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 FROM NABOTH'S VINEYARD 

 
 *
 
 FROM NABOTH'S 
 VINEYARD 
 
 BEING IMPRESSIONS FORMED DURING A FOURTH 
 
 VISIT TO SOUTH AFRICA UNDERTAKEN 
 
 AT THE REQUEST OF THE TRIBUNE 
 
 NEWSPAPER 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR WILLIAM BUTLER, G.C.B. 
 
 LONDON 
 GEORGE BELL & SONS 
 
 1907
 
 " There is no bulwark in wealth against 
 destruction to the man who in the 
 wantonness of his heart has spurned 
 the great Altar of Justice." 
 
 This Edition is intended for circulation only in India 
 and the British Colonies
 
 DEDICATION 
 
 To some future South Africa 
 (I pray not distant}^ when the 
 " Good Hope " of the old Navi- 
 gator shall have been realized. 
 
 W. F. BUTLER. 
 
 February, 1907. 
 
 2200329
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THESE letters from South Africa, 
 chiefly written in the first half of 
 1906, are the outcome of a visit 
 made to the sub-continent at the invitation 
 of Mr. Franklin Thomasson, M.P., Govern- 
 ing Director of the London Tribune. " We 
 venture to entertain the hope," wrote the 
 Directorate, "that you are willing to pro- 
 ceed, in the interests of the Tribune, to 
 South Africa in order to report in the spirit 
 of a well-informed, broad-minded, reflective 
 observer upon the various phases of the 
 very delicate and difficult situation there 
 existing. 
 
 " The Tribune, of course, does not bind 
 you to the expression of any view as the 
 result of your investigation, which we have 
 
 vii
 
 Preface 
 
 no doubt will be carried out among all 
 sections of the community; we only venture 
 to suggest the end of the enterprise, an end 
 in which we are sure you most cordially 
 acquiesce the discovery of the actual facts, 
 and the real tone and temper of the various 
 sections with a view to the rectification of 
 errors, the healing of differences, and the 
 permanent blending of the peoples. . . . The 
 districts which you visit, the people you may 
 meet, the questions you deal with, and the 
 dates and manner of your communications, 
 shall be entirely at your own discretion. . . . 
 We look forward with confidence and pleasure 
 to your acceptance of this proposition. On 
 our own part we shall feel highly honoured 
 by the co-operation of," etc., etc., . . . 
 " while from your point of view we venture 
 to suggest that in undertaking the mission 
 you will be not only helping to lay the 
 foundations of a new enterprise from which 
 important steps in the direction of progress 
 may be reasonally anticipated, but also 
 viii
 
 Preface 
 
 rendering an all-important service, at a vital 
 moment in history, to the highest interests 
 of the Empire." 
 
 Such was the programme proposed ; the 
 other preliminaries were easily arranged, and 
 on the 6th January I sailed for Capetown. 
 In July I was back again in London. In the 
 intervening six months, I had seen and con- 
 versed with many representatives of the 
 various sections of political and social life 
 in South Africa civil, military, official, 
 administrative, commercial, financial, and 
 missionary. The country was not a new land 
 to me. More than thirty years had passed 
 since I first set foot upon its shores. This 
 was the fourth visit I had made to it. I had 
 seen a good deal of its old life, travelled 
 rather extensively through it before the 
 era of railways, and had had something to 
 do and say to its subsequent history and 
 later developments. 
 
 On each succeeding visit there was one 
 fact which impressed itself upon me with 
 
 ix
 
 Preface 
 
 increasing strength. There were new names 
 in the offices and over the shop fronts in 
 the towns, but out in the big country the old 
 names were still in the farms. Men who 
 had made money in trade or commerce had 
 largely gone back to England to spend the 
 remainder of their days there. The children 
 or grandchildren of the Dutch were still on 
 the old sites. This dominating difference 
 between the two races, first convinced me 
 that it was necessary to accept the fact of the 
 permanency of Dutch life in South Africa, 
 and the consequent greater necessity of culti- 
 vating friendly relations with this permanent 
 population. 
 
 If you see a train going into a railway 
 tunnel it requires no depth of observation to 
 discover and determine the general direction 
 in which that train will appear again at the 
 other side of the hill, but all the same the 
 other side of the hill is of consequence. 
 This time I went up country after a short 
 stay at Capetown. I was four weeks in 
 
 x
 
 Preface 
 
 Johannesburg, three in Pretoria, I went to 
 the High Veldt at Middelburg, took a 
 motor-ride through the Magliesbeerg valley 
 and along the Rand, went down a gold mine, 
 inspected a diamond field and a Chinese 
 compound, visited Natal, drove fifty miles 
 into Zululand, stopped at Bloemfontein and 
 other places in the Orange River and the 
 Cape Colonies, and returned to Capetown, 
 having covered about four thousand miles 
 in all. 
 
 The following letters embody the im- 
 pressions formed during that journey. 
 Whether the views they express fulfil the 
 original intentions and hopes of the gentle- 
 men who invited me to undertake the 
 mission, I do not pretend to decide. But 
 in now giving the letters in a collected 
 form to the public, I desire to record my 
 lasting sense of the great courtesy and kind- 
 ness shown to me by the General Director 
 and Management of the Tribune, and to 
 acknowledge the generous spirit which 
 
 xi
 
 Preface 
 
 characterized from first to last all their 
 relations and transactions with me. 
 
 I wish also to express to many friends, old 
 and new, in South Africa my grateful thanks 
 for acts of attention shown by them in various 
 ways, and not the least prized among many 
 pleasant recollections linked with this last 
 visit to South Africa, will remain the honest 
 admission of mistaken judgment, frankly 
 made to me by some known or unknown 
 opponent, of the days before the War. 
 
 W. F. B. 
 
 January >, 1907. 
 
 Xll
 
 FROM 
 
 NABOTH'S VINEYARD 
 
 WE crossed the line to-day, the ninth 
 of our voyage. A week ago the 
 English winter was at its worst, 
 to-day the tropic summer is at its hottest. 
 No amount of clothing too heavy then, none 
 light enough now. It has been quick work, 
 but faster than change of sea or climate 
 thought has been moving back into old 
 days, when one came for the first time over 
 this ocean track, more than six-and-forty 
 years ago ; all the living things of that day 
 gone below a bigger sea than even this one 
 the stars, the grey waves, and the " swish " 
 of them still here. 
 
 It was another world. A little three- 
 masted ship rolled along, lay to, tacked, close 
 hauled on one wind, and ran free before 
 another, took thirty-five days to get to this 
 
 I B
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 ocean spot, then drifted for twenty days a 
 veritable log in the " doldrums." At times 
 we lowered a boat for a row around the 
 motionless vessel, which again drifted a few 
 miles backward as some current from the 
 Gulf of Guinea caught her keel. 
 
 Impossible to realize or recall a tithe of 
 it now, and impossible, too, to face even in 
 imagination a repetition of it, but never- 
 theless the recollection of it holding more 
 of the mystery of the sea, and of the gloom 
 and glory of the big ocean, than one hundred 
 steamship voyages could give to-day. 
 
 No dolphins swimming round a becalmed 
 ship now, no whale spouting on the sea-rim ; 
 no heaving to at the signal of some home- 
 ward bound whaler to Nantucket from a 
 three years' cruise in the Antarctic, and 
 sorely in need of ship's biscuit or limejuice ; 
 for that time was just two years before the 
 little Alabama came stealing into this South 
 Atlantic to give the whales and the walruses 
 a respite. 
 
 It was the great circle then, now it is 
 the short cut. And the great circle had 
 some notable things in it when the little 
 
 2
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 canvas-winged speck of life went on into 
 that immense waste of waters, where the 
 waves of the " forties " of south latitude roll 
 around an almost landless globe. What a 
 scene it was! The ship, topsails double- 
 reefed, reeled up a long slope of water, 
 seemed to pause a moment on the crest, 
 and then went staggering down into a valley 
 between two far-apart ridges stretching north 
 and south under lofty leaden clouds. And 
 the birds ? No other part of the world holds 
 them in such numbers petrel, pigeon of 
 Cape and Cape Horn, gull, frigate bird, and 
 albatross up into the lofty, fleeing clouds, 
 down between the wide following waves, 
 wheeling, poising, screaming, fighting, swoop- 
 ing, they hold their undisputed empire in 
 that gloomy, limitless sea. 
 
 The glory was of another kind. Some 
 traveller has said that the grandest sight he 
 had ever seen was the midnight heaven 
 slowly unrolling its stars above the quiet 
 deck of a ship in the Southern tropics. 
 
 Life in a sailing ship may have been all 
 that Dr. Johnson thought it, but neverthe- 
 less its prison had some wonderful sunrise 
 
 3
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 and sunset walls, and its roof could be at 
 times a long shifting scene of suns, worlds, 
 and glittering nebulse. If death was always 
 a couple of feet below the surface, eternity, 
 in star and space, was in sight above. The 
 essence of both gloom and glory lay in one 
 word detachment. That is impossible now ; 
 the word has no meaning steam killed it. 
 On this steamer of ours there is an amuse- 
 ment committee which gives the law ruling 
 and regulating our time and thought. There 
 are " King's Treasuries " on board, but the 
 daily sweepstakes, the lottery, and the fancy- 
 dress ball close that bank ; the bookmaker 
 is more in request than the bookshelf. Cards, 
 quoits, concerts, cricket, dances, these absorb 
 four-fifths of the short intervals between 
 meals, of which there are five distinct 
 varieties, with a liberal interweavement of 
 beef-teas, fruits, and squashes. Ladies in 
 pretty costumes sit in easy-chairs on the 
 big promenade deck, or pitch quoits into 
 buckets by day, and dance by night on a 
 brilliantly lighted floor. The young men, 
 sleek and well groomed, look older than 
 their years, but they still give you the 
 
 4
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 impression that they had not grown up 
 and would never do so ; and this not because 
 of any particular affection borne to them by 
 the gods. 
 
 They appear to take the game and amuse- 
 ment part of life very seriously, treating it 
 in a business fashion, holding consultations 
 and giving decisions in writing. Are they 
 reversing the old idea and taking the busi- 
 ness of life as a game ? I remember that, 
 in 1899, the new arrivals from England 
 were wont to speak of war which they 
 thought was then impending as " fun." 
 They had come to South Africa, they said, 
 "to see some fun." 
 
 Perhaps the two or three hundred pas- 
 sengers, who are now on board, will help 
 us to a forecast give us a sample of what 
 that new South Africa, of which we have 
 heard so much in the last seven years, will 
 be like. 
 
 A bucket of the water through which we 
 are sailing will give us all the constituent 
 elements of this big ocean from Iceland to 
 Tristan d'Acunha. Will the people who 
 are throwing the rope quoits into buckets 
 
 5
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 on the deck do a similar service, and 
 enable us to measure the material out of 
 which the new South Africa, from the Zam- 
 besi to the Cape, is to be built ? That is 
 a question of some moment. The founda- 
 tions of the proposed edifice have been very 
 costly. About three hundred millions, I 
 believe, more or less probably more than 
 less have gone ; much life and blood have 
 been also given to it. We have been 
 told thousands of times that the city of 
 Johannesburg and its industry is the corner- 
 stone of the building, and is to be finally 
 its coping-stone. It is, therefore, of interest 
 to ask what is the quality of the emigration 
 material on board. 
 
 A few nights ago there was a skurry of 
 first-class feet towards the second-class deck. 
 The band was playing a lively dance tune. 
 What was the excitement about? In the 
 centre of the crowd of both classes three 
 little women were doing a "cake-walk." 
 Despite the aid of extraordinarily high heels, 
 they were much below the average height 
 of ordinary women. Asking who they were, 
 I was informed that they were three young 
 
 6
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 persons proceeding to Johannesburg to teach 
 the cake-walk. A day or two later, when 
 passing the second-class saloon, I saw a 
 delicate, sad-eyed little woman with a four- 
 months-old baby in her arms, walking up 
 and down singing a music-hall ditty to the 
 accompaniment of a very depressed and 
 sickly-looking young man her husband. 
 These also were proceeding from London 
 to Johannesburg. Then I visited the third- 
 class deck ; there the people were stouter 
 and better built, but not two in twenty were 
 going to make solid, lasting homes in South 
 Africa. In most cases the wives and 
 families were left at home. It paid better 
 to keep them there and come home for an 
 occasional holiday, than to attempt home 
 life in the Transvaal under the economic 
 conditions existing there. 
 
 It is not easy to get at the inner minds 
 of these men. They are cautious. Never- 
 theless, 'they will tell you that they prefer 
 the Kaffir M boy" to the Chinese "coolie" 
 as workers under them in the mines. A 
 Cornish miner told a friend of mine on 
 board that the Chinaman remembers a blow, 
 
 7
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 the Kaffir quickly forgets one, and he gave 
 instances of this difference between the 
 African and the Asiatic, which any person 
 who has had experience of the two races 
 will easily understand. The black " boy " 
 has as yet at least few, if any, of the secret 
 methods of combination and association 
 which run beneath the social framework of 
 Eastern life. 
 
 That, however, is at present outside our 
 subject. What we want to know is : What 
 portion of our human cargo is going to South 
 Africa with the fixed intention of settling 
 there, of living and dying on the land ? To 
 fix a precise percentage would be difficult, 
 but it is as certain as anything can be that 
 the percentage is a very small one. Three- 
 fourths of all these people are looking to the 
 time when they shall have made a little 
 money and can get back to England with it, 
 saying "Good-bye" to Table Mountain for 
 ever. 
 
 Then another question arises : Suppose it 
 otherwise suppose all, or nearly all, were 
 going out to stay in the sub-continent, and to 
 live and die in the " illimitable veld " would 
 
 8
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 it be possible to make a going Colony out 
 of this particular shipload of interesting and 
 varied, but somewhat incohesive, human 
 building materials ? 
 
 Would these gentlemen and ladies, men 
 and women, through their different grades 
 and callings, from Colonial Ministers to cake- 
 walkers, mine-managers and millionaires, 
 globe-trotters and "Empire" variety enter- 
 tainers would they be likely to outbreed 
 and outlast that other stolid race of men and 
 women (of which there is not one single 
 specimen on board) descendants of that 
 stout stock who sailed those seas two or 
 three hundred years ago from the sand-flats 
 of Friesland, and made homes in South 
 Africa? 
 
 These are questions of considerable im- 
 portance, for on them depends the entire 
 matter of Colony construction in the future. 
 If this swarm from the parent hive is going 
 South to seek some drops of the golden 
 honey which is said to be in the Rand or 
 Rhodesia, and then to fly back to England, 
 it may be Empire building, but it is not 
 Colony constructing on the old lines familiar 
 
 9
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 to us in the past. What was the secret of 
 that age ? 
 
 Had the stress and storm of the sea this 
 "detachment" these months of night and 
 tempest, when the yardarms almost dipped 
 into the sea as the masts swung from one 
 quarter to the other had that anything to 
 say to it ? These old ships had no bridges, 
 no bright lights, their decks danced in another 
 fashion. Why should this swarm stay out 
 in that great lonely veld when they have 
 this bright, cheap, pleasant bridge to come 
 back over ? 
 
 Our own people won't stay in their own 
 trimmed and garlanded garden-veld at home ; 
 they flock into the towns, to the electric 
 light, the music-hall, and the cake-walk. 
 Here they have them all, and no extra 
 charge even for the cake-walk. 
 
 They tell me I am to see great changes 
 at Table Bay the breakwater is so many 
 feet longer, there is a new Town Hall, and 
 there are several new buildings of Chicago 
 type and storey ; but they say, too, that the 
 docks are half empty, and that in the big 
 buildings there are fifteen hundred or two 
 
 10
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 thousand offices unlet. This vessel of ours 
 has got about a third of her full complement 
 of cargo on board. 
 
 Hearing this and a good deal more about 
 things as they are now in South Africa, one 
 began thinking of some men optimists and 
 pessimists who in former days sailed into 
 Table Bay first Barthelemy Diaz, navi- 
 gator, discoverer, and undoubted pessimist. 
 In his little fifty-ton Caravel, he didn't like 
 the big seas that roared around the rock which 
 he named the Cape of Storms. It is said 
 that he cut a large cross on one of the root 
 rocks of the Lion, went back to Portugal, 
 and returned a year or two later to find " a 
 wandering grave " off his Cape of Storms. 
 Next there came another great navigator 
 this time optimist to the core, Vasco di Gama 
 he renamed the mountain frontlet, calling 
 it the Cape of Good Hope, and going 
 forward he gave the East to Portugal. Years 
 later the Dutchman came. He built and 
 made homes inland, bringing many things 
 with him, among them the Bible ; and then 
 for two hundred years many men came 
 along seeking all manner of things good and 
 
 ii
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 bad. At last, at the end of this crowd, there 
 came a man who amassed vast wealth in a 
 big diamond pit in the interior. He built 
 too ; he was an optimist ; he had faith in the 
 land which had brought him these great 
 riches, and with this golden key he would 
 unlock the fever-barred gate of Africa. 
 What could stand against gold? On the 
 east side of the Table Mountain a gigantic 
 detached spur faces the sunrise ; it is called 
 the Devil's Peak. At the base of this rock 
 the last great optimist set up his sign the 
 Golden Calf as four hundred years earlier 
 pessimist Diaz had set his sign the Cross 
 on the western buttress of the Lion's Head. 
 Here then, as the nineteenth century closed, 
 we had in South Africa three notable signs 
 or tokens Cross, Bible, and Golden Calf. 
 Then came war a desolating, murderous 
 war and in the ruck of this strife there 
 arrived in Table Bay a writer with a little of 
 the poet and the seer in him. He looked up 
 at the square mountain and saw in its flat 
 top and snow-white cloud-cover something 
 that reminded him of a coffin and a shroud. 
 He was a pessimist. Both these men 
 
 12
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 are gone, and both sleep in South Africa, 
 which sleeps too, exhausted after its long 
 desolating war. Who will waken her next ? 
 Will it be a man with a Cross and a Bible, 
 or one with the Golden Calf and a sword ? 
 
 " So much to do, so little done." Did 
 ever a passing soul repeat a more mournful 
 message all things remembered ? 
 
 CAPE TOWN, 
 
 $ist January, 1906.
 
 II 
 
 A THICK morning mist hung over land 
 and sea when we reached Table Bay 
 at daybreak and groped our way 
 slowly towards the Dock Pier. 
 
 On deck I found a fellow-passenger, the 
 Premier of the Cape Government, who had 
 already received a communication from the 
 shore. He courteously gave it to me, remark- 
 ing, "This will interest you." It was the 
 result of the General Election in the United 
 Kingdom cabled up to date, January 22nd, 
 1906. The little piece of paper handed to 
 me by the courteous passenger held England's' 
 verdict. 
 
