All white people within its borders are under the guidance of magistrates appointed by the high commissioner. The native tribes, in their relations to each other, are all under the control of the same government; yet the rule of each chief over his tribe is seldom, if ever, subject to interference.
A large portion of this territory is without surface water. The country is thinly inhabited by Bushmen and wandering Bechuana. These were formerly held in slavery by various clans in the neighborhood of the Springs. Although the circumstances of these people have improved much of late years, yet their lives are still characterized by want and misery, for they are largely dependent upon the caprices of their masters.
Order is Heaven's first law, and it is a recognized factor within this territory, for it is enforced by a strong body of mounted police selected from among the Europeans.
The British Chartered Company's Territory is another division of South Africa. It is situated beyond the protectorate, and is a vast territory containing fully half a million square miles. This territory was opened by the British South African Company under a royal charter granted in 1889.
The country has often been called Rhodesia, from the originator of the company, and who is still its chief manager.
The native chiefs of this section have given the company proprietary rights to immense tracts of fertile land and to extensive areas of gold-bearing quartz reefs. In some places there are shafts and tunnels to indicate that at some unknown period in the past the mines were worked, and ruins of buildings far superior to the skill of the Bantu give evidence that the land was not always occupied exclusively by Europeans.
The country does not lack modern ways and means of communication with the adjoining ones; for there is a telegraphic connection and a postal service between all the forts and Cape Colony, and a railway is fast being constructed inland from Port Beira. This will give easy access to the northeastern portion, while the northwestern portion can be reached without much difficulty from the terminus of the Cape Town Mafeking line.
Such is the march of progress that many appliances of modern times, as printing presses, etc., can be found to-day in a region which a few years ago was known only to a few explorers and hunters.
The German Protectorate, as its name indicates, is under the protection of the German government. The territory, which, since 1884, has been thus protected, occupies the southwest coast of Africa and extends from Cape Frio on the north to the Orange River on the south; from the Atlantic Ocean on the west to an irregular line running from the head waters of the Zambesi to the twentieth meridian from Greenwich on the east.
From this vast territory we must exclude the only port on the coast, Walfish Bay, which with a little tract of land around it belongs to Cape Colony.