South Africa; vol I.

by Anthony Trollope

I reached Durban, the only seaport in the Colony of Natal, about the end of August,—that is, at the beginning of spring in that part of the world. It was just too warm to walk about pleasantly in the middle of the day and cool enough at night for a blanket. Durban has a reputation for heat, and I had heard so much of musquitoes on the coast that I feared them even at this time of the year. I did kill one in my bedroom at the club, but no more came to me. In winter, or at the season at which I visited the place, Durban is a pleasant town, clean, attractive and with beautiful scenery near it;—but about midsummer, and indeed for the three months of December, January and February, it can be very hot, and, to the ordinary Englishman, unaccustomed to the tropics, very unpleasant on that account.

I was taken over the bar on entering the harbour very graciously in the mail tug which as a rule passengers are not allowed to enter, and was safely landed at the quay about two miles from the town. I mention my safety as a peculiar incident because the bar at Durban has a very bad character indeed. South African harbours are not good and among those which are bad Durban is one of the worst. They are crossed by shifting bars of sand which prevent the entrance of vessels. At a public dinner in the Colony I heard The Bar given as a toast. The Attorney General arose to return thanks, but another gentleman was on his legs in a moment protesting against drinking the health of the one great obstacle to commercial and social success by which the Colony was oppressed. The Attorney General was a popular man, and the lawyers were popular; but in a moment they were obliterated by the general indignation of the guests at the evil done to their beautiful land by this ill-natured freak of Nature. A vast sum of money has been spent at Durban in making a breakwater, all of which has,—so say the people of Durban and Maritzburg,—been thrown away. Now Sir John Coode has been out to visit the bar, and all the Colony was waiting for his report when I was there. Sir John is the great emendator of South African harbours,—full trust being put in his capability to stop the encroachments of sand, and to scour away such deposits when in spite of his precautions they have asserted themselves. At the period of my visit nothing was being done, but Natal was waiting, graciously if not patiently, for Sir John’s report. Very much depends on it. Up in the very interior of Africa, in the Orange Free State and at the Diamond Fields it is constantly asserted that goods can only be had through the Cape Colony because of the bar across the mouth of the river at Durban;—and in the Transvaal the bar is given as one of the chief reasons for making a railway down to Delagoa Bay instead of connecting the now two British Colonies together. I heard constantly that so many, or such a number of vessels, were lying out in the roads and that goods could not be landed because of the bar! The legal profession is peculiarly well represented in the Colony; but I am inclined to agree with the gentleman who thought that “The Bar” in Natal was the bar across the mouth of the river.

I was carried over it in safety and was driven up to the club. There is a railway from the port to the town, but its hours of running did not exactly suit the mails, to which I was permitted to attach myself. This railway is the beginning of a system which will soon be extended to Pieter Maritzburg, the capital, which is already opened some few miles northward into the sugar district, and which is being made along the coast through the sugar growing country of Victoria to its chief town, Verulam. There is extant an ambitious scheme for carrying on the line from Pieter Maritzburg to Ladismith, a town on the direct route to the Transvaal, and from thence across the mountains to Harrismith in the Orange Free State, with an extension from Ladismith to the coal district of Newcastle in the extreme north of the Colony. But the money for these larger purposes has not yet been raised, and I may perhaps be justified in saying that I doubt their speedy accomplishment. The lines to the capital and to Verulam will no doubt be open in a year or two. I should perhaps explain that Ladismith and Harrismith are peculiar names given to towns in honour of Sir Harry Smith, who was at one time a popular Governor in the Cape Colony. There is a project also for extending the Verulam line to the extreme northern boundary of the Colony so as to serve the whole sugar producing district. This probably will be effected at no very distant time as sugar will become the staple produce of the coast, if not of the entire Colony. There is a belt of land lying between the hills and the sea which is peculiarly fertile and admirably adapted for the growth of sugar, on which very large sums of money have been already expended. It is often sad to look back upon the beginnings of commercial enterprises which ultimately lead to the fortunes not perhaps of individuals but of countries. Along this rich strip of coast-land large sums of money have been wasted, no doubt to the ruin of persons of whom, as they are ruined, the world will hear nothing. But their enterprise has led to the success of others of whom the world will hear. Coffee was grown here, and capital was expended on growing it upon a large scale. But Natal as a coffee-growing country has failed. As far as I could learn the seasons have not been sufficiently sure and settled for the growth of coffee. And now, already, in the new Colony, on which white men had hardly trodden half a century ago, there are wastes of deserted coffee bushes,—as there came to be in Jamaica after the emancipation of the slaves,—telling piteous tales of lost money and of broken hopes. The idea of growing coffee in Natal seems now to be almost abandoned.

But new ground is being devoted to the sugar cane every day, and new machinery is being continually brought into the Colony. The cultivation was first introduced into Natal by Mr. Morewood in 1849, and has progressed since with various vicissitudes. The sugar has progressed; but, as is the nature of such enterprises, the vicissitudes have been the lot of the sugar growers. There has been much success, and there has also been much failure. Men have gone beyond their capital, and the banks with their high rates of interest have too often swallowed up the profits. But the result to the Colony has been success. The plantations are there, increasing every day, and are occupied if not by owners then by managers. Labourers are employed, and public Revenue is raised. A commerce with life in it has been established so that no one travelling through the sugar districts can doubt but that money is being made, into whatever pocket the money may go.

Various accounts of the produce were given to me. I was assured by one or two sugar growers that four ton to the acre was not uncommon,—whereas I knew by old experience in other sugar countries that four ton to the acre per annum would be a very heavy crop indeed. But sugar, unlike almost all other produce, can not be measured by the year’s work. The canes are not cut yearly, at a special period, as wheat is reaped or apples are picked. The first crop in Natal is generally the growth of nearly or perhaps quite two years, and the second crop, being the crop from the first ratoons, is the produce of 15 months. The average yield per annum is, I believe, about 1½ tons per acre of canes,—which is still high.