 Meanwhile, the mists had been rising. 
 The Lion's Head first shook its shaggy 
 frontlet free of cloud, then the old Table 
 crumpled up its snow-white cover and rolled 
 it on to the Devil's Peak, and even he, too, 
 began to shovel it farther away into the bay 
 that is called " False."
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 Six and a half years had passed since I 
 had last looked at these matchless mountains, 
 and these intervening years had done a good 
 deal for Cape Town. It would have been 
 strange if they had not done so. Of the two 
 or three hundred millions of British gold 
 poured out in the cause of whatever the 
 long-expected official history of the war will 
 finally decide for us, an immense amount 
 had fallen upon Cape Town. The vast 
 incoming flood of the precious metal had 
 met at this point the outgoing tide from 
 Johannesburg, and a great and immediate 
 prosperity had arisen. It was, of course, 
 fictitious, and it has now wholly disappeared, 
 carrying away in the final ebb not a little of 
 the natural normal growth of peace that the 
 place had known previous to the war. 
 
 Traces of the abnormal prosperity, how- 
 ever, were still to be seen. The small 
 tin - roofed, single-storied, khaki - coloured 
 houses had doubled in number, and had 
 spread out along the base of Table Mountain 
 east and west, making on one side havoc 
 in that beautiful forest of southern oak tree 
 and stone pine which the old settlers had 
 
 15
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 planted by Rondebosch and Wynberg more 
 than a century earlier. The great commer- 
 cial house-blocks were to be seen in the 
 principal streets ; but those many-piled flats 
 were empty like the docks, out of which 
 the trade that would support them must 
 come. "These great buildings," said an 
 eminent banking authority to me, "if sold 
 to-day, would not realize a fourth part of 
 what they cost to build four years ago." 
 
 And the lesser things are as the greater. 
 " Before the war," said the secretary of a 
 charitable employment organization, "if a 
 tailor applied to me for work I could get 
 him employment as a bootmaker now 
 nobody will have him." But there must 
 be the silver lining even to the cloud of 
 the tailor's trouble, and doubtless, under 
 such depressed economic conditions as those 
 described by my informant, the bootmakers 
 were sticking closer to their lasts than in 
 the pre-war days, and misfits in clothes and 
 boots were fewer. 
 
 One high authority on trade took a more 
 hopeful view of matters. There was a marked 
 increase, he said, in the newspaper and 
 
 16
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 magazine literature received by the mail from 
 England, but it seemed to me that even the 
 advantages of the London daily press and 
 the monthly magazines might be paid for 
 at too high a price ; and with customs 
 receipts and railway returns at their present 
 depressed state, the bookstall business could 
 not be relied on as a measure of economic 
 improvement. 
 
 And as it was in the larger lines, so was 
 it in smaller matters. The four-horse coach 
 that used to run daily around the mountain, 
 covering its five and twenty or thirty miles 
 over the Victoria Road, through scenery not 
 easily to be paralleled in the world, no 
 longer exists. The traveller who would 
 now see the back of Table Mountain, the 
 Twelve Apostle Mountains, and the secluded 
 bays, whose waters come cold from the 
 Southern Ocean, must make the journey in 
 the humble Cape cart. 
 
 And the worst of it is that the gas seems to 
 be still escaping from the balloon. The bed- 
 rock of depression has not yet been reached. 
 
 That it will be reached some day I have 
 little doubt. The glory of South Africa's 
 
 17 c
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 chief city cannot have permanently departed. 
 No other site in the entire African continent 
 compares with this one, either in scenery, 
 climate, verdure, wood, water, salubrity, or 
 association. South Africa has a good deal 
 of the " weary land " about it ; but the Cape 
 Peninsula is always soft, beautiful, restful. 
 For fifty years man has been doing much to 
 spoil it, but it defies him. This giant rock 
 does not throw his ever-changing shadows 
 upon a weary land ; they fall upon trees, 
 flowers, odorous plants, oak groves and pine- 
 woods, heathy hills and arum-lilied vales, 
 and around the Peninsula the Indian and 
 Atlantic Oceans stretch out clasping arms of 
 blue water to freshen and cool the atmo- 
 sphere when the sun in December is at 
 zenith power, and man's shadow falls short 
 upon the ground. Seventy inches of rain 
 fall annually upon the forehead of the giant, 
 and it is that rainfall which gives all this 
 verdure to his knees, ankles, and feet, and 
 enables a couple of hundred thousand human 
 beings to dwell upon them. 
 
 He is a noble-looking giant as well as 
 a beneficent one. It is worth coming all 
 
 18
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 these miles to see him. They tell you he 
 is at his best at sunrise and sunset, but I 
 doubt whether his midnight aspect is not 
 grander still. You may sometimes see him 
 then crowned with the Southern Cross, or 
 having a crescent moon over his forehead, 
 and once from the gardens of the big hotel 
 which is at his feet, I saw him under a 
 lustrous moon, unrolling a gigantic and 
 never-ending mantle of whitest snow-cloud 
 from his head and shoulders, a robe too 
 pure to touch the baser earth below, for it 
 continually dissolved, or frayed itself into 
 nothing among the boulders at the base. 
 
 I spent a couple of hours recently with 
 one of South Africa's most gifted sons.'" We 
 went to the western side of the Lion's Head, 
 where the waves that daunted Diaz are 
 still at work, and my friend explained the 
 foundations upon which the superstructure 
 of the mountain rests. When the tide is 
 low these granite foundations can be traced, 
 and the wearing away of the waves followed 
 through " intrusions " of felspar and sand- 
 stone. What has been done can be seen 
 
 * Dr. Kolbe, D.D. 
 19
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 aloft on the sky-line. How it was done can 
 be read below in the sea, for the immense 
 mass of mountain was once underneath the 
 ocean, perhaps many times below it. The 
 waves are at their work below still, and so 
 are the sun and the winds above ; but it is 
 such slow work that the birds can beat it 
 by berries, and the pine cones build more 
 earth below than the table-top aloft loses 
 from storm and sun. 
 
 I fear that this excellent hostel in which 
 I stay has fallen upon less propitious times 
 than were those of its early days. It was 
 opened shortly before the war. The conflict 
 brought crowds to it. Magnates abandon- 
 ing the golden city found here a genial 
 shelter. Although it had been named after 
 a great naval hero, it became familiarly 
 designated as "the Helots' Home." To this 
 delightful abode there came a corresponding 
 crowd of ladies from England. They were 
 intent, it was said, upon sharing and allevi- 
 ating some at least of the horrors of war. 
 Under conflicting conditions of this nature, 
 amusement becomes a duty. " The sounds 
 of revelry by night " were unceasing ; there 
 
 20
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 were visits to hospitals and convalescent 
 homes by day. Cynical people set them- 
 selves in opposition to these mixed revels 
 and reliefs ; they wrote and spoke hard 
 things about "a plague of women." 
 
 It was unfair to the fair. In describing 
 the departed glories of the establishment to 
 me, a denizen of the time said "there were 
 seven widows at one time in the house." 
 The number of the less severely bereaved 
 ones known as " grass widows " is not re- 
 corded, but it is certain they were very 
 numerously represented, and that they must 
 have shared in some degree at least the 
 sorrows of their real sisterhood can be sur- 
 mised from an undisputed manifestation of 
 grief, which was said to have occurred on 
 more than one occasion when the hair of 
 some mourner was observed to have become 
 the colour of straw in a single night. 
 
 This, too, became subject of cavil. A 
 sailor visiting one of these assemblies during 
 the war, is reported to have remarked that 
 " he didn't see anything of our great admiral, 
 but there seemed to be a good deal of Lady 
 Hamilton about." After all, these things 
 21
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 are merely matters of convention. In Asia 
 the bereaved one sprinkles ashes upon her 
 head, and longs to take her place in the 
 suttee. Why should a Western widow have 
 anything cynical said about her if she elects 
 to establish herself on a settee, with the halo 
 of a golden sorrow glittering around her 
 head? 
 
 I miss some old friends that used to be 
 in the streets here. There was a double 
 row of old stone-pines, bordering the market- 
 place outside the gate of the castle. They 
 were cut down a few years since by order 
 of the municipal authorities, I am told. I 
 ask why these nice old things were destroyed. 
 It is true they were not progressive ; they 
 had been one hundred years there ; they had 
 become, after the manner of stone-pines, a 
 bit ragged in the stems, but their dark 
 umbrella-tops were still full of life. At all 
 events, it has since been discovered by 
 reference to the Colonial archives that they 
 had been planted immediately after the 
 British occupation, and that a grant of 
 English money had been made for the 
 purpose. 
 
 22
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 Somebody might have put in a word for 
 them under the plea of their being a 
 "ragged - school," children, black, brown, 
 and white, used to sit and play in their 
 shade and the wind often held an evening 
 class of music in their " ragged " branches. 
 
 " The Devil has great power in South 
 Africa," was the remark of a high ecclesi- 
 astic to me many years ago. But be that 
 as it may, the Devil is very sick to-day. 
 He has had his feast, and even he could 
 not digest it. And the public are in the 
 same plight too. The best are puzzled, 
 the worst are less aggressive. Thousands 
 who never thought, or thought but little, 
 in the old times, think now they think 
 because they saw, and they see they saw 
 the land reduced to desolation and death, 
 and they see now that it hasn't paid no, 
 not even the undertakers. 
 
 Retrenchment, not expenditure, has now 
 to be practised ; places are abolished, wages 
 lowered, staffs reduced. The pressure of 
 what the leading progressive journal calls 
 the " the unparelleled depression " now 
 existing is felt everywhere. 
 
 23
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 The seamy side of what is called " Im- 
 perialism " is exposed to view, and those 
 who, six years ago, were loudest in their 
 demands for the immediate and uncon- 
 ditional destruction of the gold-laying goose, 
 now speak of " the inefficient conduct of the 
 war," of "the untoward events that followed 
 its close," of " the appalling increase in the 
 birth-rate of the coloured population," and 
 of "the terrible decrease in that of the 
 European population." 
 
 As for the reduction in wages, it seems 
 to me that it would have caused less heart- 
 burning had it been a levy en masse, run- 
 ning from top to bottom of the social and 
 official ladder. Then some of the abolitions 
 strike one as being unfortunate one par- 
 ticularly so. It was that of the historio- 
 grapher of South Africa, a writer whose 
 careful research, just judgment, and absolute 
 impartiality of treatment had made his name 
 well known in the literary world. 
 
 What a world of contradiction is this 
 South Africa ! At the same moment that 
 this distinguished historian is removed from 
 his official position not a highly paid one, 
 
 24
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 either we have before us the prolonged 
 delays that have arisen in the publication of 
 the official " History of the War in South 
 Africa," the cost of the preparation of which 
 is said to amount, even in its incomplete 
 state, to an immense sum of money. Surely 
 this was a subject upon which the services 
 of this trained and practised writer might 
 have been utilized with advantage, if it be 
 not inevitable in this case that the celebrated 
 definition of the master-maker of history is 
 to be realized once again. 
 
 CAPETOWN, 
 
 February, 1906.
 
 Ill 
 
 GOING from Cape Town to Johannes- 
 burg, the traveller will not have 
 traversed the first hundred of the 
 round thousand miles between the two cities 
 before he realizes the truth of the old Dutch 
 saying, "If you are wise, settle within sight 
 of Table Mountain." Thirty or forty miles 
 inland you are still in the region of the dark 
 stone-pine, the bright southern oak, the 
 green vineyard, thick with black-grape 
 bunches ; peach and nectarine orchards 
 spread around ; old gabled farmhouses with 
 snow-white walls and dark-brown thatched 
 roofs dot the landscape, while beyond these 
 bits of old Holland set in the sunshine splen- 
 dour of Southern France one sees, rising in 
 wonderful and fantastic shapes, the Dracken- 
 stein Mountains, with peaks and precipices 
 so sharp and jagged that for once Nature 
 seems to have made a mistake, building the 
 buttress rocks so abrupt and pitching peaks 
 
 26
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 so straight that they must fall before the 
 storms of winter. 
 
 Placed in the fairest spot of this fair district 
 is the Paarl (the Pearl) of the early settlers, 
 an old Dutch and Huguenot gem set in a 
 frame of opal-coloured mountains, and kept 
 ever bright and fresh by the waters of the 
 Berg River, flowing from the Drackenstein 
 to the sea. 
 
 But the lesson of all South Africa is soon 
 taught on this journey ; no stage shifts its 
 scenes so rapidly. Table Mountain is below 
 the horizon, we are climbing higher every 
 mile, the houses almost disappear, treeless 
 spaces open out on either side, until at a 
 distance of one hundred miles, as the crow 
 flies, from Cape Town we are three thousand 
 feet above sea-level, and all the waste of the 
 Karroo lies around us, and then for three 
 hundred miles more it is sullen, blazing desert. 
 The sun strikes fiercely upon a treeless world 
 of cindery rock and baked clay and spiky 
 aloe, while hot breaths of air are puffed at 
 intervals from the mouths of ironstone glens. 
 
 Some astronomical guesser recently pub- 
 lished an illustrated article showing how the 
 
 27
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 moon was originally formed. It was first, 
 he said, a sort of superfluous tag to the earth, 
 to which it was tied by a string-like isthmus, 
 which at last became so attenuated from 
 twizzling that the link broke and the moon 
 sailed away into space. The Karroo cer- 
 tainly supports this idea. It looks as though 
 it must have been the veritable umbilical 
 cord through which the infant tag derived a 
 precarious sustenance before she was cast 
 adrift, without food or water, to wander on 
 her own account ; and this conception of the 
 primal function of the Karroo grows upon 
 us, when the moon, coming up over the 
 eastern rim of this desert, looks again upon 
 the old dry "mummy " of its earlier self, for 
 then the dead earth wakes into strange forms 
 of beauty, the heat and dust are gone, the 
 iron rocks glisten into gold, the low bushes 
 become spikes of silver, and the rugged 
 koppies send cool breathings and cast long 
 shadows over the weary face of Mother 
 Karroo. 
 
 Some thirty hours after leaving Cape 
 Town the train crosses the Orange River 
 and enters the territory which is now called 
 
 28
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 the Orange Colony. The scene changes 
 gradually, there is more green in the land- 
 scape. A thunderstorm broke as we passed 
 the long bridge at Norval's Pont, the wide 
 river-bed was full, and the current, almost 
 the colour of the Nile in flood, ran strong 
 between banks of rock and thorn-bush ; but 
 though passing thunderstorms had filled the 
 beds of rivulets and flung rainbows across 
 the table-topped hills, there is a deep sense 
 of loneliness over the land ; many of the far- 
 apart farmhouses are still ruins, some have 
 been partly rebuilt ; the block-houses and the 
 wire entanglements are dismantled ; the small 
 villages, which appear at long intervals, stand 
 out bare upon the veldt ; few sheep, and still 
 fewer cattle, are visible. 
 
 Now and again a large vulture bird, or a 
 pair of them, flap away from the train to a 
 neighbouring koppie. 
 
 The engine is panting up that long slope 
 of one thousand feet which leads inland for 
 seventy miles from the Orange River. The 
 guard comes along the corridor carriages ; 
 he is a foreigner, and likes to tell of his 
 experience in the past. He tells of tens of 
 
 29
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 thousands of sheep and lambs driven in from 
 the surrounding country against the railway 
 lines, and left to die along the fences on 
 either side. "It was terrible to see them 
 dropping dead in thousands," he says, " not 
 a blade of grass to eat or drop of water to 
 drink." 
 
 After an hour's run we got to Spring- 
 fontein, the usual little bare village on the 
 green and red veldt. The small town has a 
 big cemetery. The sun is now in the West, 
 and in its level light the white gravestones 
 and wooden crosses stand out very clear 
 upon a green slope east of the station. The 
 cemetery looks so big for the village that we 
 ask the guard about it. " Yes, there was a 
 concentration camp of women and children 
 here," he says, "close by the station." We 
 consult a book. No wonder the graves are 
 numerous. There were between two and 
 three thousand women and children gathered 
 in here from east and west ; like the sheep, 
 except that they had food and water, they 
 died plentifully all the same. 
 
 In the month of October, 1901, the death- 
 rate among the children, the book says, was 
 
 30
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 480 per thousand per annum. But that was 
 nothing. A hundred miles further north, at a 
 place called Brandfort, the children died in 
 this same month of October at the rate of 
 1951 per thousand per annum, which in 
 plain unstatistical English means that the 
 whole of the child-population would have 
 been exterminated in six months if that rate 
 of mortality continued. This camp at Spring- 
 fontein was only a sort of " East End " 
 opening on the long path of the Boer Via 
 Dolorosa. 
 
 In Brandfort, further north, more than 
 one thousand women and children perished 
 in a few months, but it will be black night 
 when the train reaches there, and we shall 
 not have even an old moon to show us the 
 thousand and one white stones which mark 
 that " Queen's Gate " on the Boer woman's 
 road to heaven. " Stagger humanity " in- 
 deed ! What did old Kruger know about 
 such a thing ? He was only a poor lion- 
 hunter, who could cut off half his own hand, 
 when a gunshot had shattered it. We are 
 of sterner stuff. 
 
 We continue north ; some stations appear 
 
 31
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 to be nothing but a platform and a name- 
 board. They would seem to have been 
 making new stopping-places recently, or 
 changing the names of old ones. We pass 
 a big board with " Highbury " painted large 
 upon it. The name sets us thinking. Why 
 " Highbury " here ? What is the link ? Are 
 "the sands in the hour-glass running low"? 
 Is the Orange Colony " a squeezed sponge " ? 
 Is there to be " another way of loosening 
 the knot"? It can't have anything to do 
 with "three acres and a cow," because that 
 useful animal may be said to have, since the 
 war, thirty thousand acres allotted in these 
 parts to its pasturage. Then another thought 
 comes : perhaps this big board was set up 
 as a sort of buoy or landmark in the veldt, 
 to mark the precise spot where the thirty 
 millions disappeared the " Hidden Trea- 
 sure " of that great land of promise, Johan- 
 nesburg. We give up guessing as the sun 
 goes down, and the gloaming begins to 
 darken the lower landscape, and what an 
 after-glow it is ! pink and purple, rose and 
 gold, sapphire and opal, all mixed with 
 bits of broken rainbows, shafts, and blades 
 
 32
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 of light. Thunder-clouds, lightning flashes, 
 and rain sweeps ; the big vulture birds here 
 and there still flapping over a darkening land. 
 
