44 TlMEHRI. 
to the stream of progress which had flowed, with such 
exceeding sluggishness, for nearly three centuries. A 
large amount of fresh capital was introduced and invested 
in agriculture. Many of the old Dutch proprietors even 
at this period sold their estates to English speculators. 
The effect was at once seen in the improved cultivation 
of the fields, in the rapid substitution of sugar as a crop 
in place of the less remunerative, if less costly, cotton, 
and in the gradual replacement of the windmills, which 
till then had, when the wind blew, supplied the only 
mechanical power on the estates, by steam engines, 
which could be worked at will. The position of 
the slaves was also greatly improved. The fiendish, 
though partly unconscious, cruelty which had been possi- 
ble in the remote, unregarded Dutch colonies was 
no longer possible now that these same colonies, in more 
energetic English hands, were brought into constant 
communication with the outer world. How great and 
sudden was the change in the feeling of the white colo- 
nists towards the negroes is sufficiently and startingly 
shown in the fact that within a few months after the 
English occupation many emancipated negroes were 
formed into a defensive troop for the colonies, to be 
called the South American rangers. The scenes to which 
the new dignity thus suddenly conferred on the negroes 
gave rise must have been striking in the extreme. One of 
them, the drilling of these same South African rangers, 
is amusingly depicted by PlNCKARD. It must indeed 
have been hard work to drill these ex-slaves, so re- 
cently mere beasts of burden, into any military discip- 
line. The non-commissioned officers were coloured men, 
of somewhat higher class, who, as usual, were even less 
