oranges, loquats, and even bananas, ripen in the open air; and the soil produces both the ordinary and sweet potato, different kinds of pumpkins, maize, Kafir-corn, imphi or sweet reeda species of wild sugar-cane-whip-sticks, and various kinds of timber. In some parts of the Lydenberg district, especially Kruger's Post, very fine oak-trees have been successfully planted. The blue gum, seringa and poplar, with weeping willows and rose-trees, thrive everywhere; and though sugar averages eightpence a pound, and sometimes fetches as much as a shilling, beetroot-cultivation, which is eminently suitable to both the climate and the soil, and which is capable of indefinite expansion, has not yet been attempted except experimentally.

As I have said before, the Boers look with no favour on the lower grounds because of the horse-sickness, the unsuitability of the country for sheep, and former losses and sufferings of families from fever. The Lydenberg country,

or at least a portion of it, is reputed to be rich even in the precious metals; and gold has been more or less extensively sought for, three "placers" having yielded a large amount of that metal; but the great wealth of the country will, I hope, in the not distant future, if proper lines of communication are opened with the coast, prove to be copper.

North of the line of the main road from Lydenberg to Pilgrim's Rest, virgin copper, as well as copper ore, has been extensively found. I shall return to the questions connected with the future development and opening up of the country, when, later on, I deal with the vital question of railroad communication.

The whole district of Lydenberg, stretching as it does from Vaal River to Secocoeni's, and from Middleburg to the Drakensberg, is at present very sparsely inhabited; and yet some parts of this country resemble in many ways Wicklow in Ireland, and the best parts of Wales. I was extremely interested in hearing from a florist, Mr Mudd of Cambridge, whom I saw there searching for ferns for an august personage, that he constantly met with ferns and other plants similar to those of the British districts I have mentioned. Lydenberg, which is as large as a principality, contains within itself, perhaps the widest variety of climate to be

CAREFUL GOVERNMENT STATISTICS.

125 found in any one district in the world; besides which, towards Delagoa Bay, it affords immediate access to the splendid hunting-fields-fields for large game-that extend between Drakensberg and the Indian Ocean. Indeed almost everywhere there is to be found a fair supply of game within easy reach of the hunter. A distinguished general and keen sportsman, who made a tour of considerable length through the district last year, has, I am sure, no reason to complain of his success among the larger game, although he may have much to say against the means of transit.

A recent writer seems to doubt the existence of accurate statistics, either of production or population, in the African republics. Had he made further investigation he would have found that a yearly census is taken by the "field-cornets," from which can be gathered not only a correct estimate of the population existing in each ward, but a carefully compiled estimate in detail of the amount of land under cultivation, with the number of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and even fowls, on every farm in these countries. The author to whom I refer has ventured to doubt the correctness of the numbers given him respecting population in the Free State, and has also referred rather slightingly to Mr Jeppes's statements regarding the wheat produce of the Transvaal. If he had extended the range of his inquiries a little farther than he seems to have done, he would have learned that an annual register is kept of population, and that he could have ascertained, by reference to the books of the Colonial Surveyor, relating to tolls on bridges in Natal, how many waggonloads of produce passed from the Transvaal to Pieter Maritzburg in any given year from 1868 to the present hour. So accurate are the field-cornets' returns of population, stock, and cultivation in the Transvaal, that in a single month, were it needful, ample and correct statistics, affording the fullest information, could be provided by the Secretary to Government. The some holds good of the Orange Free State; and I have no doubt the President and his officials are prepared at a minute's notice to produce complete detailed lists of the burghers of the several wards and districts of the State, with a tabular statement of their ages, property, qualifications, and possessions of every sort.

Should the interest in the resources of the Transvaal aroused by this work demand further satisfaction, I shall be happy to lay before the public the amplest and fullest details on these subjects.

Pending the introduction of capital and immigrants, the Transvaal is a poor country, for whose occupation and development the Boers deserve infinite credit; and they ought rather to be admired for their energy and enterprise (which in twenty-five years have turned a desert into a habitable country) than sneered at because their clothes and their hands are not so clean as those of the brain-workers and literary men that adorn our European civilisation.