 Another hour and we are at Bloemfontein. 
 The station is garish with electric light. We 
 look out in the night at the lights and the 
 people ; beyond the town the outline of a hill 
 can be traced against what is left of an 
 afterglow. It is enough. A very slight 
 tinkle of the brain-bell sent through the eye 
 or the ear is sufficient to ring up a whole 
 vanished world of recollection. Thirty years 
 ago I went up that little eminence at the 
 back of the then village of Bloemfontein, in 
 company with the then President of the then 
 Orange Free State graduate of Cambridge, 
 member of the English Bar, later on Sir 
 John Brand, Knight Commander of some 
 British Order. 
 
 Twenty-four years later I was here again, 
 President Brand was in his grave, the village 
 had become a town, the farm-houses had 
 doubled in numbers, the wild animals were 
 gone. The Free State had grown into d 
 very prosperous little community too pros- 
 perous perhaps. Now I was back here 
 
 33 D
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 again. The people on the platform were 
 speaking Dutch and English, but it didn't 
 matter. I was straining my eyes into the 
 darkness to see what my brain was seeing 
 and hearing. It was the old President who 
 was speaking. "I had gone from Bloemfontein 
 to London," he had said (that time when 
 we stood together on the koppie), "to see 
 about some matters in which I had thought 
 we had not been treated fairly by the British 
 Government. I had an interview with the 
 Secretary of State, in which I endeavoured 
 to put the subject before him as fully as I 
 could. He listened with the greatest atten- 
 tion. When I had ceased speaking he rose 
 from his chair, unfolded a pocket-map of 
 South Africa, and begged that I would point 
 out to him on it where the Orange Free 
 State was." Such a thing could not occur 
 now, of course ; it was only old memory ; we 
 know more about our colonies and their 
 neighbours. The geographical distribution 
 of Empire is better understood ; moreover 
 the Board School system had been estab- 
 lished since that day, and wall maps are 
 now numerous. 
 
 34
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 The train moved north again, and the 
 lights soon vanished, but the ghosts did not 
 go out with them ; later ones came running 
 through the brain ten thousand times faster 
 than the train was moving through the night. 
 It was a memory of Bloemfontein again. 
 
 I had gone there a second time in 1899. 
 It was a period of great national elation ; a 
 new secret had been found ; the march of the 
 men of Empire was about to begin. Every- 
 thing was henceforward to be sold at the 
 cannon's mouth. You had only to fire off so 
 many thousand tons of lyddite, and shoot so 
 many million rounds of shell and bullets into 
 rocks and koppies, and then the new era 
 would open, all our enemies would run away, 
 we would be rich at home, powerful abroad, 
 and happy everywhere. Anybody who had 
 the misfortune to doubt this simple pro- 
 gramme of national progress was an imbecile, 
 or worse. 
 
 Six months from the date of that second 
 sight of Bloemfontein I was in London ; 
 events had moved rapidly. I called upon a 
 high official. I endeavoured to explain to him 
 the position in South Africa as it had struck 
 
 35
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 me in a rapid survey of the sub-continent. I 
 spoke of a hardy race of men, of determined 
 women, of an immense land, of many things 
 which I had been writing with persistent 
 reiteration to people in England during the 
 six preceding months. He did not listen to 
 the finish. "You may say what you like," 
 he broke in, "and very possibly your views 
 may be those which the future will hold 
 about this war, if it is to be war ; but as to 
 the cost and the difficulties, and the opposi- 
 tion upon which you are laying such stress, 
 you may take it from me, as a matter of 
 absolute certainty, that the whole affair won't 
 cost ten millions, and that the Union Jack 
 will be flying over over over What do 
 you call that town beginning with a B ? 
 before Christmas." It was then mid- 
 September. 
 
 Forty-three hours out from Cape Town 
 the train crossed the Vaal river and began to 
 ascend the long incline which leads from 
 Vereeniging to Johannesburg. Rain had 
 fallen heavily in the night, day broke over 
 the red saturated soil as we passed the river. 
 After an hour the clouds began to lift, and 
 
 36
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 under them one could see the ridge of the 
 Witwatersrand and the long line of tall black 
 chimneys pouring volumes of blacker smoke 
 into the rain clouds. 
 
 It was summer in South Africa, but the 
 city of Birmingham could not have loomed 
 darker in mid-November than this hill of 
 the White Waters under combined thunder- 
 cloud and coal-smoke. 
 
 A traveller came into these parts many 
 years ago, and he wrote a book about the 
 country, its present, and its possible future. 
 He spoke of the deer on the hill-top, the sun 
 setting through smoke of a far-off grass fire, 
 the great stretches of plain where no sound 
 broke the stillness but the wind in the long 
 grass, and the dripping of water down a 
 stony donga ; then he looked forward into 
 the future. A native had shown him that 
 day a dark streak or seam of coal laid bare 
 in one of the dongas, and his mind going 
 ahead saw visions of "great factories and 
 tall chimneys, pouring forth dark streams of 
 smoke, blurring sunlight and blotting out 
 sky," and many other things which would 
 happen when men followed that black streak 
 
 37
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 into the ground. I have been told that that 
 man lost money afterwards in South Africa. 
 It was said that he was behind his time, and 
 that he missed his opportunity, which I can 
 readily believe. There are so many oppor- 
 tunities in South Africa that a man might 
 easily get confused there, and miss them all. 
 A man may sometimes equal Boyle Roches' 
 bird, for he can be before his time, and 
 behind his time, and the people who stand 
 in the middle will abuse him equally in both 
 positions. At best it is only a case of legs, 
 for if the legs be weak their owner will lag 
 behind, and if they be long he will see over 
 the heads of the other people. But he had 
 need to be cautious about telling those who 
 may be near him what he sees, or thinks he 
 sees. Let him content himself with telling 
 them what they see. That information will 
 always be pleasant to them and harmless to 
 him. Meanwhile we are at Johannesburg. 
 
 JOHANNESBURG, 
 
 28/7* February ', 1906.
 
 IV 
 
 THERE is always something strange 
 out of Africa," we are told. But 
 it is only in our time that the full 
 " strangeness of Africa " is apparent. And 
 it is in the southern portion of the Continent 
 that the tree of strangeness attains its fullest 
 growth. The sun and his shadows go in 
 wrong directions. He is away in the north ; 
 they seek the south. The moon is stranger 
 still. She lights her evening lamp at the 
 off side of her face to that which she first 
 illumines for the benefit of Europeans. The 
 winds are all strange, too. The breath from 
 the north is hot that of the south cold. 
 The east blesses and the west blights. 
 Rain when it falls at all falls mostly in 
 summer. Many of the rivers never reach 
 the sea, and the sea only gets into the rivers 
 across shifting sand-bars, which makes them 
 hopeless to commerce. 
 
 Is it surprising, then, that under these 
 39
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 strange skies, and on this stranger stage, 
 the players should sometimes play strange 
 parts ? Is it surprising that names should 
 lose their meanings, and persons change 
 their natures, or that most undeniable and 
 undiluted statements of fact and truth, when 
 put in at one end of the ocean cable, 
 should sometimes come out at the other 
 end, like the moon, with the light all on 
 one cheek ? 
 
 Seventy or eighty years ago it was our 
 custom to send as Governor to South Africa 
 some old soldier of the wars. Lowry Cole, 
 George Napier, Harry Smith, George Grey, 
 etc. What did these veterans do when 
 they found themselves ruling this strange 
 land ? They turned their swords into pick- 
 axes and spades. The victor of Albuera 
 made roads across the mountains. He of 
 Aliwal made friends with the Dutch Boers. 
 (They built dorps and named them after him 
 and after his wife.) Even in our own day 
 you will find the last of ouf soldier heroes 
 Charles Gordon writing a year before his 
 death : " I declare I like the Boers." 
 
 Then we tried a different plan. We 
 40
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 stopped the tap of the drum and turned on 
 that of the shop-keeper. We sent out our 
 most peace-loving people. Statesmen of 
 Scinde, righteous - minded men, academic 
 men, men versed in the knowledge of the 
 Egyptian, men of the Exchange, the 
 Gazette, and the commerce of the Thames. 
 What did they do ? They went to war 
 at once. They flung peace to the 
 winds. They were consumed by a sort of 
 Napoleonic delirium. They scattered tens 
 of millions of money over the veldt. They 
 burnt everything and belaboured every one. 
 They were all for performing a sort of 
 Caesarian operation upon the womb of the 
 future South Africa. Do not imagine I am 
 criticizing them on their actions. No. It 
 was not they who did all these curious 
 things. It was the moon, working out in 
 her own slim way, the " strangeness " of 
 Africa. 
 
 I first came to South Africa more than 
 thirty years ago on the staff of the only 
 soldier who, in the course of nearly half a 
 century of service, impressed me as having 
 in him those qualities of mind and method
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 of which Clarendon has left us a word- 
 picture. "He was of an industry and vigi- 
 lance not to be tired out or wearied by the 
 most laborious of parts not to be imposed 
 on by the most subtle and of a personal 
 courage equal to his best parts." We 
 travelled extensively through the land. It 
 was horse, waggon, or mule-cart in that day. 
 The " strangeness " of Africa was one long 
 delight to us. A year before we had been 
 toiling in the most pestilential region of 
 tropical Africa. Some of us had all but 
 left our bones in that dreary equatorial 
 forest. What a change it was to the lofty 
 plateaux with the blue Drakensberg, the 
 snow-covered Malutis, and the endless up- 
 lands of the interior ! 
 
 One evening we reached a village in the 
 northern part of a Colony. Everybody said 
 of this village that it had a vast future 
 before it, and there was certainly room for 
 the largest future that the mind could 
 conceive. The town itself I have wrongly 
 called it a village consisted of about a 
 dozen houses, mostly built of tin, but an 
 enormous area of hill, vale, and plain spread 
 
 42
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 around it on every side. There was the 
 usual address of loyalty and devotion to 
 the Throne presented by the mayor and 
 corporation, and at the end of the address, 
 or in the discussion that followed it, there 
 was a request that the Governor and High 
 Commissioner might be pleased to sanction 
 an allotment from the revenue of the Colony 
 of some thousands sterling for the purpose 
 of carrying out a complete system of muni- 
 cipal drainage. One among the ten or 
 twenty houses composing the town stood on 
 a broad eminence ; the remaining structures 
 occupied detached points in a rather swampy 
 valley. When the time came for the High 
 Commissioner's reply, I wondered what he 
 would say. A town with a great future 
 before it could not be lightly gainsaid. 
 While the mayor and leading citizens were 
 speaking, I saw the Governor's eye taking 
 stock of the surrounding situation. " Gentle- 
 men," he said, after thanking the munici- 
 pality, " I entirely sympathize with you in 
 your natural desire to have your promising 
 town placed in a position in regard to its 
 drainage and sanitary conditions which will 
 
 43
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 enable it to fulfil the requirements of its 
 undoubted future, but the scheme you pro- 
 pose would be a costly one l and the finances 
 of the Colony are not for the moment 
 too redundant. Would it not be less ex- 
 pensive if we were to move the town up to 
 the top of that hill where the single house 
 now stands ? It would then practically 
 drain itself." Everybody was satisfied. 
 
 The secret of success in South African 
 administration has been not to take the 
 burthen of Government too seriously. Un- 
 fortunately for England, and still more for 
 South Africa, we have been in the habit, for 
 the last ten or fifteen years, of regarding the 
 ordinary occurrences inevitable to life in 
 the sub-continent with a terrible seriousness, 
 but still more have we erred in treating 
 lightly things that all men have regarded 
 as serious since the beginning of recorded 
 history. On the whole, it may be said that 
 if we accept the sun as he is and not as he 
 ought to be, and allow the moon to light 
 her face as she pleases, and live as much 
 as possible out of doors, and keep as far as 
 we can from a telegraph station (particularly 
 
 44
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 when Parliament is sitting), then the white 
 man's burthen of Government in South 
 Africa could be carried on with a fair 
 measure of success, even despite the un- 
 seemly attitudes of the heavenly bodies. 
 I have heard knowledgeable persons aver 
 that if Mr. Dooley and his able lieutenants, 
 Hennesey and Hogan, could be induced to 
 take up their residence on the Rand for a 
 few months, the knowledge that England 
 would possess of the state of affairs in Johan- 
 nesburg would be much more accurate and 
 extensive than it is now. I will not enter 
 into that question, but I think it safe to say 
 that if we had continued the old methods of 
 Government of the Coles, the Greys and 
 the Smiths, we would have been quite as near 
 Cairo at the Cape as we are at present, and 
 in addition have kept a couple of hundred 
 millions of money in our own pockets. 
 
 But among the strange things in or out 
 of Africa, Johannesburg is unquestionably 
 the strangest. Twenty years ago a man 
 found a chunk of rock which had gold in 
 it where the city now stands. Everybody 
 knew that South Africa was full of gold for 
 
 45
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 more than twenty years before that find, but 
 nobody had struck the metal in quantities 
 such as this discovery was destined to 
 produce. At first the experts would have 
 none of it. " It was not the sort of rock 
 that ought to bear gold," they said. But 
 they came, tapped, and debated. There 
 could be no doubt about the gold, no matter 
 how the rock could be called or classed. A 
 Boer was equal to the occasion. He named 
 the rock in which the metal was mixed 
 " Banket." The word solved the difficulty if 
 it did not explain the formation. " Banket " 
 is a sweet condiment which has small lus- 
 cious substances scattered through it. The 
 conglomerate rock represented the sugar- 
 plums of the Boer lollilop. There were 
 three " reefs " of this substance running at 
 irregular intervals through larger encase- 
 ments of rock in which there were no gold 
 pebbles or sugar specks. The three rich 
 reefs thus sandwiched between useless en- 
 compassing rocks were not only of varying 
 thickness, but also of varying richness 
 the thinnest sandwich being by far the best 
 in quality as though Nature when forming
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 this curious cake compound put the best of 
 her goods into the smallest parcel. One of 
 the reef condiments is some feet in thickness 
 another, the rich one, is only a few inches 
 through. The three reefs dip from the 
 surface into the bowels of the earth, south- 
 wards, at a gradual angle of about 45, and 
 the descent of man in pursuit of these gold- 
 bearing layers has to be followed into the 
 mine at that angle. Thus, when the miner 
 has bored and blasted his way to a depth 
 of, say, three thousand feet, he is nearly 
 one thousand yards horizontally to the south 
 of the surface-hole where he started. 
 
 Now this underground bore work has to 
 be done, with few exceptions, by man, and 
 man does it in this way : He squats in 
 a low gallery, or " stope," in the rock, and 
 drives a drill into its flinty face. With one 
 hand he holds the drill against the rock. 
 With the other he hammers, hammers, 
 hammers, all day long. When the drill has 
 been driven sufficiently deep into the 
 banket rock, the holes are filled with 
 dynamite, and the fuzes fired at midnight, 
 for the mine is then empty. At daybreak 
 
 47
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 the fumes and gases are gone fresh air is 
 driven down the shafts the men enter the 
 mine, load the debris into little iron trucks, 
 wheel them to the lifting-places, where the 
 contents are drawn to the surface, and again, 
 and still again, the hammers go on against 
 the ever-deepening face of the banket rock. 
 
 Let us go aloft with our loads of shattered 
 stone. They are quickly put through the 
 gigantic mills, which are howling and stamp- 
 ing- for them overhead. We need not follow 
 
 o 
 
 them much farther. Crushed to minutest 
 powder, drenched with water, sifted over 
 sheets of copper and mercury the white 
 powder gives up at once fifty per cent, of 
 its precious deposit. Another forty-seven 
 per cent, is extracted in three subsequent 
 processes, where the "slime," as it is called, 
 is treated with cyanide, which precipitates 
 the remaining gold to the bottom of enormous 
 tanks. Then follow various treatments by 
 means of zinc shavings, until at last the final 
 stage of the smelting furnace is reached, and 
 the pure gold emerges into brick shape for 
 the banks. 
 
 All these processes represent three great 
 48
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 forces. Flesh and blood underground ; 
 water and fire working through machinery 
 above. It takes about seven days from the 
 primal stage in the banket below until the 
 brick of gold is ready to be carted to 
 the bank above. Such is the process by 
 which this strange triple reef of the Wit- 
 watersrand is made to give up the gold it 
 has hoarded since the water, and the fires, 
 and the rocks were all one. 
 
 But it is with the flesh and blood part 
 of the work that we have to deal the 
 human labour which is necessary to hammer 
 and drive below in order to feed the 
 enormous array of stamps, cyanide tanks, and 
 furnaces above. We are here face to face 
 with a question which has wrecked Cabinets, 
 smashed reputations, and convulsed the 
 Empire in all the relations of its political life. 
 
 Until about a year and a half ago 
 this underground 'rock-boring business was 
 carried on along the Witwatersrand by the 
 black men of South Africa. In 1899, imme- 
 diately before the war, when the " industry," 
 as it is called, was at its highest pitch 
 of development, some 90,000 black men 
 49 E
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 sufficed to put forth enough banket rock to 
 give a monthly yield of more than a million 
 and a quarter sterling. In these first eight 
 months of 1899, 91,000 blacks and about 
 12,000 whites made gold to a total of thirteen 
 millions sterling, more or less. Turn we 
 now to the year 1905. Here we find that 
 95,000 natives, about 35,000 Chinese, and 
 some 1 5,000 whites produced practically the 
 same yield. 
 
 The inference to be drawn from the dis- 
 parity between the numbers at work and the 
 return of gold produced in the two periods, 
 goes far to establish the correctness of a 
 statement made to me in conversation in 
 July or early August, 1899, by the late 
 Mr. Seymour namely, that the reef on 
 the Witwatersrand at certain depths was 
 neither in yield of gold nor in working 
 facilities what it had been. The reef is more 
 difficult to work. The yield of the banket 
 is poorer. There is more labour, less profit. 
 It is not from lack of labour alone, as com- 
 pared with the pre-war days, that the mines 
 have suffered of late. It is that there must 
 be more drilling with less result. 
 
 50
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 Let us now turn for a moment to the 
 social and economic situation which the 
 mines have created above ground at Johan- 
 nesburg. Professions, trades, shops, hotels, 
 banks, agencies, newspapers, offices of every 
 kind have sprung up on the top of the reef. 
 One hundred thousand white people, of 
 whom 80,000 are men, have to live above, 
 while 150,000 blacks have to toil below. Of 
 100,000 whites, the majority have lived, up 
 to the present time at least, what might be 
 called " the sporting life." The cost of 
 living was very high. The pound sterling 
 in Johannesburg was not, and is not to-day, 
 worth more than nine shillings in its pur- 
 chasing capacity as compared with London. 
 But money came easily if it went quickly. 
 Everybody betted or gambled or did both. 
 The white miner who drew ^30 or 40 a 
 month in wages spent perhaps half of it on 
 himself or his family, and gambled on the 
 stock exchange with the other half. He, 
 like his masters, had his brokers. So long 
 as things boomed, he made money and 
 had a good time. He lived upon "booms" 
 quite as much as on banket-boring. He
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 frequently became a microscopic magnate. 
 He was no longer a miner in any of the old 
 meanings of that term. 
 