It used to be the practice for a grower of canes to have as a matter of course a plant for making sugar,—and probably rum. It seemed to be the necessity of the business of cane-growing that the planter should also be a manufacturer,—as though a grower of hemp was bound to make ropes or a grower of wheat to make bread. Thus it came to pass that it required a man with considerable capital to grow canes, and the small farmer was shut out from the occupation. In Cuba and Demerara and Barbados the cane grower is, I think, still almost always a manufacturer. In Queensland I found farmers growing canes which they sold to manufacturers who made the sugar. This plan is now being largely adopted in Natal and central mills are being established by companies who can of course command better machinery than individuals with small capitals. But even in this arrangement there is much difficulty,—the mill owners finding it sometimes impossible to get cane as they want it, and the cane growers being equally hard set to obtain the miller’s services just as their canes are fit for crushing. It becomes necessary that special agreements shall be made beforehand as to periods and quantities, which special agreements it is not always easy to keep. The payment for the service done is generally made in kind, the miller retaining a portion of the sugar produced, half or two thirds, as he or the grower may have performed the very onerous work of carrying the canes from the ground to the mill. The latter operation is another great difficulty in the way of central mills. When the sugar grower had his own machinery in the centre of his own cane fields he was able to take care that a minimum amount of carriage should be required;—but with large central manufactories the growing cane is necessarily thrown back to a distance from the mill and a heavy cost for carriage is added. The amount of cane to make a ton of sugar is so bulky that a distance is easily reached beyond which the plants cannot be carried without a cost which would make any profit impossible.

In spite of all these difficulties,—and they are very great,—the stranger cannot pass through the sugar districts of Natal without becoming conscious of Colonial success. I have heard it argued that sugar was doing no good to Natal because the profits reached England in the shape of dividends on bank shares which were owned and spent in the mother country. I can never admit the correctness of this argument, for it is based on the assumption that in large commercial enterprises the gain, or loss, realized by the capitalist is the one chief point of interest;—that if he makes money all is well, and that if he loses it all is ill. It may be so to him. But the real effect of his operations is to be found in the wages and salaries he pays and the amount of expenditure which his works occasion. I have heard of a firm which carried on a large business without any thought of profit, merely for political purposes. The motive I think was bad;—but not the less beneficial to the population was the money spent in wages. Even though all the profits from sugar grown in Natal were spent in England,—which is by no means the case,—the English shareholders cannot get at their dividends without paying workmen of all classes to earn them,—from the black man who hoes the canes up to the Superintendent who rides about on his horse and acts the part of master.

There is a side to the sugar question in Natal which to me is less satisfactory than the arrangements made in regard to Capital. As I have repeated, and I fear shall repeat too often,—there are 320,000 Natives in Natal; Kafirs and Zulus, strong men as one would wish to see; and yet the work of the estates is done by Coolies from India. I ought not to have been astonished by this for I had known twenty years ago that sugar was grown or at any rate manufactured by Coolie labour in Demerara and Trinidad, and had then been surprised at the apathy of the people of Jamaica in that they had not introduced Coolies into that island. There were stalwart negroes without stint in these sugar colonies,—who had been themselves slaves, or were the children of slaves; but these negroes would only work so fitfully that the planters had been forced to introduce regular labour from a distance. The same thing, and nothing more, had taken place in Natal. But yet I was astonished. It seemed to be so sad that with all their idle strength standing close by, requiring labour for its own salvation,—with so large a population which labour only can civilize, we who have taken upon ourselves to be their masters should send all the way to India for men to do that which it ought to be their privilege to perform. But so it is. There are now over 10,000 Coolies domiciled in Natal, all of whom have been brought there with the primary object of making sugar.

The Coolies are brought into the Colony by the Government under an enactment of the Legislature. They agree to serve for a period of 10 years, after which they are, if they please, taken back. The total cost to the Government is in excess of £20 per man. Among the items of expenditure in 1875 £20,000 was voted for the immigration of Coolies, of which a portion was reimbursed during that year, and further portions from year to year. The Coolie on his arrival is allotted to a planter,—or to any other fitting applicant,—and the employer for 5 years pays £4 per annum to the Government for the man’s services. He also pays the man 12s. a month, and clothes him. He feeds the Coolie also, at an additional average cost of 12s. a month, and with some other small expenses for medical attendance and lodging pays about £20 per annum for the man’s services. As I shall state more at length in the next volume, there are twelve thousand Kafirs at the Diamond Fields earning 10s. a week and their diet;—and as I have already stated there are in British Kafraria many Kafirs earning very much higher wages than that! But in Natal a Zulu, who generally in respect to strength and intelligence is superior to the ordinary Kafir, is found not to be worth £20 a year.

The Coolie after his five years of compulsory service may seek a master where he pleases,—or may live without a master if he has the means. His term of enforced apprenticeship is over and he is supposed to have earned back on behalf of the Colony the money which the Colony spent on bringing him thither. Of course he is worth increased wages, having learned his business, and if he pleases to remain at the work he makes his own bargain. Not unfrequently he sets up for himself as a small farmer or market-gardener, and will pay as much as 30s. an acre rent for land on which he will live comfortably. I passed through a village of Coolies where the men had their wives and children and were living each under his own fig tree. Not unfrequently they hire Kafirs to do for them the heavy work, assuming quite as much mastery over the Kafir as the white man does. Many of them will go into service,—and are greatly prized as domestic servants. They are indeed a most popular portion of the community, and much respected,—whereas the white man does I fear in his heart generally despise and dislike the Native.