Читать книгу Thoughts on South Africa онлайн

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The Free State is a small independent Republic, once under English rule, but rashly given up by England in 1854 as not worth keeping; it is inhabited by Boers and English, the Boers living mainly on the farms, the English in the towns. The labouring classes here, as elsewhere, are black.

British Bechuanaland, which comprises the larger part of this grass-plain region, is a tract as large as several European countries combined, inhabited mainly and sparsely by native tribes subject to England, by a few European settlers, and the inhabitants of a few embryo villages. Its soil is rich, and, like that of the rest of the grass plains, if vast dams were built, it might become a great grain-producing country. Its climate is perfect, rivalling that of the Karoo.

Griqualand West, one of the most interesting and varied divisions of the grass plains, is part of the Cape Colony. In it are situated the great Kimberley diamond-mines, the richest in the world. Within the space of a few miles lie those marvellous beds of once boiling but now petrified mud, which have for twenty years modified, and are still modifying, the history of South Africa.