 How will it all work out ? He would be 
 a far-seeing man who would answer that 
 question, but here is a forecast of some 
 interest when we remember the source from 
 which it comes. The Jewish Chronicle of 
 Johannesburg, in a leading article, recently 
 wrote as follows : 
 
 " The whole social fabric which surrounds 
 us is changing under our very eyes. We 
 can at once characterize most of the cities of 
 the British Empire as England and Christian. 
 Not so Johannesburg. He who should pro- 
 ceed on the assumption that it was English 
 and Christian would soon find himself con- 
 fronted with some very puzzling situations. 
 He would soon discover that one, and 
 perhaps the indispensable, factor in the 
 economic life of the town is an element 
 which is neither English nor Christian, 
 and can hardly by any conceivable means 
 become either Anglicized or Christianized. 
 He would find if his own or any other 
 nationality were taken away the town would 
 
 52
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 still go on, but that if the Chinese went the 
 town would collapse. . . . Hence we conclude 
 that Johannesburg must in the near future 
 become practically a Chinese town a town 
 in which Chinese will be the most important 
 language, and where the dominant religion 
 corresponds. The old regime was the share 
 market i.e. drawing money from the Euro- 
 pean investor to the satisfaction of everybody 
 concerned. This must cease . . . they (the 
 men of the old regime) will now all be 
 glad if they can get out with a whole skin." 
 And then in the tag comes the best bit : 
 "The Jew is to survive the exodus of all 
 his compeers, because he will be able to 
 adapt himself to the changed order of 
 things." 
 
 No one can complain of the frankness 
 with which this article is written. It may be 
 brutal, but it has the merit of plain speaking. 
 There is no endeavour to prove that the 
 Chinamen will better the position of the 
 white man on the Rand ; no attempt to show 
 that the civilization of Europe will erase that 
 of Asia in Johannesburg. 
 
 This editor clearly thinks that the ethics 
 53
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 of Confucius will hold their own in the 
 compounds against the teaching of the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury. Briton and 
 Boer (happily perhaps for themselves) are 
 to have no part in this glowing future. Two 
 Asian cities are to arise on the Ridge of 
 the White Waters and the remainder of the 
 sons of men are to go into the Dead Sea. 
 
 JOHANNESBURG, 
 March, 1906.
 
 V 
 
 UNTIL the epoch of the war the labour 
 question in Johannesburg did not 
 become really serious. We have 
 seen aow 90,000 or 100,000 black men 
 sufficed to produce gold which 150,000 can 
 only equal to-day. But the war brought 
 two great changes into the question. It 
 made the capitalist masters believe that they 
 wculd be able to introduce a cheaper form 
 of labour into the mines, and at the same 
 moment it caused the native labourer to 
 think he was entitled to receive a higher rate 
 of wages than had been paid him before the 
 war. Nor could it be said that he was un- 
 reasonable in holding this belief. He had 
 been in receipt of four pounds a month and 
 more from the military authorities during the 
 war, given to him for work above ground, 
 which was in every respect much more con- 
 genial to his tastes. He had helped the 
 Government to achieve the conquest of the 
 
 55
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 Boers, a help which he believed, not without 
 some reason, to have been an essential facior 
 in that conquest, and now when that con- 
 quest had been achieved, its first resuli to 
 him was a proposal to reduce the wages he 
 had been paid in the pre-war days by more 
 than fifty per cent., and to lessen :hem 
 seventy-five per cent, as compared with the 
 war wage. It was certainly a most unfor- 
 tunate moment at which to propose such 
 reductions. Whether it had its roct in a 
 long-conceived idea on the part of the 
 capitalists to force upon the Imperial 
 Government that acceptance of the prin- 
 ciple of yellow labour to which all Govern- 
 ments the Boers and that of the British 
 had hitherto always objected, cannot be 
 definitely proved ; but it is widely believed 
 that such was the object of the moment, and 
 that the old game of forcing the hand of 
 the Imperial Government in this matter of 
 imported labour was again being resorted 
 to by the cosmopolitan capitalist who had 
 so far worked the lever of British patriotism 
 on all occasions to the advancement of his 
 personal aims. 
 
 56
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 Yellow labour promised several advan- 
 tages to its employer : 
 
 1. It was to be for three years instead 
 
 of for six months. 
 
 2. It was to be cheaper than black 
 
 labour. 
 
 3. It would keep out the white work- 
 
 man. 
 
 4. It was a possible lever against black 
 
 and white. 
 
 5. It would cause a boom in shares. 
 
 As to ^the nature of the labour itself, its 
 moral aspect, or its effect on South Africa 
 outside the Rand, these were matters about 
 which the managers or magnates scarcely 
 troubled themselves. They had not asked 
 themselves what a war between the white 
 races in South Africa would really mean to 
 the sub-continent, neither did they question 
 the lesser issues involved in this new depar- 
 ture in labour which was certain to introduce 
 complex conditions into a problem which 
 was already a deeply complicated one. 
 They saw only the policy of the moment 
 a greater yield of gold more rapidly arrived 
 at, the duplication of share profits, a quicker 
 
 57
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 passage from the uncertain seas of South 
 African finance into that haven or heaven 
 of all rapidly acquired riches the great Fair 
 of Vanity in London. And it is an easy 
 matter now for organized capital acting upon 
 the existing conditions of South African life 
 to produce an artificial situation which renders 
 the particular policy it desires an apparent 
 necessity to the State. 
 
 The compound system is nothing new in 
 South Africa. It has existed in Kimberley 
 for twenty years, and under conditions more 
 degrading to human nature than any which 
 obtain in Johannesburg. The extraordinary 
 influence which the late Mr. Rhodes pos- 
 sessed in England probably caused the 
 compound system to remain unquestioned 
 during all these years. It is now only 
 debated because it is associated with the 
 question of Chinese labour. But its essence 
 has always been the same. The best thing 
 that can be said of it is that it is a com- 
 promise between free labour and slavery. 
 That it comes nearer the latter system than 
 the former most people who know both 
 systems will admit, even though it does not
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 possess the worst adjuncts of the old slave 
 system, the horrors of the middle passage, 
 the barracoon, and the sale-market. From 
 these things the indentured system is exempt, 
 but it has features which the old slavery 
 lacked. The Kaffir who has come to the 
 Witwatersrand on a three or six months' 
 indenture is a less valuable animal to his 
 master than was the black slave in Alabama 
 fifty years ago, for whose possession the 
 cotton planter had paid one thousand dollars. 
 The slave had at least the animal value 
 which he had cost. The indentured " boy " 
 had not even got that selfish hold upon his 
 employer. Hence we have the long lists 
 of maimed and broken beings, the ravages 
 from pneumonia, the heavy death-rates in 
 in the mines among men in the prime and 
 fullest vigour of life. What is inconsistent 
 in this compound controversy is that we 
 seem to have swallowed without protest this 
 system for twenty years when it had relation 
 to our own black people, and to have become 
 suddenly alive to its evils when it was applied 
 to Chinese coolies. As a matter of fact, the 
 advent of the coolies to Johannesburg has 
 
 59
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 improved the level of animal life in the 
 compound. 
 
 The rooms are better built, the food is 
 more generous than it used to be. But with 
 all these improvements the compound system 
 is, and must remain, a horrible system. 
 " Tainted with slavery ? " Aye, even steeped 
 in some things that formed the most brutal- 
 izing features of that once cherished insti- 
 tution which our less fastidious-speaking 
 forefathers called slavery. 
 
 You have to live some little time on the 
 Rand before finding out the ramifications of 
 the coolie question. Half a dozen Chinese 
 will be pointed out to you driving in cabs 
 about Johannesburg or smoking cigarettes 
 at a railway station, and you will be asked 
 in ironic tones, " Are these your slaves ? " 
 Longer acquaintance with compound life will 
 give other readings. When the coolie 
 emerges from the mine after his eight or 
 ten hours' "shift," he enters the compound, 
 washes, eats, rests, and gambles. He has 
 no other amusement or recreation. All 
 Chinamen are gamblers. Every room has 
 its punters. Money is plentiful from Ah 
 
 60
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 Sin's point of view. A clever punter will 
 clear the wages of a dozen men in a few 
 hours. It is usually these successful "bookies " 
 that are to be found in the cabs in the streets 
 of Johannesburg. Sunday is the favourite 
 day for the outings of these experts. The 
 Kaffir looks on in open-mouthed astonish- 
 ment. Here is his rival, his enemy, disport- 
 ing himself in a manner which he, the native 
 of the soil, cannot hope to imitate. He 
 cannot take cabs or perambulate the side- 
 walk like this imported punter with the 
 pigtail. The thing that is certain in all this 
 babel of confused opinion is that the China- 
 man has come to add yet another factor of 
 demoralization to that already long list of 
 subjects which "civilization" is teaching to 
 the negro in the school of the Witwaters- 
 rand. 
 
 So far as I have been able to read this 
 Asiatic problem in South Africa, it is not the 
 slavery of the yellow man or the Indian 
 which is to be feared. It is his eventual 
 mastership of the land. Our modern Euro- 
 pean pagans are constantly asking their 
 much-to-be-pitied gods to reveal the burden 
 
 61
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 that is on their knees. The gods are silent, 
 but Buddha and Brahma and Vishnu have 
 their eyes set wide open on Africa, even 
 though their lips are closed to Europe. " Do 
 what we may," said one of the ablest of the 
 American mine managers on the Rand to 
 me, " we cannot get even with the Chinaman. 
 He always gets the best of us." 
 
 A glance is sufficient to show that the 
 managers are not altogether happy with 
 their new labour. The Chinese compounds 
 have many inventions and precautions which 
 the old black compounds do not possess. 
 More barbed-wire lines above the walls, 
 curious-looking hydrants fixed upon roof- 
 tops, and parapets with brazen muzzles laid 
 straight on the yards, ready to turn on a jet 
 of water " sufficiently strong to lift a dozen 
 coolies off their legs." When you walk 
 through the yards there is a look in these 
 queer-angled black eyes altogether different 
 in quality and expression from that in the 
 equally black, but quite level-set, eyes of the 
 negro. 
 
 The yellow man has had for centuries the 
 most complete system of secret societyship 
 
 62
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 in the world. The Cornish ganger has 
 had some remarkable proofs of the manner 
 in which this system works. He cannot 
 hammer the yellow labourer as he was wont 
 so often to hammer the black one. Curious 
 things sometimes happen. A blow is not 
 forgotten by this new-comer as it was by 
 the old. Retentive memories would seem to 
 temper tempers, even in a South African 
 mine. The Chinamen have a trade union of 
 their own, just as they had gunpowder and 
 the mariner's compass long ages before we 
 knew them. "You can't knock 'em down," 
 said an experienced Cornish ganger to a 
 friend of mine. " You can't hit them as you 
 would a nigger they remember it, they 
 does." There are some fifty thousand 
 Chinese coolies on the Witwatersrand to-day. 
 The magnates want, I am told, double or 
 treble or four times that number. I have an 
 idea that if the Imperial Government were 
 to accede to that demand, or, let us say, if 
 they put two hundred thousand Chinese 
 coolies on the Rand, there would be after a 
 little while no further trouble in Johannes- 
 burg. The development would be complete, 
 
 63
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 but it would not be exactly on the lines 
 looked for. 
 
 The Chinese do not like the mine work 
 any more than the black man likes it ; but 
 the yellow man has signed for three years, 
 and the black has only signed for six months, 
 hence the attempts at desertion on the part 
 of the longer indentured men. No person 
 who has seen the work and the life in the 
 mines can be astonished at this condition 
 of affairs. " It is devilish work," said a high 
 official in the native department to me, " the 
 men hate it." It is curious to note that all 
 the deserters who have been recaptured have 
 been found to the northward of Johannes- 
 burg. None have been traced south of 
 it. They imagine that by heading north 
 they will reach China. About a score of 
 Chinese deserters have been found on 
 farms nearly two hundred miles north of 
 the Witwatersrand. " They are going to 
 China," they say. "It is not so far off. 
 The ship that brought them went round 
 and round to make them think it was a 
 long distance." Probably some of them will 
 be found before very long in Cairo that 
 
 64
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 will be the solution of the Cape to Cairo 
 problem. 
 
 What is to be done ? That is indeed a 
 difficult question to answer. Johannesburg 
 has been taking leaps in the dark for a long 
 while. To escape from the evil of one jump 
 it has sprung into another. Raid, war, 
 cheap labour, Chinese where will the next 
 spring be made ? There is a favourite mine 
 on the Rand called " The Jumpers' Deep." 
 Will Johannesburg's next jump be into the 
 abyss? And meanwhile? Meanwhile you 
 will have to go on with the Chinese experi- 
 ment. They speak truly who tell you that 
 rapid removal of the yellow man would mean 
 heart failure and death. The Chinese are 
 at present to the Witwatersrand what the 
 administration of oxygen is to the sick man. 
 Stop it and he sinks. All this accumulated 
 mass of life has its sole root in these mines. 
 They call it an " industry." Let us accept 
 the term and ask in turn What have you 
 done with this " industry " during those last 
 twenty years if now you require the aid of 
 fifty thousand Chinamen to save it from 
 extinction ? You have induced the British 
 
 65 F
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 public to invest untold millions in your 
 schemes. They have given you all you 
 asked of them, even war and yet the 
 Chinese coolie is to be the last chance of 
 Witwatersrand salvation from ruin. " Tis 
 true 'tis pity ; and pity 'tis 'tis true." 
 
 " And all this time, while you were laying 
 the blame upon a dozen outside causes or 
 agencies, the one real cause of failure has 
 been kept back over-capitalization ; enor- 
 mous, unequalled expansion and inflation. 
 And you who would still rule and still dictate 
 are not to be the sufferers. While you kept 
 Johannesburg jumping in the dark you took 
 care to jump clear into the light to jump 
 into palaces and pleasant places, the very 
 glow and glamour of your agility only serving 
 to bring into your nets larger catches of 
 innumerable smaller fishes and lesser fry in 
 the waters of speculative finance.' 1 It is 
 impossible not to feel pity for the large class 
 of hard-working men in Johannesburg upon 
 whom, so far as human judgment can foresee, 
 the financial catastrophe, if it occurs, will 
 eventually fall. The oxygen process cannot 
 go on for ever. 
 
 66
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 The question that is uppermost in the 
 minds of the average white citizen to-day on 
 the Rand is not the political racial question. 
 It is the economic one. Like the traveller 
 in the old inn where the four-post bed had a 
 top which slowly and silently descended upon 
 the sleeper pressing him to death as he lay, 
 so the ordinary white dweller in Johannes- 
 burg begins to see what he believes to be 
 an elaborate and highly organized system of 
 capitalist machinery quietly descending upon 
 him, threatening to crush him out of exist- 
 ence. The fear may be only the nightmare 
 of an imagination overheated or disordered 
 by the fever of life on the Rand, but, as 
 there was a picture on the wall of the old inn 
 which served to warn the traveller of his 
 impending doom, so the modern sojourner in 
 the Golden City has had some very notable 
 disappearing landmarks to awaken his sus- 
 picions and arouse his fears. Will the ballot- 
 box save him while there is yet time ? 
 
 PRETORIA, 
 
 26th March) 1906.
 
 VI 
 
 THE stream of life runs so swift in 
 Johannesburg that yesterday is almost 
 forgotten before to-morrow has come, 
 a fortunate fact for the man who has to 
 steer the course of his inquiry through 
 the twisting channels of Witwatersrand 
 political life. 
 
 He has only to go back six months, a year, 
 or six years, not indeed to get " true bear- 
 ings," these are difficult to discover ; but 
 to find some new pretext eating up an old 
 one, some prophecy made void by the piti- 
 less hand of Time. Pretext is a hard 
 taskmaster. It demands either complete 
 forgetfulness on the part of the audience, 
 or a continuously lengthening chain ol 
 " terminological inexactitude " on that of the 
 performer. Let us look back a little. The 
 Raid was undertaken, we were told on the 
 highest authority, for the rescue and salvation 
 of the women and children in Johannesburg. 
 68
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 The war was for the heritage of the 
 British workman, free labour, free press, free 
 speech, free emigration, free everything. 
 This all-embracing thirst for freedom finally 
 resolved itself into a geographical expres- 
 sion ; everything was to be free up to the 
 Zambesi. One was never able to under- 
 stand why the line of freedom was drawn 
 at that river. Were we afraid that if 
 Freedom went north of the Zambesi it 
 might get into the Nile Valley and carry 
 from the Cape to Cairo an undesirable 
 commodity ? 
 
 The geographical expression solved diffi- 
 culties and silenced doubts. Zambesi became 
 another " Mesopotamia." People looked 
 for it in the map, and they who found it 
 equally with those who were unable to do 
 so, were more than ever convinced that it 
 was the place where the flag of an ideal 
 freedom was to be displayed to an admiring 
 world. 
 
 Then came the war ; other rivers inter- 
 vened ; the Tugela, the Orange, the Modder, 
 forced themselves into public recognition, 
 and the Zambesi was forgotten. The war 
 
 69
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 which was to have been a three months' 
 picnic took so many years that its origin and 
 pretext had been lost sight of ere it was half 
 over. But the prophets were soon at work 
 again. Progress and development were now 
 the watchwords ; the new white settler was 
 to come in, the old Boer was to go out. 
 Irrigation, railways, lunatic asylums, depart- 
 ments, expansions and extensions, all these 
 were to rapidly raise the land to a pitch of 
 prosperity such as it had never known ; 
 millions of white men were to make their 
 homes on the Rand. "The land of the 
 Republic is now being cleansed by fire and 
 sword," wrote one prophet, whose name, I 
 think, rhymed with or resembled Moloch. 
 "The changes which will ensue through 
 enlightened government in the Transvaal 
 will be so great, that they will affect the 
 other colonies as well ; all will share in the 
 coming progress ; there will be a new South 
 Africa. . . . Besides supporting a pros- 
 perous population, and repaying tenfold any 
 capital judiciously invested, they (the mines) 
 can easily supply sufficient revenue to pay 
 for their own government, and provide a 
 
 70
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 surplus to repay any reasonable part of the 
 great sum that has now been spent upon 
 them." 
 
 The great alchemists to whose gaberdines 
 or frock-coats we had pinned our faith, 
 assured us that if we only continued to put 
 our money into the " slots " and " stopes " of 
 Johannesburg we would be richer than the 
 dreams of an East-End costermonger when 
 he is about to set out for South Africa. 
 Again the money went in, the handle turned, 
 and nothing came ; indeed something worse 
 than nothing came. Things ran exactly in 
 the other direction ; men were wanting food 
 in Johannesburg ; notices had to be pub- 
 lished stopping intending emigrants. No 
 person was to be allowed to land in South 
 Africa without a special permit; relief societies 
 and unemployed agencies were everywhere 
 at work. 
 