For present purposes, I think I have said enough of the Transvaal and its resources, from an agricultural point of view. As a grazing country for large stock the Transvaal is simply passable. I have made most minute inquiries from farmers in nearly every district, and I cannot find any who have not complaints to make of a want of success, which is equally noticeable in Natal and the other South African colonies. Herds, except under the most favourable circumstances, do not seem to increase in anything like a fair ratio. The stocks of most farmers, apart from wars and other exceptional causes, have not permanently yielded even the natural increase-much less that which might have been expected in a country which has not been subject to the desolating droughts that have so frequently decimated the herds of the other colonies. I have asked the question pointblank of many farmers, What increase have you to show in your breeding-cattle for the last ten years? The answer almost invariably has been, "No increase." This is generally attributed to calf-sickness and lung-sickness, which have proved fatal to seven out of ten of the breeding-cattle and young ones on an average of years in most districts. Still, the herds have been kept up, and farmers have made a profit by the sale of oxen, and should have calculated as income the value received during these years from spans of bullocks working in the plough and the waggon.

Only the better portions of the Highveld are free all the year round from horse-sickness. With the exceptions of New Scotland and Wakkerstroom, the Transvaal is not in any

STOCK AND SHEEP FARMING.

127

sense a horse-breeding country, and the horses bred in these districts, it must always be remembered, are as liable to perish of the disease called horse-sickness when they are exposed to its influence in the Bushveld and low-lying divisions, as if they were foreign or imported stock. Sheep can hardly as yet be said to have had a fair trial, it being only within recent years that the value of the Highveld as a sheep-walk has revealed itself. On all new soils sheep must be thoroughly acclimatised before results can be even approximately guessed at. I have consulted a friend, Mr Cornelius Van der Berg, residing near Standerton, on the subject. He, with a number of relatives and friends, migrated from the county Weenen, in Natal, into the Transvaal Highveld, in the beginning of the winter of 1870. He himself became the purchaser of two farms-one pasture, and the other a winter farm of considerable extent on the Pongola River. These he stocked with 170 head of cattle, 17 breeding mares, and 750 ewes, all in good condition. He had also with him a considerable number of Angora goats. The result of his settlement is that he has lost thirty per cent of the cattle, all the horses, all the goats, but gained in eight years fortyfive per cent on sheep. The experience of all those who accompanied him is, with one exception, nearly similar. This exceptional case shows an increase in the value of stock, in the seven years, of £1700 on an original outlay of £400. All these people, however, it must be remembered, have been able to exist, defraying expenses by their wool, assisted by the produce of the small patch of land they had placed under cultivation, and the income they had earned by their "trek" and working stock. This is not a very great result, but, at all events, it maintains Van der Berg and his friends in the only position which I claim for them—that of substantial proprietary peasants.

I shall now turn for a short space to the much-boasted mineral resources of the Transvaal. The Gold Fields I have dealt with at very considerable length elsewhere. I shall, however, for the benefit of speculators, detail an act of rascality, the exposure of which will, I hope, tend to check enterprise of a similar sort. There was a reef showing a "prospect," discovered in 1874, which it will suffice for my

purposes to call the "Labrador" reef. Now, in 1877, a couple of gentlemen, with an eye to the development of the country, visited Pilgrim's Rest, inspected the Labrador reef, and bought it for speculative purposes, giving for it £300, for which they took a receipt for £3000, to give a fictitious value to their purchase. Their plan, of course, was to get up a syndicate, to whom they would transfer their claim at its fictitious value. Whether they have succeeded or not I cannot say; perhaps they effected some other object. Speculators of this stamp nearly always have a double purpose in view. The spreading abroad of the report that £3000 was given for this reef undoubtedly tended to raise the value of farms in its vicinity, and this may also have been within their intentions. That there are in the Transvaal genuine and workable auriferous reefs I do not deny. Gold exists in many places throughout the country, and is certainly to be found in payable quantities in many localities, of which "Blaauw Bank" is the most noteworthy. This really valuable property-the reef, not the reported alluvial -has not received the attention it merits. Of "alluvial diggings," in the great, wide, profitable meaning of the word Gold Diggings, there is none in the Transvaal proper. It was stated by a distinguished traveller that he had seen on his journeys pieces of yellow metal lying on the surface of the ground, which the Kafirs compelled him, when he attempted to pick them up, to replace on the ground, saying "that their chief did not want white men coming into his country to dig holes." The traveller's tale was perfectly true, the place was the valley of the Oliphants River, below Secocoeni's country; but the metal was copper-pure virgin copper-of which I have seen specimens picked up exactly in the way described by Captain Clarke, R.A., and other gentlemen.

There are in many places in Africa small deposits of gold, which would be called in Mexico "placers; " but these will never carry population, and when discovered ought to be given as concessions to the finder, instead of being divided out in claims. Were this done, such places could be worked out quickly by companies formed for the purpose. The mistake about the whole matter prevalent throughout all South