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 sh.o.r.e 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 Nya.s.sa. The anchorage in the estuary behind the sand-spit is s.p.a.cious and sheltered, and the outrush of the tide from the large estuary keeps down, by its constant scour, acc.u.mulations 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 a.s.sert, 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 (_Hyperic.u.m 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 sh.o.r.e 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 Nya.s.saland, 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 const.i.tutions 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. .h.i.therto 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 quant.i.ty 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sure 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 2 a month; and the want of labour is a.s.signed 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 inst.i.tutions. To concede these inst.i.tutions 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 Bechua.n.a.land 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 ent.i.tled 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 (-- 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 const.i.tution 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 a.s.suming, as most men, perhaps too hastily, do a.s.sume, 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 192,679 for the preceding ten months. The average wages paid to natives were 2 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 r.e.t.a.r.ded 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 Wit.w.a.tersrand 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 quant.i.ties. 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 pa.s.sengers. 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 munic.i.p.ality 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, munic.i.p.al 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 ma.s.s of gardens, where sub-tropical and even some tropical fruits are grown in great quant.i.ties, 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 a.s.sembly 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 Bechua.n.a.land, 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 compet.i.tor 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.