 For once South Africa was consistent, and 
 it was somewhat tardily discovered that you 
 could not destroy from eighty to one hundred 
 millions' worth of cattle, sheep, hogs, houses, 
 and household goods throughout a vast 
 region, and immediately begin a boom in
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 stocks, shares, buildings, lands and mines 
 upon the same ground. 
 
 If man did not live on bread alone, much 
 less could he subsist on gold, when that 
 metal was produced in a land upon which 
 every vestige of life, food sustenance, and 
 shelter had been destroyed. Still the sooth- 
 sayers were not dismayed, they did not 
 unsay what they had said, they only ignored 
 it, and went on again at promise and pro- 
 phecy. It was cheap labour they now asked 
 for, cheap and nasty ; the last didn't matter 
 if they got the first. Moloch was getting 
 desperate ; he had to lift a corner of the 
 prophet's veil. It was not white labour he 
 wanted, not even black ; it was yellow. 
 
 Here, then, was the final outcome of the 
 war ; this was the freedom, this the progress, 
 this the development. Short as were memo- 
 ries in England and in Johannesburg, men 
 remembered the promises of the pre-war 
 period. Zambesi, birthright, free labour, 
 " cleansing by fire and sword," all bartered 
 and battered down for a mess of Chinese 
 rice porridge. 
 
 Men remembered, too, that old Paul 
 72
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 Kruger had told them this would be the end 
 of it. He had said to the English workmen, 
 "When they have driven me out they will 
 drive you out." This was the beginning of 
 that last phase. 
 
 But the prophets had another pretext 
 ready. "Give us," they said, "enough 
 yellow men and we will employ more white 
 men." This was that particular form of half- 
 truth which philosophers have told us was 
 the worst falsehood. 
 
 And now a notable exhibition was to be 
 given of the freedom of opinion enjoyed 
 upon the Rand under the new dispensation. 
 During the earlier pre-war days, when the 
 British workman was being exploited as the 
 lever for upsetting the Boer Government, 
 three gentlemen had been imported from 
 England by the inner Rand circle as editors 
 of newspapers wholly devoted to mining 
 politics and interests. These gentlemen 
 were not prepared to eat their words at the 
 bidding of their masters, and to advocate 
 against their convictions the introduction of 
 Chinese. They had to go forced to resign 
 or dismissed ; their places were quietly filled 
 
 73
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 by more complacent scribes, and the secret 
 service was again victorious. 
 
 Still the pitiless logic of fact remained 
 obdurate ; shares fell and still fell, all values 
 decreased to less than half what they had 
 been before the war. The enemy, Truth, 
 seemed to be drawing near the inner citadel 
 itself. It was rumoured that men whose 
 names in the financial world have been 
 towers of strength for years, even they were 
 said to be in monetary difficulties. Many 
 stars of the first magnitude which had with- 
 drawn their light from the southern hemi- 
 sphere and fixed themselves in the northern 
 constellations (those of Taurus and the Great 
 Bear, for preference), resought the scenes of 
 their earlier activities, and again appeared in 
 Scorpio and Capricorn. But the worst blow 
 had still to come. The much-vaunted cheap 
 labour was following the old rule of South 
 Africa it was proving itself to be dear 
 labour, while it still retained all the character- 
 istics of nastiness which had been so readily 
 condoned in the days of its supposed 
 economy. 
 
 At this supreme moment chance or design 
 
 74
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 threw a last straw to the prophets. The old 
 Government resigned, new ministers came 
 into office. The soothsayers were quick to 
 catch their chance, and the cry of " Say it's 
 the new boy," rang long and loud through all 
 the various channels and press organs which 
 were still theirs to command. Nothing more 
 insolently untrue had ever been uttered 
 before, even on that great mount of menda- 
 ciousness, the corner-stone of Johannesburg. 
 
 These things deceive few people in South 
 Africa, but they are meant more for home 
 consumption than for the Transvaal. It is 
 a last attempt to confuse the issue, to delay 
 the discovery. Before the war the game 
 used to be called " forcing the hand of the 
 Government." It has been tried once too 
 often. It won't do this time. Government 
 by bogey is now at a discount. The plan 
 won many victories for the inner circle. 
 They won on the war and on the peace, for 
 they captured even the capturers. It is that 
 long succession of success that makes the 
 new position so galling. 
 
 They who for twelve years have " run " 
 South Africa as they pleased, and who for 
 
 75
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 half that time have gone a long way towards 
 running the Empire, now find themselves 
 told to mind their own business. 
 
 It is almost too much to bear. They are 
 busy at the old devices. They have so 
 many weapons in their armoury that they 
 know not which to use. One moment they 
 flag-wag, the next they threaten " to cut the 
 painter," the next they open negotiations 
 with Het Volk. Again it is an appeal to 
 the victims of the war, who are adjured " to 
 turn in their graves " rather than submit 
 to so terrible a disaster as dictation at the 
 hands of a Liberal Government in England. 
 But it will not do. Philip was very drunk 
 in the closing years of the nineteenth century 
 and the early ones of the twentieth. He is 
 sober now. He was drunk, poor fellow, as 
 many a well-meaning man from Macedon to 
 Monmouth has been drunk before, and many 
 an honest fellow even in wider geographical 
 limits will be drunk after him. But it is 
 with those who made him drunk that we 
 have to reckon ; they are with us still. The 
 point of their argument (which might indeed 
 be called the "Imperial pint") is ever the 
 
 76
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 same. If Philip drinks that draught again, 
 he will deserve his fate. 
 
 I don't think the working-man of England 
 will be deceived a second time ; he knows 
 "Jew-burg," his corner-stone, better than his 
 betters know it. Even if that multitudinous- 
 chambered establishment were suddenly to 
 start an anti-Chinese antechamber, it would 
 not deceive the working-man. It is he who 
 has the future of England in his hands. 
 That is what gives the inner circle of the 
 Rand its day dread and its nightmare. 
 
 So long as it had only the good old Tory 
 investor to deal with, the game was easy. 
 The circle fed him with alternate booms and 
 bogies, and while he was gravely loading his 
 old flint gun at home under alternate halluci- 
 nations of greed and fear, they in their agile 
 Syrian way were hilariously unloading their 
 paper shares and ventures upon him. 
 
 The last great " flutter " occurred only a 
 few months ago. It was called "Sallies." 
 " Sallies " were eight or nine pounds a year 
 since ; they are eight or nine shillings to-day. 
 "Coronations" which four years back were 
 ^"3000, are now at ^40. The gas is slowly 
 
 77
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 getting out of the monstrous balloon, and 
 when it is all out the government of the 
 Rand will be easy enough. 
 
 In the earlier nineties there was a " slump " 
 in Johannesburg. A deputation from the 
 Rand went to interview Oom Paul in Pre- 
 toria ; they were received by the President. 
 "Times were bad," they said. They had 
 lost their money, and it was everybody's 
 fault except theirs. The State must do 
 something for them. The old man listened 
 in silence, smoking. At last he took his 
 pipe from his lips and spoke. 
 
 "Gentlemen," he said, "you remind me 
 of a pet monkey I had once. He was very 
 fond of me ; he would never leave me alone. 
 When anything happened that he did not 
 like, he always ran to me. One winter's 
 night he was at my feet by the fire. 
 Monkeys never sit quiet for long, and he 
 kept twisting himself round about until at 
 last he got his tail into the fire. He did it 
 himself. Gentlemen, I didn't even know he 
 was doing it, but all the same he turned and 
 bit me in the leg." 
 
 That is still the game with the gentlemen 
 
 78
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 of the inner circle. When anything goes 
 wrong, they have a pleasant habit of biting 
 the Government in the leg. This time it is 
 Mr. Winston Churchill's leg to which they 
 have particularly attached their teeth ; but 
 they are equally ready to go for " the 
 painter," which of course means the flag. 
 When a boom is on, they wag it, drag it, 
 and brag about it ; but when a slump 
 threatens, or they burn their fingers in the 
 Stock Exchange fire, they are quick to put 
 their teeth into the " old painter." It is only 
 a little way they have, and no one, not even 
 the man with the bitten leg, need take it too 
 seriously ; least of all need " the painter " 
 mind it. 
 
 JOHANNESBURG, 
 
 March, 1906. 
 
 79
 
 VII 
 
 TO attempt an exhaustive treatise on 
 the native question in South Africa 
 in the limits of a letter would be 
 absurd. One can only indicate its bound- 
 aries, name its salient points, and try to 
 show where its greatest difficulties lie. The 
 native African has always been the Old 
 World's chiefest puzzle. He has played the 
 same part in the New World ; but it is on 
 his own ground Africa that he and his 
 question have reached almost insoluble pro- 
 portions. The native is everywhere in 
 South Africa. He is indigenous, strong, 
 active. He can do scores of things which 
 the white man cannot, or will not, do. He 
 has all Africa behind him and all the future 
 before him. He possesses qualities of 
 courage, loyalty, power of discipline, honesty, 
 and obedience which are not exceeded by 
 any race of men in any part of the world. 
 We are in the habit of speaking of him as 
 
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 though he formed a single stock from Table 
 Mountain to the Equator. In reality he 
 varies as much in character, and is as 
 different in race, as the Laplander differs 
 from the Spaniard. He watches, waits. He 
 is still a child in many things, but he pos- 
 sesses powers of comparison that are daily 
 growing, and he is expanding that faculty 
 of testing what he is told by what he sees 
 which we call criticism. 
 
 But perhaps the most remarkable thing 
 about him is the fact that while we need him 
 very much he does not need us ; he could 
 do without us, and under the present con- 
 ditions of life in South Africa nothing is 
 more certain than that we could not do 
 without him. If it be only remotely true 
 that the withdrawal of 40,000 Chinese from 
 the mines of the Witwatersrand would 
 cause the industry of that region to collapse, 
 what would happen if the 200,000 black men 
 who are at work in Johannesburg in mines 
 and other occupations were to leave their 
 employments ? 
 
 Roughly speaking, it would be correct to 
 say that at least eighteen-twentieths of all 
 
 81 G
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 manual labour in South Africa is performed 
 by black or coloured people. As we know 
 labour in England, they are the only 
 labourers. From infancy to age the white 
 man has his labour done by the black 
 "brother" (?). The white baby is rocked 
 in the cradle or wheeled in the perambulator 
 by a black. A native digs the dead man's 
 grave. A coloured coachman drives the 
 white bride and her white husband from 
 the white man's church. It is absolutely 
 and entirely true of this black man to say 
 that he is equally at home in minding the 
 baby or mining the mine. 
 
 And yet we are constantly being told that 
 the black man won't work. Tis a sermon 
 which our white brethren are never tired of 
 preaching. They were preaching it when I 
 was here more than thirty years ago. They 
 are at it still. Turning back the leaves into 
 the time of that dead generation, I find this 
 is what I then wrote about it at Kimberley : 
 "Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Aus- 
 tralasia have all sent their representatives to 
 Kimberley. The African delves in the mine, 
 the representatives from the rest of the world 
 
 82
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 buy, sell, and drink in the town." If Johan- 
 nesburg be substituted for Kimberley the 
 description will stand fairly well to-day. 
 Indeed, a philosopher might possibly derive 
 some comfort from the marked devotion to 
 parental example which, in this respect at 
 least, the present white generation shows to 
 that which went before it. Despite Mr. 
 Kipling's pessimism, we do not forget. 
 
 Still there is a labour distinction in South 
 Africa. The work of the carpenter, saddler, 
 tailor, mason, is still largely at least done by 
 white men, but that is because we have 
 reserved these trades for ourselves. We 
 are very chary about allowing our black 
 brother to acquire knowledge of the crafts 
 which would fit him to become an artisan. 
 You will see in the hotel a white house- 
 maid directing a black " boy " how to 
 perform the bedroom duties for her. You 
 will also see in every town a white carpenter 
 or bricklayer having his tools or his bricks 
 reverentially handed to him by his black 
 assistant, who, if he had been taught, could 
 do the work quite as well. The white 
 artisan is getting seventeen shillings or a 
 
 83
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 pound a day ; the black acolyte receives two 
 shillings or less. Hence you will be able to 
 trace some singular anomalies in this South 
 African labour question. You will find, for 
 instance, an effort to keep up or increase 
 the cost of white labour, and a similar effort 
 to keep down or decrease the cost of black 
 labour. Every white man, of every degree, 
 has an interest more or less active in reducing 
 the black man's wage ; but he has not a 
 similar interest in lessening the wage of his 
 own caste. 
 
 And, following this fact to its results, we 
 reach the reason why the cost of living in 
 South Africa is so high higher, indeed, than 
 in any other part of the world I have been 
 in. When you enter a native reserve the 
 difference becomes at once apparent. The 
 egg which is threepence or fourpence in the 
 town is here a halfpenny. The fowl equally 
 tough, unfortunately, in both places is 
 eighty per cent, less in the kraal than in the 
 capital. If South Africa had been a little 
 India in the matter of the black man's pos- 
 session of the land, his apprenticeship to 
 trades, etc., and if the white man was an 
 
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 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 official or governing caste, the cost of living 
 would be what it is in India. If, again, there 
 had been no black labour in South Africa, 
 the white immigrant would long ago have 
 settled down to the conditions of work which 
 obtain in all our other Colonies, and 
 another New Zealand or Australia would 
 have arisen here. 
 
 To understand this black and white labour 
 question we must go back a little. Seventy 
 years ago South Africa was a slave country, 
 both predial and domestic. The white races 
 grew up in the idea that the sole duty of 
 the black race was labour, and labour for 
 the white man. When slavery was abolished 
 this prevailing conception of the whole duty 
 of the black man still lived on, and it still 
 lives on in some shape or form. In the old- 
 time conditions of life in the sub-continent 
 there was no particular reason why the idea 
 should assume formidable shape. Grape- 
 growing, wine - pressing, or sheep-shearing 
 were predial labours which did not call 
 for labour on a large scale. Products 
 and wages were alike small, and from 1840 
 to 1870 the conditions of life in the 
 
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 From Nabobs Vineyard 
 
 sub-continent were easily met in the matter 
 of labour. Then a great change occurred. 
 Minerals and precious stones began to be 
 discovered. An immediate demand for 
 labour arose. Wages increased. 
 
 The natives longed for guns. The em- 
 ployers found that the possession of a gun, 
 with a little powder and ball, was a greater 
 inducement to a Basuto or a Zulu to come 
 to the mines than a mere rate of money 
 wage would have been. So they at once 
 offered guns in remuneration for labour. It 
 was vastly cheaper too. A gun which cost 
 ten shillings would be given to a black man 
 in payment for a month's labour at a nominal 
 rate of two or three pounds a month. It 
 was good business for the white man 
 "shent. per shent." twice over. If the 
 governing authorities objected on the ground 
 of danger to the State through the arming 
 of the natives, their fears were allayed by 
 the assurance quite truthfully given, I 
 believe that the weapon was only danger- 
 ous to its user. So the trade was not only 
 permitted, but war was even threatened in 
 its behalf. 
 
 86
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 The Government of the Orange Free 
 State of that time, wisely foreseeing what 
 this trade in gun-running, as it was called, 
 would lead to, attempted to stop the practice 
 within their territory. They detained a 
 consignment of firearms passing through the 
 Free State. An ultimatum from the High 
 Commissioner at Cape Town immediately 
 followed. A fine of six hundred pounds 
 was to be paid and an apology given, other- 
 wise there was to be war. The little Free 
 State paid the money and wrote the apology ; 
 and for five or six years things went merrily 
 at Kimberley. Then the crash came. It 
 was war with the natives from the Kie 
 River to the Pongola. The guns burst as 
 it was said they would ; but all the same 
 the assegai did much mischief, and Great 
 Britain had to foot a little bill on account 
 of Kaffir wars, which ran into over ten 
 millions sterling. No matter who wins, the 
 English taxpayer always pays. 
 
 This cycle of Kaffir wars had only just 
 ceased when gold was discovered on the 
 Wit waters rand. The demand for native 
 labour became greater than it had ever been. 
 
 3?
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 Good wages had to be offered in order to 
 induce the "boys" to descend into these 
 underground caverns. The black man loves 
 the surface of the earth, and the sun and 
 sky above it. But life was becoming harder 
 to him day by day ; taxes had to be paid 
 and clothes bought. When I first went 
 to Natal in 1875, the order for putting the 
 black man into trousers was a recent one. 
 It was good for trade, and necessarily good 
 for morality. A little later the interests of 
 morality were further advanced by orders 
 that the Zulu ladies were to wear blankets, 
 and to wear them high a proviso, however, 
 which may have been only a matter of 
 averages, for about the same period it is to be 
 noted that while the tide of blanket fashion 
 was at shoulder height in Zululand, its 
 counterpart in silk or velvet was not much 
 above waist depth in Europe. 
 
 But it has not always been in the cut of 
 his clothes alone that we have shown our 
 solicitude for the black man in matters of 
 morality and labour. I have had in my 
 hand the copy of a letter in which the state- 
 ment was made that an expedition had been
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 sent against a friendly chief and tribe in 
 Rhodesia, with orders to cut down the un- 
 ripe crops of mealies and Kaffir corn, with 
 the avowed object of obliging the " boys " 
 to go into the mines. When I turn to the 
 death-rate among the natives working two 
 of those mines in 1899, I find that two 
 hundred and forty " boys " died or were 
 killed in two years out of an average of 
 sixteen hundred at work. 
 
 These are but straws. Nevertheless, they 
 show the set of a current which has been 
 steadily gaining strength and direction in 
 the minds of many in South Africa the 
 idea that what it is the fashion to call the 
 inherent love of idleness in the black races 
 should be cured or set right by measures 
 of constructive coercion. If trousers-and- 
 blanket legislation, increased taxes, the 
 raising of hut rents, new grass lands, and 
 licences fail to induce the natives to develop 
 the mineral resources of South Africa for 
 the benefit, in the first instance, of the 
 capitalist, the European shareholder, and 
 the mine managers then other means must 
 be found to make them do it. This, scream 
 
 89
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 at it as some people will, is the oft-spoken, 
 sometimes written, and still more extensively 
 held silent opinion of large numbers of 
 people at the present moment in South 
 Africa. Now it is essential to note that all 
 these methods of constructive coercion are 
 neither, in their later development at least, 
 the work of Boers nor of the old-time 
 British. They are mainly, if not entirely, 
 the product of the over-sea immigrant, the 
 Uitlander of the pre-war days, and the new- 
 comer into South Africa. 
 
