MILL (OR BATTERY) OF A GOLD MINE (SALISBURY AND JUBILEE, JOHANNESBURG)
The powdered ore is washed down over the plates. The deafening roar from the stamps sounds in quiet evenings, from a distance, like the roar of the sea on a rocky coast.
Photo by Barnett & Co., Johannesburg
THE AGRICULTURAL OUTLOOK
By LOUIS CRESWICKE
Almost the last message of that prophetic statesman Rhodes was characteristic: “Support Milner through thick and thin,” he curtly and emphatically said. It is therefore Lord Milner’s opinion of the future settlement of the country which should not merely be read, but marked and learnt and inwardly digested, by all who are anxious for the development of British interests in the new Colonies, and who shrink from a recurrence of the horrible scenes of the past, which owed their origin mainly to long years of vacillation on the part of Governments that “swallowed up” the Boers at one moment only to disgorge them the next. Lord Milner, as Mr. Chamberlain has put it, “is the most effective instrument in our possession.” To his subtle yet gigantic brain, to his detailed yet comprehensive labours, we are indebted for a plan out of the chaos, a practical plan by which Briton and Boer may be efficiently planted side by side on the soil for the agricultural and political well-being of the newly-acquired Colonies.
It must be remembered that the agricultural resources of the conquered territory have hitherto been inadequately developed. As it was half a century ago, so it remains to-day—a pastoral country importing its cereals, its dairy produce, and even its hay from foreign parts. The motto of the Boer has never been “Forward,” nor has industry been his strong point. The happy farmstead of five thousand acres which served to keep his ancestor, served also to keep him comfortably till the date of the war. Progress lay not with him but with the British settlers in the region of the Rand, or with the crafty Hollanders who pulled the wires of the misguided autocrat whose ambitious aim was to “stagger humanity.”
The sole appreciable advance came from Great Britain. While mining hummed apace, agriculture crept laboriously; the country, teeming with promise, remained in parts entirely barren, in others overrun by the uncombatted yellow tulip or the incango, both weeds deadly to the soil.
The veldt and the karroo, say the pessimists, offer no home for the Englishman. They moreover aver that only so long as the mines hold out will the settler remain in South Africa. But there are others, Lord Kitchener and Lord Milner among them, who see in the country the latent possibility of modern North America, or, at least, a great agricultural future which will endure long after the history of the mineral districts is a closed volume. The science of irrigation in its most modern development—“the foundation-stone on which can be built the permanent prosperity of South Africa”—is capable of transforming the profitless deserts into flowering gardens and fruitful orchards which in very few years will do more than pay their way. But to properly develop any scheme requiring eternal vigilance, industry, and foresight, it is necessary that a goodly sprinkling of the enterprising British population shall be dispersed all over the land, so that not in the towns alone will the characteristics of the dominant race be maintained.