ciations, which, for the purposes of that meeting, were merged in one. 

 Almost all our journeys were made by special trains, which were always 

 ready, when needed, and we were never kept waiting for connections. 

 When we arrived at a new town, the members of the official party were 

 met by their hosts and immediately taken to the houses assigned to 

 them. I don't doubt that the unofficial party was well taken care of in 

 the hotels, but I did not meet the unofficial members. I learned indi- 

 rectly, however, that there was much grumbling and dissatisfaction 

 among them, chiefly due to envy and hatred of the guests whose 

 expenses were paid. I can only say that all those visitors whom I saw 

 received every possible care and attention and that all the arrangements 

 of transportation and supply worked without a hitch. 



On a geological excursion which I made to the Bushveldt, north of 

 Pretoria, one of our hosts said to me, as I was bidding him good-bye: 

 "Don't run us down, when you get home." I replied: "I should be the 

 most ungrateful of mankind, if I were to run you down." "That isn't 

 what I mean," he said, "Don't disparage the country and speak ill of our 

 outlook for the future." That was an altogether different matter and I 

 could only answer evasively, for the long future of South Africa seemed 

 very far from rosy to me. The mineral wealth of the country is incred- 

 ible and since the time of my visit, many new and wonderful ore 

 deposits have been found, notably the platinum and chromium ores. On 

 the other hand, the black cloud of natives is a threatening danger for 

 the future. The blacks far outnumber the whites and their increase, now 

 that the pax Britannica has put a stop to intertribal wars, is at a much 

 more rapid rate. The traveller must be very cautious in attempting to 

 determine the value of what the people of a foreign country tell him. 

 Had he chanced to meet a different lot of individuals, he might have 

 received a totally different series of impressions. The men with whom 

 I talked in South Africa, whatever the weight of their opinions may 

 be, were all apprehensive of an uprising of the natives against the 

 whites. They said the Kaffirs had grown sullen and insolent and they 

 feared that, eventually, there would be bloody work to do, if European 

 civilisation were to be saved in South Africa. 



We sailed from Beira on September 17 and were nearly three weeks 

 in reaching Suez, stopping at Mozambique and Mombasa. For several 

 days before reaching Suez, we had met no southbound ships in the Red 

 Sea and felt sure (there was no wireless then) that the Canal must be 

 blocked in some way. At Suez, this inference was confirmed and we 

 heard that a dynamite ship had blown up in the Canal, stopping all 



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