 NATAL, 
 
 April, 1906. 
 
 90
 
 VIII 
 
 IN what I have said so far about this 
 native question I have dealt only with 
 three distinct human factors "British, 
 Boers, and Blacks." But there is a fourth 
 factor hitherto unnamed, and one of enor- 
 mous importance. I have run over in my 
 mind many appellations by which this fourth 
 factor might be designated, but it is not 
 easy to find a fitting one. There is no par- 
 ticular country no exclusive class or caste 
 no religion and no ritual observance by 
 which he could be entirely and adequately 
 designated. But there is one name a new 
 dictionary one, I believe which seems to 
 fit him with entire exactitude. It is the 
 name of Bounder. In a recent debate in the 
 British Parliament a rather happy definition 
 of two political parties was given by a 
 Minister. He spoke about those who be- 
 lieved it possible to stand on one leg in 
 South African government, and those who
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 like himself preferred to rest the idea of 
 civil and political administration upon two 
 legs. It will be observed that in placing a 
 fourth factor the Bounder in the political 
 edifice, in addition to the three already 
 enumerated British, Boers, and Blacks I 
 am giving a still more substantial foundation, 
 as well as a new designation, which I believe 
 to be as apposite to reality as it is certainly 
 alliterative. But there is one point which I 
 would wish to make quite clear in connection 
 with the name I have used to characterize 
 this great "fourth estate" factor in the 
 political life of South Africa. I attach to 
 the name no social distinction whatever no 
 particular rank, hierarchy, or order. I look 
 into the dictionary and find " Bounder " thus 
 defined : " A boisterous or overbearing per- 
 son." That will do. I have known people 
 of that description in every degree and pro- 
 fession of life, and it exactly fits the particular 
 point in the native question which I desire 
 to press and to press with all seriousness 
 and strength. 
 
 The native African is essentially a subject, 
 subject to the rule and law of his kraal, his 
 92
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 chief, his king, but his chief and his king 
 must have brain as well as blood. Here is 
 an estimate of native character drawn by the 
 hand of one who at this moment, and pro- 
 bably since the death of that master of all 
 native knowledge, the late Sir T. Shipstone, 
 knows more about the black man than any 
 person now living in South Africa Mr. 
 William Grant : " Owing to the iron rule to 
 which for centuries he (the native) has been 
 subjected he is naturally law-abiding. He 
 assents to and complies with the law under 
 which he now lives. He pays willingly and 
 peacefully all legal taxation. He provides 
 for himself and family all necessary require- 
 ments. He never solicits or receives charity 
 at the hands of Europeans, and as concerns 
 his debts, he never pleads the ' Statute of 
 Limitations.' These at all events rank 
 among some of the qualities which attach to 
 the gratuitously abused native." And again 
 the same hand writes : " The iron rule to 
 which natives for centuries have been sub- 
 jected has stamped in their mind obedience 
 to law, and though in many cases the process 
 has been inhuman and brutal, the results 
 
 93
 
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 obtained are far too valuable to be lightly 
 disregarded." Yet again : " An indispen- 
 sable condition for the successful treatment 
 of the natives is that the responsible heads 
 of the several native departments should be 
 men possessing the necessary qualifications 
 to command their complete confidence, for 
 only under such circumstances will natives 
 accept the white man's guidance and direc- 
 tion." These extracts could be multiplied 
 indefinitely. The thing is the same as it is 
 in India, in China, everywhere in the world 
 where black and white come into relation- 
 ship. It is a lesson so old that we are in 
 danger of forgetting it. Thackeray preached 
 it for us in fiction, for he knew it in fact, and 
 when he drew Josh, or Joe, Sedley, and 
 Colonel Newcome, he put the bounder and the 
 anti-bounder into opposite panel portraits 
 that will last for long. Which think you of 
 the two men was it who won and kept India 
 for us ? The Collector of Bogglywallah, or 
 the old gentleman who died in the Charter 
 House ? 
 
 Here, then, is the source of our present 
 trouble, and the fruitful seed of our coming 
 
 94
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 trouble with the black man in South Africa. 
 The Bounder is abroad what does he know 
 or care about native character or native 
 custom or native law? "Boisterous and 
 overbearing," he rushes in where the older 
 men of longer experience fear to tread. He 
 has his own methods of solving every diffi- 
 culty. It is at these times that you will 
 hear him, as I have heard him, enunciate 
 solutions in broken bits of thought such as 
 the following : " Why not give 'em the 
 measles ? They would run into the water 
 then and die." Or this : "I'd like to see 
 four-foot (sic) of snow over the whole country 
 that would clear 'em out, that would." It 
 would be quite a mistake to suppose that the 
 tall, lanky individual who gave utterance to 
 this last expression of desire for Siberian 
 conditions of climate in South Africa was 
 of an unnatural or diabolical disposition. I 
 saw him a few minutes later taking leave of 
 an aged mother with the greatest appearance 
 of filial affection. 
 
 A recent writer upon South Africa, who 
 appears to have studied the land and its 
 peoples with close attention, has said that 
 
 95
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 among the numerous attractions to emi- 
 grants which the newer Colonies present 
 there was the somewhat unusual one of the 
 possibility of becoming a Prime Minister. 
 How magnificent would it have been had 
 there been no black or subject races to deal 
 with ! But alas ! all the difference comes in 
 there. If you cannot minister to the dis- 
 eased mind of a white man, it is no less 
 certain that you cannot " Prime Minister " 
 on such terms to the healthy body of a 
 black man. He will fight first. He will 
 not die out before the incoming Bounder. 
 He persists in increasing. Nature comes 
 to his aid, and Africa. Emerson knew it 
 all. His seer-sight saw it sixty years ago 
 saw it, perhaps, because it was in his 
 country that the true Bounder was born, 
 even if he was bred on some other less 
 expansive soil. This is what he wrote 
 about it : " Nothing is more marked than 
 the power by which individuals are guarded 
 from individuals in a world where every 
 benefactor becomes so easily a malefactor 
 only by continuation of his activity into 
 places where it is not due." 
 
 96
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 Certainly Nature has had many ways of 
 limiting the Bounder's "activity" in Africa. 
 She thins him out by his weaknesses and 
 her own strength. For the last twenty years 
 events have been pouring the Bounder into 
 South Africa. The mines and the wars that 
 arose through them have left strange after- 
 maths behind them. Arnold said that Asia 
 bowed her head as the Western waves swept 
 over her, and raised it again when they had 
 passed. But Africa goes one better. She 
 does not bow her head. There was a doctor 
 on board the ship I came from England in, 
 and he had a strange theory about mos- 
 quitoes and the spread of malarial fever. 
 The mosquito, he said, was harmless or 
 uninoculated until it had first bitten a black 
 baby ; it then became malarially affected 
 the mosquito, not the baby. The mos- 
 quito next bites a white man ; he gets fever 
 "black water," it is called and dies. 
 That is the whole process. Is this, then, 
 the great secret of the sphinx which Africa 
 has kept hidden for thousands of years ? 
 She or the mosquito has wiped out or 
 absorbed successive waves of Uitlanders 
 97 H
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 one after the other Assyrian, Greek, 
 Roman, Arab, Norman, Turk. Only those 
 races which became African have continued. 
 Asian Mohammedanism battered at the 
 Eastern Empire and at Constantinople for 
 eight hundred years before it took it ; but 
 when Asian Islam reinforced itself with 
 Moor and Berber blood, it overran the best 
 part of Western Europe in a century. 
 Stranger "even is it what this Africa did for 
 that northern race from the Vistula or the 
 Volga which we call Vandals. They who 
 skirted along the frontiers of the Roman 
 Empire for a hundred and more years, cast- 
 ing sidelong looks towards the great city, 
 got at last into Africa, and within the limits 
 of a lifetime they took Rome by the throat 
 and carried her plunder of a thousand years 
 back with them to Carthage. How quickly 
 the three hundred bishoprics of Augustine's 
 age disappear from Africa never to rise 
 again ! And to think that it was the black 
 baby and this little swamp-gnat that did 
 it all ! 
 
 I once came upon an odd volume of Cole- 
 ridge's poems in a far-away Hudson's Bay 
 
 98
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 post in North America. It was a season 
 when mosquitoes were unusually active. I 
 turned to an ode, an invocation to the mos- 
 quitoes. It began with the words, " Sweet 
 insect." I closed the book in the belief that 
 the poet had entirely mistaken the pest. 
 But now ? Did he not know all about the 
 mosquito even as he knew all about the 
 albatross ? " Out of the mouths of babes 
 and sucklings!" If this Bulawayo doctor 
 is right, then the babe and the suckling 
 for surely the mosquito is a suckling are 
 doing giants' work in Africa. They will 
 either slay or Africanize the Bounder. 
 
 Thus far I had written when I received 
 a letter from one of the Natal Ministers a 
 gentleman to whom I am personally in- 
 debted for assistance kindly rendered in the 
 matter of a recent visit to Zululand. There 
 is a paragraph in the letter which is of so 
 much interest at the present moment that 
 I take the liberty of quoting it here : " I 
 think the Zulus are behaving very well in 
 the present trouble. ... It seems to me a 
 thousand pities that such a splendid race 
 as the Zulus ever came into contact with 
 
 99
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 civilization at all." Until I met that Rho- 
 desian doctor my sympathies would have 
 run with those of the Natal Minister, but 
 now " civilization " claims a tear, and 
 presently we may find ourselves saying, 
 " Even though we knew thee well Alas ! 
 poor Bounder ! " 
 
 BLOEMFONTEIN, 
 April) 1906. 
 
 IOO
 
 IX 
 
 WHEN you have to put before people 
 at a distance some complex poli- 
 tical position such as that which 
 now exists in the Transvaal, it is not a bad 
 plan to take the position to them instead of 
 attempting to bring them to the position. 
 With this object I propose to make England 
 our Transvaal, and the city of Birmingham 
 our Johannesburg. We will, then, try to 
 reproduce on an English stage thus created 
 a counterpart of the conditions of economic, 
 social, and political life as they exist to-day 
 in that part of South Africa. The many 
 profound and conflicting questions which lie 
 hidden beneath the apparently simple formula 
 of " One vote one value " may then be more 
 easily understood by people in England. 
 
 We will first deal with our new Birming- 
 ham, dressed as Johannesburg. Then we 
 shall survey England attired, contrived, and 
 circumstanced as the Transvaal, and, finally, 
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 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 we shall apply to the people who dwell in 
 Birmingham and those who inhabit England 
 the panacea of " One vote one value," which 
 is now proposed as the sole solution of all 
 trouble, and the only guarantee for future 
 peace and happiness in the Transvaal. 
 
 In Birmingham there is one industry. It 
 is the production of a very valuable gas 
 from a rock which up to the present time 
 has been discovered only in Birmingham 
 and its immediate vicinity. This gas, when 
 produced, is taken immediately to New 
 York, whence it is sent to most of the 
 great cities of the outer world. The actual 
 part of this precious product which Birming- 
 ham retains is nil, the gas itself being all 
 sent away in sealed and guarded vessels. 
 But the equivalent of a certain portion of 
 the value of the exported gas comes back 
 to Birmingham, and in a lesser degree to 
 England, in the form of wages paid to the 
 miners who hammer out rock from which 
 the gas is obtained, and to the men who 
 transmute the rock into gas ; and a further 
 portion of the equivalent also returns in 
 the shape of money spent in banks, offices, 
 102
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 shops, hotels, drinking-saloons, at racecourses 
 and other places of amusement, as well as 
 in the food which goes to support the 
 managers, miners, engineers, firemen, stokers 
 who are engaged directly or indirectly in 
 this gas business. 
 
 Now, the first thing to note is that the 
 people who are engaged in the production 
 of gas in Birmingham are not Englishmen. 
 They are Irish, Scotch, American, French, 
 Peruvians. England itself is represented in 
 Birmingham by a small and insignificant 
 minority, but outside this great gas city, 
 even in Warwickshire and all over the land 
 from Cumberland to Cornwall, the sons of 
 the soil, the people of England, form a 
 large majority of the residential population. 
 And the next thing which is of importance 
 to note is that the difference existing be- 
 tween the inhabitants of Birmingham and 
 the people of England is not confined to 
 difference of race or nation. It is still 
 more acute and complex. There is what 
 might be called a domestic difference be- 
 tween the single city and the immense 
 outside country. The English in England 
 103
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 are all family people married people with 
 sons and daughters, home people with 
 cradles and churches and graveyards and 
 the rest of it. While the Birmingham 
 people, who have come from America, 
 Paris, or Peru for this specific gas business 
 they are mostly young men who have 
 either no wives, or, if they possess wives, 
 have for the most part left them over-sea, 
 and have come here as single men. The 
 conditions of life in Birmingham are not 
 congenial to family well-being, and this 
 manufacture of gas has, so far, at least, 
 not been found to conduce to the domestic 
 virtues in any high degree. Neither is life in 
 Birmingham of a permanent nature. It is 
 unusually transitory. It is the life of the 
 hotel, of the boarding-house, of the club, 
 and the taproom. There is much of the 
 swallow about it, and ' Here to-day, gone 
 to-morrow " would be a suitable motto for 
 it ; it would be true to say that a residence 
 of three or four years in Birmingham would, 
 in the majority of cases, be equivalent to 
 one of thirty or forty years elsewhere in 
 England. Nor are the moral differences 
 104
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 between town and country life less striking 
 when we examine them. The gas business 
 is intensely self-centred, exciting, restless 
 even to fever-pitch, grasping and aggressive. 
 It is always spinning round itself until it 
 becomes inebriated with the exercise. It 
 seems unable to remain long alone, even with 
 its own wealth. Have you ever noticed what 
 an overfed and too-much-indulged house- 
 dog will do if he is shut up in a room by 
 himself? He gets up, howls, and scratches 
 at the door-panel, or begins to bite a 
 window-frame. That is not unlike the way 
 Birmingham goes on. 
 
 This gas production generates other gases, 
 and they in turn produce new intoxicants, 
 mental and physical. There is the Stock 
 Exchange, a porphyry-pillared edifice, where 
 gas inflation was until recently carried on 
 to an inconceivable extent. Its foundation- 
 stone was laid with great ceremony by a 
 late High Inca from Peru, but so far it 
 has not fulfilled the glowing anticipations 
 which were entertained of it, and it has 
 signally failed up to the present in extracting 
 the same quantity of gold from the pockets 
 105
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 of the inhabitants of Peru as its predecessor, 
 a much humbler and less pretentious edifice, 
 succeeded in doing in the olden time. It 
 is almost harrowing to hear the lamentations 
 of the old habitues of this grand edifice as 
 they compare the booming days of yore 
 with the present sad and degenerate times. 
 * Then, if you bought in the morning and 
 sold in the evening you were rich," one 
 of them remarked to me. "It (Birming- 
 ham) is only becoming a big Chinese 
 compound, worked by a few foreigners," 
 said another ; and a third gentleman of the 
 institution, who had kindly volunteered to 
 conduct me to the summit of the Corner 
 House, whence an extensive view of Bir- 
 mingham and its suburbs was visible and 
 to whom I apologized for taking him tem- 
 porarily from his business replied, " Don't 
 say anything about it. There is nothing 
 doing ; not a stroke all day." 
 
 On the other hand, the general state of 
 excitement in which Birmingham usually 
 lived did not appear to have suffered from 
 this collapse of jts Stock Exchange. The 
 stamps by which the gas is extracted from 
 1 06
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 the rock seemed to be going day and night. 
 Horse-racing was of constant occurrence. 
 The grand stand was always well filled, 
 horses seemed to be continually going round, 
 the furnaces were always sending forth 
 volumes of black smoke, and if you hap- 
 pened to wake at night you heard the thud 
 of the town as though it had been day. I 
 once inquired of a man how it came about 
 that the theatres in Birmingham were so 
 well filled. " You see," he said, " this is 
 the way of it. Take a young fellow a 
 ' remittance man,' or a chap who has only 
 twelve bob in the world he'll put ten of 
 it into a stall to see Lizzie Giggles, and he'll 
 give the other two for a whisky-and-soda." 
 " And who are the persons whom you call 
 * remittance men ? ' " I inquired. " They are 
 young men from North and South America," 
 he replied, " whose parents and guardians 
 think Birmingham a good place to send 
 them to. It keeps them out of harm's way 
 in New York or Lima, and while they are 
 waiting for a job their people send them 
 money every month that's why they're 
 called ' remittance men. ' 
 107
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 You might, perhaps, imagine from these 
 glimpses of life in Birmingham that exist- 
 ence was a pleasant one there. Eighty 
 per cent, of the population are men, and 
 another eighty per cent, of these men 
 bachelors. Things must be quite lively 
 with all this gas production racing, betting, 
 theatre-going, and the like. Lively, no 
 doubt, things are. The statistics furnished 
 by the police authorities show great vivacity 
 of life. In the six months, from January 
 to July, 1905, ten thousand persons received 
 sentences for various crimes committed in 
 Birmingham ; eighteen murders were re- 
 ported, and there were more than seven 
 hundred cases of robbery and housebreak- 
 ing in the same short period. And this 
 record of vivacious living has been achieved 
 in Birmingham under its new dispensation, 
 when it had got completely rid of its old 
 English government, expelled its British 
 municipality, and constituted itself entirely 
 on the new Peruvian model, specially intro- 
 duced by the High Inca of that nation. 
 Personally, I remember visiting Birmingham 
 in its old dull (British days, when a single 
 1 08
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 murder sufficed to bring war between Peru 
 and England within measurable distance, 
 and when the temporary disappearance of 
 one lady, whose ''crown of wild olives" sat 
 uneasily upon her head was made the sub- 
 ject of Blue-book recrimination for nearly 
 a year. 
 
 As my readers may have anticipated, from 
 the few details of life given above, the in- 
 habitants of Birmingham do not manifest 
 any strong desire to make their stay in that 
 city longer than they can help. Their great 
 effort is to get as much gas out of the rock 
 as they possibly can in the shortest term 
 of time, and then to be off bag and baggage 
 to Peru, leaving Birmingham, or the ash 
 and cinder heaps which will finally represent 
 the city, to the occupation of the people of 
 England. 
 
