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peculiar circumstance, and puzzles one at first sight, that although the export of sugar from Natal represents a value varying from a quarter, to half a million sterling annually, yet, sugar is not much, if it be any, cheaper in Natal than it is in England. This fact, however, is owing to the more scattered disposition of the population, and the consequent exhaustion of time and labour in distributing the sugar in small quantities to the various centres of consumption. The centralisation of the main portion of the people of this country in large towns and cities facilitates distribution in a far more bulky form, and the expense to the individual is consequently lightened.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE BOWELS OF SOUTH AFRICA.

THE GOLD MINES.

"IN CERTAIN FATHOMS IN THE EARTH."

"Whose mountains, pregnant by the beam

Of the warm sun, with diamonds teem,

Whose rivulets are like rich brides,

Lovely with gold beneath their tides."

-Paradise and the Peri,-Thos. Moore.

"A mask of gold hides all deformities."-Thos. Dekker.

THE Mineral wealth of Africa is simply incalculable and it is upon that inheritance, after all, that she must hope to shape her future. As a general rule, it may be safely asserted that the nearer one travels towards the central portions of Africa, the richer the country becomes in mineral producing districts. In short, Africa bids fair to realise, and that too at no distant date, the most extravagant dreams of the most ardent searcher after an El Dorado in modern days. There is scarcely a mineral which is not to be found in enormous profusion scattered all over that vast continent with no niggard hand. If Africa were peopled with a dense European population like unto England, and if all the appliances of modern civilisation were in full force there-railways, canals, and the like, it is impossible to over-estimate the grand sustaining capabilities which the concurrent, and in this case inevitable development of her mineralogical deposits would repre

sent.

Sir Bartle Frere recently spoke in the following terms upon South Africa, in the above connection. "There was also enormous

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mineral wealth. They had all heard of the diamond fields, and they would soon hear of the gold fields, the richness of which he was assured was such as was seldom to be found in the great goldproducing countries in the world. And, above all, there were immense stores of coal there. They, as Yorkshiremen, need not be told that with wool on the surface, and coal beneath, there were there present some of the conditions which had made Yorkshire such a prosperous county. He believed that in a very short time many of these resources would be developed, and it was to him the subject of the greatest interest to think, all this prosperity and inevitable influx of Europeans, was to be reconciled with the welfare, progress, civilisation, and the Christianity of the native races." These are brave words of Sir Bartle's, and they are by no means high-flown, exaggerated, or over-coloured. In a little work like this I shall not attempt to say much about the gold and diamond mines of South Africa, much less. for reasons which I have already given, shall I attempt to write a geological disquisition. If I did so, I should be going entirely wide of the purpose which I proposed to myself. I aspire simply to present to my English readers an idea of life in South Africa, and to give them an insight into the social and political peculiarities and characteristics of the colonies, an aspect of South African affairs which has been very much neglected by writers on these colonies, and, in short, one which has hitherto received no adequate attention whatsoever.

Much has been heard recently about the De Kaap gold mines in the Transvaal, and although these particular mines would. appear for the present to have proved unproductive, every mail brings pamphlets and newspaper articles in abundance on the subject of the undeveloped gold resources of the republic over the Vaal river. The absence of transport facilities and of roads, no less than the lack of necessary capital and machinery, added to the fact that so much of the land is in the hands of the Boers, stand in the way of their present and of their proximate development. Maybe these difficulties cannot be readily overcome, but of their ultimate removal there cannot be a doubt. The great distance from harbours, in short, from the coast, and the high price of

provisions have hitherto militated against the success of all mining operations in the Cape. When I first went to Africa an era of prosperity seemed to be opening up for the Lydenburg gold diggings. There were 1,000 diggers there and many were doing well. Then followed the war with Secocoeni, and the successive defeats of the Boers by that chief. These reverses frightened the diggers, who returned to the Cape Colony, Natal, and Griqualand as best they could. The thousand miners, soon dwindled down to 300, and so on until the place was practically deserted. The fields have never recovered their full prosperity since those anxious days, although they are looking up again now. The subsequent defeat of Secocoeni by Sir Garnet Wolseley, and the annexation of the Transvaal, induced some diggers to return, but since the retrocession the mines have become practically a monopoly in the hands of a person nominated by the Triumvirate.

I shall never forget those troublous days when the East African steamboats from Zanzibar brought down her freights of returning diggers. They had many tales of misery and privation to tell. From one of the proprietors of the Gold Fields Mercury I gleaned the narrative of the hairbreadth 'scapes and adventures with which a seven days' journey on foot from Pilgrim's Rest to Lorenço Marques (Delagoa Bay) bristled. The editor of the Mercury remained at his post until the last, pouring out week by week the most perfervid denunciations of Boer misrule, crying, until his cry became almost a hysterical wail, for annexation. I shall have something to say about this Transvaal business later on. As to the Gold Fields district it is a lovely country, broken and mountainous, and the hills are intercepted by many waterfalls and streamlets. The gold is largely found between enormous boulders, but much danger and labour attend the removal of these large stones. Thus heavy work is carried out without yielding an adequate return. Many pioneer diggers lost their lives by insanely endeavouring to traverse the intervening country between the coast at Delagoa Bay and Lydenburg during the fever season. Of those who thus acted, at least 70 per cent. perished in the rash attempt, in that howling wilderness. Of the survivors, for few indeed were unstriken by fever, the majority were mere wrecks of

THE CHARIOT WHEELS IN THE BOER RUT AGAIN. 139

their former selves. One does not need to have been long in South Africa to hear many harrowing tales of the miserable experiences of men who were attached to those parties. In more recent days, however, passenger conveyances ran from the Diamond Fields, so that none but the very rash and foolhardy had in settled times any reason to incur these dangers.

On board one of the coasting steamers I dropped upon Mr. Macdonald, the Transvaal government gold commissioner. He was an American, and had had a very extensive experience of Californian, and moreover, of Australian gold mines. He pronounced loudly and emphatically in favour of the gold prospects of the Transvaal. Many Australians likewise, who have visited and worked at the diggings, entertain and express opinions favourable to the future of the mines. On the whole I am strongly of the opinion that the gold fields of the Transvaal only want a fair start to put them in the position of becoming the stepping-stones to the prosperity of the country. The Dutch know only too well, however, that a general inrush of Englishmen and Cape and Natal colonists, to their fields, would mean good-bye to their isolation, to their pig-headed ideas of no government and no taxes, and to the power to enslave the natives, and to inflict abominable cruelties upon them. They will therefore do their utmost to retard the progress of all gold fields within their boundaries. The English have an awkward knack of building large towns from which they conveniently spread themselves all over a new country. Large and successful gold fields would constitute a nucleus around which all kinds of commercial and political institutions would spring into life. The Boers know full well that in this case they would have to submit to being quietly pushed on one side, with their old world ideas and habits, or they would be forced to take time by the forelock and walk out of the country. This will probably, nay assuredly, be the end of the matter, but not yet.

Gold-mining, take it all round, is a more popular industry than diamond digging. There are many disappointments which. attend the latter. Stones, which appear on discovery to be the finest and whitest of gems, are apt to drop into fragments and