NOVEMBER 399 



I should now be entertaining foreign Royalties in a marble 

 palace in Park Lane, for that farm lies in the centre of the Rand 

 district, and I have heard that the best reefs run through it. 



And yet, although my vision failed me in this instance — why 

 are there not gold dowsers as well as water doivsers7 — I must 

 have been a youth of some foresight. Here I quote a passage 

 written by me in 1876 when 1 was a lad of twenty. For a first 

 effort in prophecy it has proved fairly accurate, especially as I can- 

 not have had much to go on, for in those days few people looked 

 upon the bankrupt and unvisited South African Republic as a 

 country of any value { 



' It is very difficult to convey an impression of the intense 

 dreariness and monotony of the great Transvaal wastes, " where 

 wilds immeasurably spread seem lengthening as we go." Day 

 after day the traveller passes over vast spaces of rolling veld 

 stretching away north, south, east, and west, without a tree, a 

 house, or any sign of man, save here and there a half-beaten 

 waggon track. And yet those wastes, now so dismal and desolate, 

 are at no distant date destined to support and enrich a large popu- 

 lation , for underneath their surface lie all minerals in abundance, 

 and when the coal of England and of Europe is exhausted, there 

 is sufficient stored up here to stock the world. Those plains, too, 

 which for centuries have lain idle and unproductive, will before 

 long supply the greatest corn markets with grain ; for, save in 

 some places where water is scarce, the virgin soil is rich beyond 

 comparison. Yes, before us lies the country of the practical future, 

 of the days when the rich man will have his estate in Switzerland 

 to gratify his eyes, and his estate in the Transvaal to fill his 

 pockets. This vast land will one day be the garden of Africa, the 

 land of gems and gold, of oil and corn, of steam-ploughs and rail- 

 ways. It has an assured and a magnificent future.^ 



Ostriches are disappointing birds. Ours steadily declined to 

 lay eggs, but by way of compensation their kicking powers were 



