28 The Winning of the West 



semblance to the later settlement of Australia and 

 New Zealand. The English conquest of India and 

 even the English conquest of South Africa come in 

 an entirely different category. The first was a mere 

 political conquest, like the Dutch conquest of Java 

 or the extension of the Roman Empire over parts 

 of Asia. South Africa in some respects stands by 

 itself, because there the English are confronted by 

 another white race which it is as yet uncertain 

 .whether they can assimilate, and, what is infinitely 

 more important, because they are thus confronted by 

 a very large native population with which they can 

 not mingle, and which neither dies out nor recedes 

 before their advance. It is not likely, but it is at 

 least within the bounds of possibility, that in the 

 course of centuries the whites of South Africa will 

 suffer a fate akin to that which befell the Greek 

 colonists in the Tauric Chersonese, and be swal- 

 lowed up in the overwhelming mass of black bar- 

 barism. 



On the other hand, it may fairly be said that in 

 America and Australia the English race has already 

 entered into and begun the enjoyment of its great 

 inheritance. When these continents were settled 

 they contained the largest tracts of fertile, tem- 

 perate, thinly peopled country on the face of the 

 globe. We can not rate too highly the importance 

 of their acquisition. Their successful settlement was 

 a feat which by comparison utterly dwarfs all the 

 European wars of the last two centuries; just as 

 the importance of the issues at stake in the wars of 



