The chief industry of the colony is wool raising. It has been estimated that there are fifteen million sheep throughout the colony. Many of them are of the Merino breed. These are rapidly displacing the big-tailed sheep raised by the early Dutch settlers. The Angora goat is kept quite extensively for the sake of its long silky hair. Cattle of the finest description are found in every part of the country, the better varieties having displaced those owned by the natives and early settlers.
Among the commonest sights at the colony are the long lines of wagons, which lumber slowly over the roads. These are drawn by six, eight, or even ten yokes of oxen, which subsist upon such scanty herbage as they can find along the road. Coaches are common, and the many railways now form a network across the colony. The latter, valuable as they are for the utility of the country, can never rival the picturesqueness of the typical Cape wagon, which, doubtless, for many years will continue to be the most characteristic mode of South African travel.
The history of Cape Colony is one of many vicissitudes. The various Kaffir wars, nine in all, together with the five seasons of warfare with the Basuto tribes, were enough to paralyze and cripple the energies of any government. The peculiar characteristics of the Dutch settlers were not always pleasing to Great Britain, and she had occasion many times to exercise her power in sections to which she could lay any possible claim. Now, however, that the management of their own affairs has passed into the hands of the Dutch settlers, Cape Colony has made great progress towards good government and prosperity.
The chief industries still continue to be pastoral and agricultural. In the vicinity of the Great Karroo grazing plains, agriculture can be carried on only where there is running water. Consequently, much labor has been expended in making reservoirs, the waters of which irrigate the gardens and orchards. The sinking of artesian wells has recently been attempted, and has proved a successful experiment.
In the districts which adjoin the eastern border, and on the first and second terraces from the southern coast, where the rainfall is sufficient for all purposes of agriculture and cattle raising, both pursuits are followed. While wheat and maize form the principal crops, oats are raised extensively for horses, and almost every variety of vegetable and fruit is grown in abundance.
In this portion of the colony, namely the southwestern corner, which was founded as early as the seventeenth century, the vine, as well as wheat, is largely cultivated.
In the middle of the present century, rich copper mines were opened in that portion called Namaqualand. This part of the colony had long been regarded as the least valuable of any of the provinces.
To quote from Theal's South Africa, in the The Story of the Nations series: "It is impossible to give the value of the purely colonial products, but the quantity from the whole of South Africa exported in the year that ended on the 30th of June, 1893, was valued at a little over thirteen and a half million pounds sterling, of which twelve and a quarter million passed through the ports of Cape Colony, and one million and a quarter through Durban, Natal."
This same writer tells us: "Of the items that made up this amount gold was first, being valued at four millions and a half, and diamonds came next, being valued at nearly four millions. The copper ore exported was worth over a quarter of a million, and the coal over fifty thousand pounds.
"These figures, representing nearly two-thirds of the total exports, show the importance of the mining industry of South Africa, and it must be remembered that this industry is only in its infancy."