How an Enlightened Transvaal should view the Spread of Free Institutions in the North.
To the South African Republic it is vitally important to weigh well in what manner the Bulawayo railway will affect her future. The Republic will soon be surrounded by a rampart of steel on three sides and alien land and ocean on the other. From Beira, north of the Republic, a railway will run west to Salisbury, and thence south to Bulawayo and the Cape. With two ways of ingress from the sea a country like Rhodesia—with as good a climate as the Transvaal State, with resources which tend to rapid prosperity, enjoying impartial and liberal laws, just and pure administration, opening its arms widely to the whole world without regard to race, blessed with ample domains and suited to the needs of all classes—must necessarily prove more attractive to all people in search of homes, than a country which only favours Dutch burghers; and Rhodesia therefore bids fair in a few years to overtake the Republic in population, and even to surpass it. The Boers do not avail themselves of the advantages of their position to that fulness which would make it doubtful whether Rhodesia or the Transvaal offered the most inducements to intending settlers. On the contrary, the common report is that the object of the Boers is to restrict population and reserve the State for Boer progeny. I shall see the country for myself, I hope, and either verify or disprove it. But if true, the attempt to suppress population and growth by restrictions, monopolies, and vexatious ordinances is simple imbecility, as compared to the Chartered Company’s policy of stimulating commerce by giving free rein to enterprise, and keeping the paths and gates to its territory freely open to all comers. If there is an intelligent man in the Transvaal, it must be clear to him that the Republic must soon lose the rank among South African States to which she was entitled by her wonderful resources and undoubted advantages; and the only thing that can save her from degradation, neglect, and financial difficulties, is the absorption of that alien population which crowds her cities and clamours for political rights.
The Cape and German Pushfulness.
Cape Colony, though much is due to it for its support of the Bechuana railway, is not wholly free from the blame of inertness in the past. One cannot look at the map of Africa and miss seeing that extraordinary territory labelled German close to Cape Colony, without being reminded of the obtuseness shown by the Cape democracy. But the Germans are a great nation, rich, commerce-loving, and enterprising, and the Cape people need to be warned, considering that they are largely mixed up with Dutch Boers who are slow to move and sadly behind the times. If the Germans chose to invest 4,000,000 pounds in railways from the mouth of the Swakop to the banks of the Orange, they would be formidable competitors for the trade of Bechuanaland and the north of the colony, and Swakop is three days nearer Europe than Table Bay. The railways in America created cities and filled the wastes with settlers, and every new settler was supposed to be worth 200 pounds to the nation; and in that country they have a mile of railway to every twenty square miles of country.
The Cape has but a mile of railway to every 112 square miles. The railways should spread out like a fan from Cape Town. The existing lines require straightening greatly. It is not good policy that the line to Natal should run through alien States, nor is it conducive to the development of the Colony. Some railways may not show large dividends, but they are indispensable to development and communication: they give value to acres which otherwise would be worthless, and indirectly contribute to revenue in other ways than by dividends. Hence Cape Colony may learn a good deal from this new railway.
Bulawayo reminds Mr Stanley of Winnipeg.
I think I have said enough to illustrate the position in which Bulawayo has been placed by the arrival of the railway. At present its broad avenues and streets give one an idea that it has made too much of itself. When the avenues are about 90 feet wide and the streets 130 feet wide, naturally the corrugated-iron one-storeyed cottages and the one-storeyed brick buildings appear very diminutive; and the truth is that, were the streets of proportionate width to the height of the buildings, the town would appear very small. The plain upon which it stands gives an idea of infinity that renders poor one-storeyed Bulawayo very finite-looking indeed. The town, however, has laid itself out for future greatness, and the designers of it have been wise. Winnipeg, in Manitoba, which Bulawayo reminds me of by the surrounding plain, was laid out on just such a spacious plan; but ten years later six-storeyed buildings usurped the place of the isolated iron hut and cottage, and the streets were seen to be no whit too wide. Ten years hence Bulawayo will aspire higher towards the sky, and when the electric trams run in double lines between rows of shade trees, there will be no sense of disproportion between buildings and streets. On the walls of the Stock Exchange I found hanging plans and elevations of the brick and stone buildings already contracted for. They are not to be very lofty, none over two storeys, but architecturally they are most attractive. These new buildings will, perhaps, stand for about five years, for, according to my experience, it is not until the tenth year that the double storey becomes the fashion. At the twentieth year begins the triple storey; at thirty years the fourth storey begins to appear.
East of the town area devoted to commerce is a broad strip of park. It occupies a gentle hollow in the plain, watered by a crooked ditch, called spruit here, running through a rich, dark, and very thirsty earth. It contains a few puddles here and there along its course. Only a portion of the park is laid out as yet, and that has been well and carefully done. Its plots contain a few hundreds of grape vines, which look like currant bushes. There are also about a hundred very young orange trees, a few flowers, shrubs, etc. A stone column to the memory of Captain Lendy occupies an eminence in it. The whole park has a sombre appearance, owing to the dark soil and ironstone freely sprinkling it. But as the bushes, shrubs, and flowers have only been lately planted, and as around the forcing houses there is a large number of young plants in tins and pots, soon to be transplanted, a couple of years will make an immense difference in the appearance of the pleasaunce.
Beyond and east of the park is the residential part of Bulawayo, divided into two avenues and nine streets running east and west, and eight roads running north and south, named respectively Townsend, Lawley, Livingstone, Pauling, Clark, Duncan, and Heyman, and Park Road, parallel with the park.