he, in the face of violent opposition and prophecies of disaster, granted 

 self-government to his unreconciled enemies in South Africa and 

 thereby averted the revolution which seemed imminent when I was in 

 the Transvaal, What fruit this generous policy bore in the World War, 

 needs no restatement here, for it is known and read of all men. 



When, in the Boer War, Pretoria surrendered without a blow, the 

 world was greatly surprised, for it was known that the city had been 

 elaborately fortified, with a ring of works on the hill tops, completely 

 enclosing the capital. Immense sums of money were expended by 

 German military engineers in these works, but they were not of the 

 least real value. We visited one of these forts which, we were told, was 

 essentially like all the others, and found it a barefaced swindle. It was in 

 charge of a corporal and two men, who exhibited it to us. I said: 

 "Corporal, where are your gun emplacements.''" "There aren't any. 

 Sir." "So far as I can see, you couldn't even set up a field-piece in here," 

 "No, Sir, there is no place for even that." The forts were never 

 armed, could not have been, in fact, and were of no more use than so 

 many stone piles. 



At Johannesburg we had a very interesting time in studying the gold 

 industry of the Rand, for the gigantic scale of which I was not at all 

 prepared and in endless talks with Mr, Catlin, an American engineer, 

 who was my kind host at Germiston and had been through all the 

 troubled times that led up to the war, I learned incomparably more than 

 I could ever have discovered for myself. We also saw the newly discov- 

 ered diamond mines near Pretoria, which were geologically more in- 

 structive than the great pits at Kimberley, our next destination. There 

 we saw not only the operations of diamond mining and sorting but also 

 the remarkable collection of diamonds at the offices of the De Beers 

 Company, As I had lost a great deal of sleep, I tried to make up some 

 of it at Kimberley, for the pace set by the indefatigable, white-headed 

 old fellows of the Association was too hot for me. 



From Kimberley, we travelled north through Bechuana Land into 

 Southern Rhodesia, a very interesting experiment, for though in the 

 Tropics its altitude is such that the climate is moderate and white men 

 can do out-of-door manual labour, without the cosdy apparatus of 

 sanitation which was indispensable in building the Panama Canal. 

 Buluwayo, like other South African towns, we found to be soHdly built 

 of brick and stone; it did not have the shabby look which frame con- 

 struction and unpainted buildings give to our newer towns. The high 



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