 But in the contemplation of Birmingham 
 under the Peruvians we have almost lost 
 sight of the English in England. Let us 
 turn to them. You will bear in mind that 
 these English people are almost exclusively 
 "old timers" on the land. Their old home- 
 steads are no longer there, because in the 
 109
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 war which Peru waged against England for 
 the possession of Birmingham, the armies of 
 the Inca of that time burned down all the 
 homesteads of the English, and so devas- 
 tated their farms and houses that, to use 
 the words of one of the Peruvian officers 
 who went through the war, "there was not 
 a window-frame, or a door-post, or a bit of 
 carpenter's worked wood left in the whole 
 eastern half of" England. But in the few 
 years that have elapsed since that war was 
 concluded the houses have been rebuilt in 
 some shanty fashion or other, and the 
 owners, or those who survived the war, are 
 back again on the old sites, and at all events 
 the graves of the people's ancestors are still 
 there, and the outlines of the hills are the 
 same as they used to be, and the sun shines 
 on the home as it did of old. Cradles, too, 
 are to be seen in the rebuilt shanty-houses, 
 and the downs are showing sheep on them, 
 and you may even see some cattle again 
 browsing in the valleys of the Thames or 
 the Severn. 
 
 Well, as we have said, while eighty per 
 cent, of the Peruvians in Birmingham were 
 no
 
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 single men, so eighty per cent, of the Eng- 
 lishmen in England are married, and they, 
 with their wives and children, mean to live 
 and die on the land. Their home is here 
 in England, and they have no Peru to go 
 back to when their " pile " is made indeed, 
 the only pile that many of them will ever 
 gather will be a pile of stones for their graves. 
 Well, now, having carried our transported 
 Transvaal conditions of life to England, let 
 us go a step farther and put down upon 
 the two peoples, whose objects, habits, out- 
 looks, hopes, and aspirations we have thus 
 described, this great constitutional principle 
 of " One vote one value," which we are told 
 is to mark an entirely even and just balance 
 of power between English and Dutch in the 
 Transvaal. Where does the even justice 
 come in ? Is the bird of passage, the 
 swallow, which does not even build a tem- 
 porary mud nest in his attic at Birmingham, 
 to have the same power of saying what is 
 to be done with all this immense England 
 as the man who has dwelt here from the 
 beginning, and will dwell here to the end of 
 his life? Is the new-comer, who has no 
 in
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 family cares, and cares for no family ties, 
 who is intent on the most rapid acquisition 
 of money, who would if he could draw the 
 last cubic foot of gas out of the rock in a 
 week, and be gone the week after is he to 
 have, not, indeed, an equal share in the 
 Government, but an enormously prepon- 
 derating share of it ? For observe, this 
 shibboleth of " One vote one value " is quite 
 as misleading as any other of the innumer- 
 able catch words which have been coined in 
 the Birmingham mint and cast out by the 
 Caucus House during the past fifteen or 
 twenty years. It is not to give one value 
 to every vote at which they aim ; it is to 
 make the one vote of the Birmingham 
 Peruvian equal to three votes of the English 
 over the rest of England. That is the plain, 
 unvarnished truth. 
 
 CAPE COLONY, 
 April, 1906. 
 
 112
 
 X 
 
 WE have been told that the vote of 
 the newcomers into the Trans- 
 vaal will be the vote of intelli- 
 gence, of probity, of progress, of education, 
 and of all those principles of justice between 
 man and man which are the watchwords of 
 English life. But is it English life as we 
 know it in England that exists on the Wit- 
 watersrand ? Outside the language and the 
 racing there is little in common between 
 the two countries. This single "industry" 
 has called to life a great network of un- 
 English methods espionage, a vast secret 
 service, a mysterious machinery for " roping 
 in " a neutral or " freezing out " an opponent. 
 There are newspapers, but they are only 
 permitted to teach one side of the question. 
 There are bookstalls and news agencies, 
 but you will find it difficult to obtain a 
 Liberal journal at them, although you will 
 be plentifully accommodated with every 
 113 i
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 racecourse rag or scavenger sheet in the 
 empire. 
 
 There is an element of duality in the 
 life of Johannesburg which is altogether 
 peculiar to itself. There are, I think, about 
 a hundred and eighty-four gold - mining 
 companies on the Witwatersrand, of which 
 less than a third, I believe, pay any dividend. 
 You will find on the list of the directors of 
 these companies the same name appearing 
 and reappearing over and over again. A 
 single name will be repeated eight and 
 twenty times on the directorate lists. People 
 in England know nothing of these duplica- 
 tions, nor of the company meetings which 
 roll off one after the other at intervals of 
 from five to fifteen minutes like trains at an 
 underground railway station. It all looks so 
 big, so imposing, at a distance, so "spacious " 
 like "the times of Great Elizabeth"; but 
 follow it to its source, and you find a gentle- 
 man of Assyrian shrewdness and Teutonic 
 training in the centre coil of the supposed 
 colossal combination. The actor on the 
 stage of a variety theatre, who represents 
 a dozen different characters in as many 
 114
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 minutes, has scarcely a more varied person- 
 ality programme than a director of gold 
 mines in Johannesburg, to whom Chambers 
 of Commerce, innumerable associations, 
 leagues, organizations and societies offer 
 almost endless opportunities of self-duplica- 
 tion. 
 
 Scarcely less surprising is it to trace the 
 thread of supposed intellectualism upon 
 which so much stress has been laid to 
 follow back into their early environments 
 these would-be political guides, of whom it 
 is said that they are alone fitted by mental 
 superiority and gifts of education to be the 
 leaders of a new people along the difficult 
 paths of constitutional experiment. I ask, 
 In what colleges did these men pursue their 
 study of the principles of parliamentary 
 government? In what universities did they 
 graduate ? Who were the illustrious teachers 
 with whom they communed ? I endeavour 
 to lead conversation into channels which 
 may give me information upon those points. 
 I ask questions of old timers at Kimberley, 
 or of some pioneers on the Rand, and I am 
 told in reply that so-and-so sold ice-creams 
 
 "5
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 and cakes at Kimberley in the early 
 seventies ; that another so-and-so was said 
 to have been engaged in the fried-fish 
 business in the Old Kent Road before he 
 came to Johannesburg in the late eighties ; 
 or, that a yet older so-and-so spent his early 
 years in disposing of waistcoats from a hand- 
 cart in the East- End of London at a still 
 more remote period. 
 
 I beg my readers not to think that I 
 entertain any prejudice whatever against any 
 of the avocations named ; but partiality for 
 an ice-cream, a fried sole, and a warm waist- 
 coat in winter does not carry me to the 
 length of endowing early vendors of these 
 useful condiments and garments with any 
 special aptitude for the ruling of men, or 
 right of birth, by which wise statesman- 
 ship in the government of South African 
 communities can be secured. The main 
 diversities between the interests of the two 
 sections merge off into more subtle shades 
 of differences than any I have specified. 
 But there is this characteristic feature about 
 all, and it is that while to one side that 
 of the mines all these differences are and 
 116
 
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 must be of little moment, to the other side 
 that of the country they may be of the 
 deepest moment. 
 
 What the Transvaal wants in its true and 
 lasting interest is a sure and steady develop- 
 ment of its mineral wealth. It does not 
 need a rapid, still less a feverish, output of 
 its gold, any more than it needs a deluge 
 of water in a single night. It requires a 
 development of what is beneath its ground 
 of such a sort as will enable its surface 
 development to keep pace with it, to extend 
 its agriculture, to increase its irrigation, to 
 expand its forestry, to multiply its stock. 
 You cannot hurry the seasons. No matter 
 what laws you pass, the equinoxes will not 
 come more quickly. The development of 
 the surface of the Transvaal requires the 
 lapse of time, aided and nourished by the 
 wealth that lies below the surface. But 
 the mines ? Are they on the same plane 
 of development? It is easy to conceive 
 economic situations which are directly op- 
 posed to this idea, situations which may 
 tempt to the most rapid and exhaustive 
 developments. The more you over-capitalize, 
 117
 
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 the more you inflate share values in the 
 Stock Exchange and you have been doing 
 both for twenty years the greater will be 
 the effort at fevered development, all tend- 
 ing to the exhaustion of the mines and 
 the ultimate ruin of the Transvaal. It is the 
 difference between the gamekeeper and the 
 gamester. One does not want all the game 
 killed the next year and the subsequent 
 years have to be thought of but the other ? 
 He wants it over in a night. He will 
 double, and again double, and then quit. 
 The land may whistle in the wind for all he 
 cares he is off. 
 
 Yet another point the native question 
 that one of vital importance. A native war 
 on any large scale would be disastrous to 
 aoriculture in South Africa. How would it 
 
 o 
 
 affect the mines ? It is by no means certain 
 that it would not benefit them. It was by 
 such wars that Rome recruited her slaves 
 for service in the mines of the Iberian 
 Peninsula. Fifteen hundred years later 
 Spain filled her mines in Mexico and Peru 
 from the same source. It is not quite thirty 
 years ago since harbour and dock works 
 118
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 in South Africa were being worked by 
 prisoners taken in Kaffir wars, and if even 
 such things could not occur again a fact 
 of which I am doubtful it does not follow 
 that the state of abject penury which a native 
 war would inflict upon tens of thousands of 
 blacks, would not oblige some of these tens 
 of thousands to seek the mines in order to 
 save themselves and their people from 
 starvation. 
 
 For myself I prefer to go back to the 
 study of the old masters in all these matters. 
 Wonderful is it to reopen the old books and 
 to find how many were the things these men 
 knew about Kimberley and Johannesburg 
 long years before either place had been 
 heard of knew the lives that the people 
 would lead there, the things they would say 
 and do ; foretold the very thoughts that 
 would fill their brains, and even the tissues 
 that would form their bodies. Here is one 
 little bit about Johannesburg : " A terrible 
 machine has possessed itself of the ground, 
 the air, the men and women, and hardly 
 even thought is free." And here is a sen- 
 tence which many of the people who control 
 119
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 the " Industries " of South Africa might 
 learn and lay to heart, and many another, 
 too : " See what allowance vice finds in the 
 respectable and well-conditioned class. If a 
 pickpocket intrude into the society of gen- 
 tlemen they exert what moral force they 
 have, and he finds himself uncomfortable and 
 glad to get away. But if an adventurer go 
 through all the forms, procure himself to be 
 elected to a post of trust, as of senator or 
 president, though by the same arts as we 
 detest in the house-thief, the same gentlemen 
 who agree to discountenance the private 
 rogue will be forward to show civilities and 
 marks of respect to the public one, and no 
 amount of evidence of his crimes will prevent 
 them giving him ovations, complimentary 
 dinners, opening their own houses to him, 
 and priding themselves on his acquaintance." 
 Nor does the following passage seem out of 
 date when applied to some of our latter-day 
 patriots and heroes : "The reputations of 
 the nineteenth century will one day be 
 quoted to prove its barbarism." And did 
 not a certain great thinker see something 
 like a Chinese compound in Johannesburg 
 1 20
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 when he penned the following : "In , 
 
 in addition to the ordinary abominations of 
 slavery, it appears only men are bought for 
 the plantations, and of these miserable 
 bachelors one dies in ten every year " ? The 
 italics are not in the original, and neither is 
 it South Africa about which the philosopher 
 was writing, but these thoughts have the 
 eternity of truth in them that they are as 
 " claims " pegged out for ever on the con- 
 science of the world. 
 
 And meanwhile I hear the question asked, 
 What, then, should be done in the matter 
 of this Transvaal constitution ? I will 
 endeavour to answer it in as few words as 
 possible. Turn your constitutional scales 
 any way you like, they will always come 
 back to a level swing. It may take years to 
 do it costly and terrible years but it will 
 come back. You can separate Johannesburg 
 from the remainder of the Transvaal, make 
 it an independent unit in a group of other 
 independent colonies, giving it any rights 
 and privileges in reason, and then let it work 
 out its own destiny as it pleases. This is a 
 possible solution (and it is one which I think 
 121
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 was first formulated by Mr. Chamberlain 
 some seven or eight years ago) ; but attempt 
 to mix it with the remainder of the Transvaal 
 in a cunningly devised and dishonestly stated 
 scheme of what is called " one vote one 
 value," as that idea is at present planned 
 and understood, and you will fail, just as 
 surely as every other scheme which has been 
 conceived in injustice and formulated in pre- 
 tence, has already failed in South Africa. 
 
 And there seems to me to be another 
 course, easier, safer, and less liable to the 
 experimental and unknown. It is so to 
 measure and distribute your electoral areas 
 that while in a House of sixty representa- 
 tives the two great parties will have some- 
 thing like even numbers, there will be at 
 least a likelihood of from six to twelve seats 
 falling to a third or moderate party. These 
 would hold the beam of the balance and give 
 
 o 
 
 the ship of state a better chance of sailing, 
 with some degree of safety and success, 
 through the early part of its voyage. 
 
 I do not believe that the Boers would 
 even wish for a clear and definite majority 
 at this stage of their political life. But they 
 
 122
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 are living under a great dread namely, 
 that they will be handed over to the rule of 
 the magnates of a single class and colour. 
 They have had even ampler reason in the 
 past than the ordinary outside world is aware 
 of to dread this faction. It has pursued 
 them with a hounding hate through their 
 history. The men who are foremost in 
 this party the edge of whose animosity 
 seems ever to be on the grinding-stone 
 came among them for the most part as needy 
 adventurers, some of them in outcast penury. 
 They are now of great wealth. Even when 
 they had plotted and contrived the destruc- 
 tion of the Government under which they 
 had accumulated these riches, their punish- 
 ment at the hands of the enemies they had 
 gratuitously made was a nominal one. 
 Whence comes this unrelenting animosity ? 
 Was Balzac beholding it when he wrote, 
 " There is nothing so terrible as the ven- 
 geance of the shopkeeper " ? But vengeance 
 for what ? 
 
 CAPE TOWN, 
 
 2nd May, 1906. 
 
 123
 
 XI 
 
 IF books could have cured South Africa 
 or even alleviated the worst symptoms 
 of the troubles which seem to have 
 become chronic in her system, all would 
 long ago have been well with her. Happy 
 is said to be the land which has no history, 
 and happier would seem to be the country 
 about which people do not write anything. 
 A book resembles a prescription, only 
 penned when there is illness about. Some- 
 thing of the nature of our Distinguished 
 Service Order, a decoration of which a late 
 illustrious statesman observed, when in- 
 formed that his son had got it, " Ah ! poor 
 boy. I heard there was a lot of it about. 
 But he'll get over it he has a sound con- 
 stitution." As to South Africa, books have 
 been piled on books in endless variety, and 
 still the troubles remain. New doctors 
 prescribe new nostrums, and these in turn 
 seem only to generate new distempers. As 
 124
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 the tropical portion of the Continent has 
 been known as the white man's grave 
 almost since the time of Columbus, so the 
 temperate zone of the southern region has 
 persistently proved itself a great cemetery, 
 in which the reputations of successive states- 
 men and commanders have been entombed. 
 
 The native trouble which has lately 
 appeared in Natal is of very old standing. 
 Its causes are only difficult to discover 
 because of the multiplicity of the reasons 
 assigned, and of the various side currents 
 which influence the direction of the main 
 stream. I find the following entry in an 
 old notebook kept in Natal more than 
 thirty years ago : " The night before I 
 left London I met a gentleman who had 
 lived for many years in Natal. ' You are 
 going to Natal,' he said. * Well, you will 
 meet a man there who will tell you that 
 all the evil in the country is caused by 
 one thing. Five minutes later you will 
 meet another man who will give you a 
 totally different reason. Take my advice 
 hear everything and judge for yourself.' ' 
 Recently I visited Natal for the fourth time 
 125
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 in my life. I had met on the ship that 
 brought me from England one of Natal's 
 ablest Ministers, and he had most kindly 
 made the journey easy and pleasant to me. 
 
 The Colony was in a state of great ex- 
 citement. A telegraphic despatch had just 
 been received from the Colonial Office at 
 home asking information regarding a pro- 
 posed execution under martial law of twelve 
 natives, who had been tried by a court com- 
 posed of Militia officers, for the murder of 
 a police officer and a constable, and direct- 
 ing that the execution should be suspended 
 pending, as it would appear, the receipt of 
 this information. The facts of the case 
 were these. Resistance had been made by 
 a party of natives armed with assegais to 
 a patrol of mounted police sent to arrest 
 men who had refused or delayed to pay a 
 poll tax recently imposed by the Legisla- 
 ture. A couple of natives had been arrested 
 and handcuffed. A rescue was successfully 
 attempted. Shots were fired by the police, 
 assegais were thrown by the natives. Some 
 four or five men, white and black, were 
 killed or wounded, including the officer and 
 126
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 constable. The affray took place at dusk 
 Rain was falling. There had been a general 
 scuffle, and the precise details of what hap- 
 pened are obscure, but it is admitted, so 
 far as I have seen, that the first shot was 
 fired by the police, and that a general mttee 
 had then ensued. 
 
 In consequence of this, martial law was 
 immediately proclaimed in Natal. Native 
 kraals were burnt by punitive expeditions, 
 crops were destroyed, cattle were seized 
 over considerable districts, and two natives 
 were summarily shot by drum-head court- 
 martial. Twelve other men were to be 
 executed at forty-eight hours' notice given 
 by telegram to the Imperial Government 
 at home. It was under these conditions 
 that the Secretary of State had cabled to 
 suspend the executions, and to ask for some 
 further information as to the crimes and the 
 trial of these condemned men. 
 
 Thereupon Natal flew out. The Ministry 
 resigned. Indignation meetings were held, 
 and the action of the Home Government 
 was denounced from one end of the Colony 
 to the other. One man a gentleman whose 
 127
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 name deserves to live had the courage to 
 stand up in the largest of these indigna- 
 tion meetings and to protest against the 
 action taken by the Natal Government. 
 There had been no necessity or occasion 
 for martial law, he said, and even if cir- 
 cumstances had warranted the departure 
 from civil law, he pointed out that the 
 offences for which the twelve men were 
 condemned had been committed prior to 
 the proclamation. Further, he laid stress 
 upon the fact that the civil tribunals were 
 all in being, that the King's writ still ran, 
 and that there was no state of war in the 
 Colony to justify this resort to extreme 
 measures. He might better have talked 
 to the winds. But though Mr. Morcom 
 stood alone on the platform of protest, he 
 was not the only person who held similar 
 opinions regarding these sanguinary pro- 
 ceedings. Many men of the older order 
 were with him. Natal, however, does not 
 listen to its older heads. Other voices are 
 in an ascendant there, perhaps more than 
 elsewhere in South Africa. The Colony 
 was always remarkable for the possession 
 128
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 of a very advanced school of public orators. 
 Even in the old times it was sometimes 
 wont to fly into a rage on slight provoca- 
 tion, and a second generation begotten under 
 the semi-tropic conditions of the larger 
 portion of the Colony is not likely to be 
 more cool of head or less warm of language 
 than were its old and cold world fathers. 
 Even these old fathers could, in some in- 
 stances at least, talk big enough. Thirty 
 years ago, when Natal had a white popula- 
 tion of seventeen thousand souls, I remember 
 one of its most prominent politicians inform- 
 ing his constituents that the Government 
 of Great Britain " was a remote and incon- 
 siderate faction, who were heedless of the 
 lives and properties of the Colonists." It 
 was, if I do not mistake, the Govern- 
 ment of Mr. Disraeli and Lord Salisbury 
 which was thus described. The reigning 
 sovereign of that day was alluded to as 
 "a distant potentate." The small garrison 
 then stationed in Natal was said to be main- 
 tained, " not for the protection of the white 
 people, but for their control and subjection ; " 
 while, again, the weakness of this force was 
 129 K
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 cited as proof of the " callous ineptitude of 
 the Home Government, which ought to 
 send to the capital city of Pietermaritzburg 
 a force eight times the strength of the 
 existing garrison, in order to secure to the 
 Colony the blessings of peace, security, and 
 prosperity." And all this remarkable flow 
 of rhetoric, and much more of it, was poured 
 forth merely because Lord Carnarvon, the 
 Colonial Minister, had ventured to ques- 
 tion some high-handed acts of the Natal 
 Executive of that time ; and a bishop of the 
 English Church, whose name was celebrated 
 in his lifetime, and is now associated with 
 the scene of the most memorable defeat 
 sustained in our history for a hundred and 
 fifty years, had raised his voice in protest 
 against these proceedings. 
 
