Supplement 1918 25 



Fifty years ago steamships were already replacing sailing 

 vessels on all ocean lines, including those to South Africa; and 

 ground had already been broken for a railway in the immediate 

 vicinity of Capetown. By the year 1870, the discovery of 

 diamonds about five days' drive, by Cape-cart, from Capetown 

 produced a rush of miners and speculators to the place after- 

 1s called Kimberley ; and very soon there was a large popula- 

 tion, which called for a railway and naturally it was constructed 

 with all speed. 



About tlu year 1873 gold was discovered, in quantity, on 



th< Rand and it attracted a still greater rush than did the 



;iionds, and to a distance still further inland. 



Perhaps the great African fauna might have withstood the 



re <>f civilisation for diamonds, but its greed for gold was 



quite another thing. Railways spread into the interior and in 



ourse of forty years the process of invasion, extermination 



and re-settlement by immigration has become nearly complete. 



^reat fauna is almost extinct and the indigenous human 



races may follow the same course. 



Ii \\i wish to know by what they have been replaced a page 

 :i at random from the Business Directory of the city of 

 Miirsburii will furnish an average sample. 

 It is probable that I and my shipmates on the "Challenger," 

 when >lu- vi-itrd NYw Guinea and the Admiralty Islands in the 

 ;ming of the year 1875 were about the very last of our race 

 who came into personal contact with the primitive uncultured 

 man, proud of Ix-in" undisguised by clothing, who met his 

 vi-itors adorned with shells and flowers, and armed, the NY\\ 

 , with the bow and arrows, more than a cloth \ aid long, 

 with the hollow bones of bird-, and the Admiraltx 

 nder, armed with spear- titti-d with massive ob-idian heads, 

 Iv fashioned from tin volcanic glass of his mountain-. 

 To young people the process of rapid destruction and 

 initiation which has altered the whole world in BO short a tim< 

 appear to l>< <|uit< n.itural. but to older people and to those 

 reflect that the world i- not t them alone, th. 



inju 1 th>- I' TO, ity of the whole t 



\\\\\- and humiliating. 



