CRITICAL PERIOD IN SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY 377 
tilled more than is necessaiy to retain them in this state. All 
areas having a slope of more than fifteen feet in one hundred 
should, by the rules which the conservator of the soils is dis- 
posed to lay down, be devoted to forests, which afford the only 
crop that can be harvested from such ground without a swift and 
irremediable loss of fertility. 
It may be asked how these rules can be enforced. After much 
consideration of the matter, I am satisfied that our only reliance 
is on an education which will bear in upon our people the duty 
the}" owe to the soil and the ways in which they may discharge 
this great obligation. Our folk are dutiful ; at every step in 
their advance they have striven, not for the moment’s profit, but 
for the good of generations to come. If this admirable motive 
be impressed by knowledge, we can trust to it for the remedy. 
The scarred and unfertile fields of this country, which, to the 
extent of millions of acres, mark the results of a few generations’ 
life upon areas which nature fitted for the unending support of 
man, are not evidences of lack of care on the part of the people 
who brought this r*uin. They were of the breed which willingly 
lays down life for an idea, for a belief in creed or state. Teach 
them what the soil means to their kind, instruct them in the 
arts by which it may be cared for, and we may trust, as we needs 
must, to the fruit of this knowledge. 
It is much to be deplored that there is not in our schools a 
single book to tell the youth what every one should know con- 
cerning the foundations of life in the soil or the conditions under 
which the generation to which he belongs may pass on the 
precious heritage to those who are to come after. Such instruc- 
tion can alone be enforced through the exertions of those who 
have been brought to see the truth and who are willing to labor 
for its diffusion. 
A CRITICAL PERIOD IN SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY 
The years 1876-’77, of Avhich it was beside the purjjose of Mr 
George F. Becker to treat in his long and interesting article on 
the Witwatersrand and the Revolt of the Uitlanders, constituted 
one of the most critical periods in South African history. 'I'he 
story of the succe.ssive crushing defeats inflicted upon the Boers 
by the Kaffirs, of the bankruptcy of the Boer national treasury, 
of the demoralization of the Boers themselves, of the state of 
