608

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

[Conducted by

progress is not the less felt. Any sort of
European labour (except convict labour), any
kind of capital, is welcome in our South African
dependencies; and in the long run " pays."

As to Capital; men with from two thou-
sand pounds to ten thousand pounds will
find plenty of most profitable employment for
their money. The Colony has innumerable
resources–––amongst them I may mention her
fisheries and her mineral treasures. The
former produce a large revenue even now,
though carried on, from want of enterprise
and capital, in the most unsystematic and
slovenly manner. Of minerals there is
abundance; ore in many places actually lying
on the surface. The assegais (or spears) of
the Kafirs are all made of iron, smelted and
welded by themselves; while recent travellers
from the northernmost extremity of the
Colony bring accounts of innumerable imple-
ments in use among the savage tribes there,
formed of iron of their own manufacture.
Copper and lead have been discovered within
fifteen miles of Algoa Bay.

But such riches remain utterly unproductive
without facile means of transport, and a great
want in the Colony is good roads. Of course,
want of labour is the cause of this deficiency,
which is, however, being slowly remedied by
the local government. Whether the Cape
Colonists were wise in rejecting the convicts,
so kindly proffered to them by Lord Grey,
I shall not presume to opine, because I have a
notion that everybody knows their own busi-
ness best; but we must not forget that New
South Wales owes the blessing of her good
roads to what was, it must be admitted, in
other respects, a great curse to her–––the
bands of convicts the Colonial Office were so
obliging as to send her.

Before I dilate on the greatest of all colonial
wants, I will mention what the Cape of Good
Hope does not want; namely, young gentle-
men with white hands and empty pockets,
of no profession, and with very extensive no-
tions of refinement. She does not require
martinet "half-pays," who know more of
pipe-clay than of soils, and more of killing
than of breeding and fattening. Fine ladies,
who are proficient pianistes, and do not under-
stand poultry, she is much better without.
What she does require, are––– : In the towns,
mechanics and artisans of all kinds; in the
country, good farmers and sturdy dames,
shepherds and agricultural labourers; in both,
domestic servants, male and female. For all
these the Cape is open, and it offers them
first-rate livelihoods, abundance of food of
the best description, and a climate which the
returns taken of the mortality among the
troops prove to be amongst the healthiest in
all Her Majesty's world- wide dominions. The
Colony has also one great advantage over
Australia it is ten thousand miles nearer to
England.

Want the third in point of importance is a
change in the present system of selecting

Colonial Governors. Were we to choose Ge-
nerals to lead our armies–––not from soldiers
trained to arms and distinguished in the field
––– but from decayed statesmen, who had "never
set a squadron in the field," nor even handled
a sword; would not our enemies not only
beat us, but laugh at us? Yet conversely
we commit precisely this absurdity: we
"reward " meritorious Generals by appointing
them Governors; of whose duties they are,
as a rule, as ignorant as a Lord of the
Treasury is of fortification. The Governor of
a Colony, as the representative of the highest
power in the Empire, is required to fulfil the
highest civil functions; to conduct the most
difficult and delicate negotiations; and we
select a brave old General, who hardly knows
the geography of his government; is pro-
foundly ignorant of the habits and require-
ments of its people; who never even pretended
to statesmanship, and either commits himself
to something so rash that it makes everybody
angry, or to something so silly that it makes
everybody laugh.

IN EDUCATION, England might take a lesson
from her South African dependency–––it is
in the education of the people. Govern-
ment schools are established in every town,
and almost every village of the Colony, open
to children of all classes and all creeds, and
free of all expense. They are presided over
by intelligent teachers, chiefly selected from
the Scotch Universities, and truly their
pupils do these gentlemen infinite credit. I
do not hesitate to say, that the rising genera-
tion of the Cape Colony will be the best
educated men of their class in all the British
Empire. It is to Dr. Jones, the former
President of the South African College, in
Cape Town, that the colony is indebted for
this invaluable boon. Even the population
in the far interior are better off in this
respect than the children of our English
peasantry. Thanks to the energy of Camp-
bell, Latrobe, Moffat, and other energetic,
common-sense, as well as pious, members of
the Missionary Society; the children of the
Hottentots, Griquas, and even of some of the
Bechuanas, are fast being brought into the pale
of civilisation by attendance at the schools
established by those gentlemen. Some of the
offspring of English parents in the "interior"
of England, have no such schools to attend.

SHEEP FARMING is, perhaps, the best and
most profitable occupation at the Cape. It is
far better than agriculture, and better than
cattle farming, for the following reasons. The
great deficiency of the colony is the want of
sufficient water for irrigation. Wherever
this want is not felt, all kinds of grain may be
raised with profit, and Cape wheat is univer-
sally pronounced to be the finest in the world.
But the farms, or portions of farms, on which
it can be grown are few and far between.
Nor is this the only drawback to agriculture;