are those five seaports, and Johannesburg with its tributary mining villages. Assuming the present growth of the Rand to continue, it may have in ten years about 500,000 whites, which will be not much less than a half of the then white population of the whole country. Stimulated by the trade which the Rand will supply, the five seaports will probably also grow; while elsewhere population may remain almost stationary. Unless the gold reefs of the country beyond the Limpopo turn out well and create in that region miniature copies of the Rand district, there seems no reason to expect the total number of whites to reach 1,200,000 in less than twenty years. After that time growth will depend upon the future of agriculture, and the future of agriculture depends on so many causes independent of South Africa that it would be unsafe to make any predictions regarding it. I know some South Africans, able men, who think that the day will come when the blacks will begin to retire northward, and a large white population will till their own farms by their own labour, with the aid of irrigation. Of the advent of such a day there are no present signs, yet stranger changes have happened in our time than this change would be. Other South Africans believe that minerals not less valuable than those which the last twenty years have revealed are likely to be discovered in other places. This also may happen,—South Africa, it has been said, is a land of surprises,—and if it does happen there may be another inrush like that which has filled the Rand. All that one can venture to do now is to point out the probable result of the conditions which exist at this moment; and these, though they point to a continued increase of mineral production, do not point to any large or rapid increase of white inhabitants.

Twenty years hence the white population is likely to be composed in about equal proportions of urban and rural elements. The urban element will be mainly mining, gathered at one great centre on the Witwatersrand, and possibly at some smaller centres in other districts. The rural element, consisting of people who live in villages or solitary farmhouses, will remain comparatively backward, because little affected by the social forces which work swiftly and potently upon close-packed industrial communities, and it may find itself very different in tone, temper, and tendencies from its urban fellow-citizens. The contrast now so marked between the shopkeeper of Cape Town and the miner of Johannesburg on the one hand, and the farmer of the Karroo or the Northern Transvaal on the other, may be then hardly less marked between the two sections of the white population. But these sections will have one thing in common. Both will belong to an upper stratum of society; both will have beneath them a mass of labouring blacks, and they will therefore form an industrial aristocracy resting on Kafir labour.