 It may be of interest to recall out of that 
 time a few notes then written upon the 
 question of bestowing responsible govern- 
 ment upon the Colony of Natal: "To 
 reproduce here (in Natal) the form of 
 government under which England thrives, 
 it is essential that there should be an ample 
 supply of able men whose social position 
 130
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 will place them above the suspicion of 
 interested motives, and whose private means 
 will allow them to devote their lives to the 
 service of the country. Natal does not as 
 yet possess men of sufficient means so cir- 
 cumstanced as to enable a Government to 
 be carried on in a safe and satisfactory 
 manner, and neither can the small body of 
 able men now here be expected to form 
 such dispassionate opinions as Ministers at 
 home. As we find in the religious world 
 the smaller bodies are more prone to ex- 
 cessive outbursts of sectarian zeal and more 
 bitter in their warfare of words, so in the 
 political arena we observe small communi- 
 ties indulging themselves more frequently 
 in minute animosities, the perception of 
 which would be lost in broader boundaries, 
 and we obtain evidence of legislation on 
 statements of opinion which are unchecked 
 by more sober thought or wider experience." 
 And then I come upon this bit about the 
 native question : " Immigration of Zulus 
 from Zululand into Natal will be unneces- 
 sary if Kaffirs (in Natal) are placed upon 
 a proper footing (i.e., on the land)." I
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 venture to give these old-time extracts, not 
 so much for the purpose of making time 
 my justifier as to show old Natal that I do 
 not now plunge into the discussion of her 
 troubles or her politics on the sole warranty 
 of a globe-trotter's return ticket. Old Natal 
 and I were young together. I have always 
 had for her a kind of second home affection. 
 Her lowlands and her highlands, her winter 
 snow-capped Drakensberg, her deep kloofs 
 and sparkling waterfalls, the magic of her 
 sunrises and sunsets these, and the memory 
 of friends, most of whom are gone to their 
 rest, have made Natal a green spot in my 
 memory. 
 
 But as I was not blind to certain pecu- 
 liarities which seemed to mark her collective 
 character a generation ago, I cannot be 
 oblivious of them to - day. They have 
 neither disappeared nor lessened. It is 
 rather the other way. Whatever riches 
 Natal may have won she owes them chiefly 
 to adventitious aids and outside circum- 
 stances. Let us look at |her again as she 
 was thirty years ago before we speak of her 
 as she stands to-day. " There is much to 
 132
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 excuse the possessors of this land if in the 
 very richness of their possession they should 
 at times become fretful over the slow develop- 
 ment of the earthly paradise where they 
 dwell. It is so fair and fruitful that they 
 may well ask why it does not thrive, and 
 they may easily ascribe to causes other than 
 the right one the fact of their ill-fortune ; yet 
 the true reason is simple enough. The 
 critic who said of Natal that it was only a 
 land of samples missed the point of his own 
 truth. To change a sample into a crop, to 
 make a crop a staple commodity, to export 
 to foreign shores the surplus productions of 
 the soil, these are only progressive steps in 
 the prosperity of a nation. But this ultimate 
 result can only be reached through the same 
 conditions of industry and energy which in 
 other lands, and under less favoured climates, 
 turns the product of the soil into the wealth 
 of a civilized community. There is no Royal 
 road to the prosperity of a people, be their 
 country ever so rich or highly favoured. As 
 our forefathers toiled to unlock the riches of 
 the soil, and as they passed through succes- 
 sive stages of development on their road to 
 133
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 prosperity, so must their sons labour in their 
 new homes ere they arrive at national wealth 
 and greatness. The cry from one end of the 
 Colony to the other is that * No one will 
 work the Kaffirs won't work, the whites 
 won't work.' Meanwhile, Natal stagnates. 
 And yet this cry is only half the question. 
 That Providence helps the man who helps 
 himself is as old as it is true ; but in Natal 
 the help is sought abroad and forgotten at 
 home. To ride on horseback over the 
 country, to eat well, drink well, race well, 
 and do little or nothing else such are the 
 everyday customs of the land. It was not 
 in this fashion that the homeland prospered 
 or that the new States of the Western World 
 have risen to wealth and power." 
 
 Here we seem to be at the source of the 
 stream of trouble, by the mid -course of 
 which we stand to-day. Natal preferred her 
 own methods. Fenced in between a great 
 mountain range on the west, the Indian 
 Ocean on the east, and with native territories 
 on her northern and southern frontiers, she 
 elected to go as she had gone in all matters 
 of life and labour. She brought in the Zulu 
 134
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 and the Kaffir from north and south, and 
 imported the Indian indentured coolie from 
 over the sea. She kept her territory locked 
 in great aggregations of land which were 
 wrongly called " farms." The owners of 
 these vast expanses induced Kaffirs to build 
 their kraals and become tenants thereon. 
 At first the rent charged was a mere 
 nominal sum. The huts were of the rudest 
 description, beehive structures of reeds and 
 grass. As time went on the rents grew. 
 Decade by decade they rose from ten shillings 
 or a pound per annum to many times these 
 figures. At the present moment Natal has 
 about half a million natives living on lands 
 owned by men who are called farmers, but 
 whose wealth is chiefly derived in the 
 majority of cases from the rents which they 
 levy upon these Kaffirs. Considerable num. 
 bers of these landlords are absentees. In 
 addition to the rents paid for their beehive 
 huts the natives are taxed by Government 
 fourteen shillings a year hut tax. They 
 have also to give labour to their lords at 
 low rates of remuneration. They pay for 
 dog licences, fees to magistrates' clerks, and 
 
 135
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 are, of course, subject to fines for offences 
 against law. These offences include the 
 collective drinking of beer in the huts or 
 kraals. When a fine is imposed the money 
 or the cow is not always at hand to pay it, 
 but there is sure to be a local "gombeen 
 man" a village Shylock ready to advance 
 the required amount ; and I have been told 
 on the best authority that the mulct man 
 will be fortunate if by the time he has re- 
 deemed his bond he has not paid his fine 
 twice and even three times over. 
 
 It is the Ireland of the eighteenth and 
 
 O 
 
 and early nineteenth centuries over again, 
 with black men substituted for white and 
 the blunderbuss absent. 
 
 Now the point to bear in mind in con- 
 nexion with all this is that these black 
 people in Natal have no representation in 
 Parliament. If they should object to the 
 rents which are put upon their reed huts, 
 the answer is, " You can go." But that is 
 just what they can't do. There is now no 
 place for them to go to. Besides, the Zulu 
 is not nomadic ; he is very fond of his home. 
 It would be wrong to say that the natives 
 136
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 have no friends in Natal. They have many 
 true friends, many kind masters and magis- 
 trates, but the tide of public opinion is 
 against them, and the form of Government 
 which has been so oddly called " respon- 
 sible," is not and cannot be as direct, or as 
 " favourable in the mind of its ruling," as that 
 which was identified to the native imagina- 
 tion with the names of "Somtseu" (Sir 
 Theophilus Shepstone) or that of "Sobantu" 
 (Bishop Colenso). In the old time they had 
 men to rule and advise them, whose sym- 
 pathy and good-will they felt assured was 
 theirs, and to whom they looked with perfect 
 confidence and trust. Colenso's love for the 
 native races was one of those superb devo- 
 tions to the ideal which all good men admire, 
 and it was an ideal for which he would 
 willingly have laid down his life. Now 
 there is no one to be their friend in the 
 sense that these great men were friendly 
 to them. I see that the working-men of 
 England are their friends, but when the 
 individual working-man comes to South 
 Africa, the feeling can scarcely stand the 
 strain that environment puts upon it. Still, 
 137
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 taken as a whole, the attitude of the white 
 working-man towards the native is not a bad 
 one. It is a long way superior to that of the 
 loud and boisterous man of whom I spoke in 
 a recent letter. 
 
 CAPE TOWN, 
 
 May, 1906. 
 
 138
 
 XII 
 
 AMONG all the evidence taken before 
 the Commission on Native Affairs," 
 said the foremost authority upon 
 native questions now in South Africa, " I am 
 sorry to say that the latest importations 
 from home were the least in sympathy with 
 the natives." This opinion I have found 
 corroborated wherever I came into contact 
 with the individuals who were in closest 
 touch with the black man, or were best 
 acquainted with his ways and history. There 
 is no room for doubting that the man who 
 knows the Kaffir best likes him the best. 
 The man who has the smallest knowledge 
 of him has the largest measure of contempt 
 or dislike for him. And it was the same 
 thing in North America when I travelled 
 there many years ago. The new-comer 
 into the land was the Red Indian's worst 
 enemy. 
 
 That there is to-day unrest and discontent 
 139
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 among a large number of the native races 
 outside the Cape Colony there can be no 
 doubt, but there are reasons for it. It could 
 not have been otherwise. Many causes of 
 native discontent lie on the surface, others 
 are deep down in their hearts. Democracies 
 have not yet succeeded in ruling subject 
 races. We have broken faith with the black 
 man. It was Mary Kingsley who wrote 
 that ' ' when you once get between two races, 
 the feeling of treachery, the face of their 
 relationship, is altered for ever altered in 
 a way that no wholesome war or no brutality 
 of individuals can alter." These are weighty 
 words. We have waged very unwholesome 
 wars with the natives, and there have been 
 terrible acts of barbarity and brutality per- 
 petrated against natives in these wars, but 
 it is doubtful if they have had the effect 
 upon the native mind that what are supposed 
 to be more legitimate pursuits of covetous 
 accomplishment have produced. In all parts 
 of the sub-continent, and by all persons, you 
 will be told the same story of the demorali- 
 zation of the natives by the late war. The 
 details differ, but the effect is the same. In 
 140
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 Northern Natal men will tell you of the 
 fortunes made by certain master cattle- 
 raiders who employed natives to loot cattle 
 from the Boers. The master-raider made 
 his tens of thousands, the white captains of 
 the industry their hundreds, the black 
 battalions got nothing. " Where is the 
 money and the land you promised us ? " 
 they now ask, not in North Natal alone, but 
 in Basutoland and elsewhere. " You told 
 us that we were to get the farms when the 
 Boers were driven out. You were then to 
 be first, we were to be the second. But for 
 us you could not have finished the war. It 
 was we who tracked and found the Boers 
 for you. How many thousand of our people 
 have been killed fighting for you, and what 
 have we got for it ? " 
 
 That is one phase of discontent, but there 
 are others. The old " respects " have largely 
 disappeared from the native mind. If ever 
 familiarity bred contempt it did in the un- 
 natural alliance between black and white 
 against white which that war produced. 
 " Why do you sit here night after night with 
 that gun firing at you ? " the black brother 
 141
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 would ask. "We will go and take it." But 
 the brotherhood ended when the last shot 
 was fired. The servant, elevated for the 
 time, had to go downstairs again. Nor was 
 his old position before the war allowed him ; 
 he must go lower. His wages were to be 
 reduced by half. He was to pay double 
 taxes. He was to be coerced into labour 
 by taxation. Men had no hesitation in 
 saying in his hearing that if these means 
 failed to induce him to work for the white 
 man, other methods must be found. 
 
 At the close of a native meeting held by 
 a high official some months ago, and after 
 many grievances had been brought forward, 
 the following words are said to have been 
 spoken: "You increase our taxes. You 
 bring in the Chinese, and by them you take 
 work from us. Where are we to find the 
 money to pay all these taxes ? You tell us 
 that Parliament will hear our words, but 
 who is there to represent us in Parliament ? 
 You prevent us from buying land, you tell 
 us not to employ lawyers, but we must 
 employ them." In these complaints, and 
 there were many more, we get some insight 
 142
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 into the general causes of native discontent 
 existing outside of the Cape Colony. 
 
 That Colony stands alone in its policy 
 towards the native race a wise and far- 
 seeing policy, the result of the work of many 
 minds during the past quarter of a century, 
 but mainly due to the lifelong labours of 
 one individual, Mr. Saul Soloman, a gentle- 
 man of whom Mr. Froude once wrote : "He 
 was one of the best men I ever knew." 
 Much might be written upon this subject, 
 but it cannot be written now. The policy 
 pursued in Natal and that adopted by the 
 Cape Colony represent two distinct systems. 
 There can be little doubt as to where the 
 balance of wisdom lies. 
 
 In making its money Natal has made its 
 bed too. The present Government in that 
 Colony is the heir to successive adminis- 
 trations which have followed the same track. 
 They are on the wrong road, and when 
 that is the case the further you follow the 
 road the further it will carry you out of 
 your course. So convinced was Sir Garnet 
 Wolseley thirty years ago that it would not 
 be possible to continue the lines which Natal 
 143
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 was then pursuing towards its native popu- 
 lation that I believe he thought of proposing 
 a government for the Colony based upon 
 the Indian system. He foresaw that the 
 introduction of responsible government 
 under the conditions which were possible 
 in Natal would only aggravate the diffi- 
 culties of the native situation, and increase 
 the evils under which the Colony suffered. 
 It was interesting to hear all this repeated 
 by so many persons in Natal, after these 
 years, as their personal experience of what 
 had actually occurred. The forecast had 
 been verified. " Responsible government 
 by a handful of farmers twelve-thousand- 
 acre men, more or less is bound to produce 
 trouble, for legislation for natives will rest 
 chiefly with men who manage the natives 
 for their own interests." So one said, and 
 another, and yet another. Natal could not 
 make up its mind frankly to accept the 
 new situation which arose in South Africa 
 with the development of the great mineral 
 wealth of the interior sub-continent. It 
 would neither educate its natives nor 
 enfranchise them. They were to be 
 144
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 rent-payers, hewers of wood, tax-payers, 
 farm hands, domestic servants, policemen, 
 but not artisans, nor owners of land, nor 
 citizens. The tribal system was to be 
 maintained, but the power of the head of 
 tribe, the chief, was to be lessened almost 
 to the vanishing-point. 
 
 Natal forgot that the native was gradually 
 educating himself, and that the process was 
 not likely to be carried on in the best school. 
 The black miner would learn many things 
 in Johannesburg besides rock-drilling. The 
 Zulu policeman was receiving education of 
 a strange type in our seaport towns. During 
 a stay of a few days in Durban I saw some 
 extraordinary lessons being taught. I saw 
 rickshaw Kaffirs carrying a white man in a 
 state of helpless intoxication to the lock-up. 
 Another Zulu in police uniform walked 
 beside the vehicle, occasionally picking the 
 white man's hat from the street and re- 
 placing it tenderly upon the inebriate's head. 
 Lessons such as these were only as infant- 
 school teaching compared to those which 
 the war had inculcated. Hell was then, as 
 a celebrated journalist said at the time, " let
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 loose." When you thoroughly emancipate 
 that portion of the universe you will not 
 be able to tie it up again at your pleasure, 
 even with responsible Government to help 
 you. I have been told by one of the oldest 
 and most experienced gentlemen in the 
 Colony that parental and tribal authority 
 or discipline among the young Kaffirs was 
 now a thing of the past. The young 
 blood does as he likes. Formerly he had 
 to beg his "musha." from his relations. 
 " He came into the world naked, he lived 
 naked, and he left the world naked. Now 
 he can buy his finery and pay his 
 fines out of the money he makes at the 
 mines. His old code of morals is all but 
 gone. He still loves his home, but he no 
 longer wants to marry and settle down." 
 He will do as the white man does. The 
 terrible aftermath of the war is before him, 
 and in Johannesburg the "Book of the 
 Bounder " is always open to him. 
 
 " The Government of this country (Natal)," 
 wrote the most distinguished soldier who 
 has been in South Africa for a century, "is 
 neither one thing nor the other. Its natives 
 
 146
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 are quick to catch the true meaning of this 
 state of things. They are changing their 
 tone, and they will readily grasp the fact 
 that the house divided against itself, etc., etc." 
 
 In Natal blacks to white are 9 to i 
 
 In the Transvaal they are ... 4 ,, i 
 
 In Basutoland 35 ,, i 
 
 In Cape Colony 44 J 
 
 Besides the blacks there are large numbers 
 of coloured or half-caste people to be reckoned 
 with. Thirty years ago there were three or 
 four thousand Indians in Natal. Now there 
 are more than one hundred thousand, and 
 there are almost as many more over the 
 other Colonies. Fifty thousand Chinese 
 coolies have recently been added to the 
 population to add fresh confusion to the 
 race question. These yellow coolies were 
 carried through Natal by railway " precisely 
 as convicts" the words are those of an 
 official. What does the native African 
 think of it all ? 
 
 Now let us look at the frame in which 
 this strange picture of black and white and 
 yellow is set. You have placed in a central 
 147
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 position between the Zambesi and Table 
 Bay a great gold and diamond "industry," 
 with an enormous plant of machinery. This 
 plant requires, say, two hundred thousand 
 workmen to keep it fully going. At the top 
 of this " industry " you have a directory 
 with an inner circle or powerful combination, 
 possessing in an almost unlimited degree the 
 power of purse and Press. This directing 
 circle is cosmopolitan, exacting, highly or- 
 ganized. It grasps at unlimited power, and 
 so far it has got everything it has grasped 
 at. If this powerful organization of men, 
 money, and machinery had grown up gradu- 
 ally in some old and strong social body, or 
 long-established national system, where a 
 firm Government ruled over a closely settled 
 and homogenous population, it would have 
 taken its proper place in the nation to which 
 it belonged ; but in South Africa it came 
 as the thunderstorms come, and instead of 
 growing up as a valuable adjunct or servant 
 of the State it descended upon it as a master, 
 a despot, and a collective despot, in whose 
 frame the bowels of human compassion could 
 not be looked for nor the brains of a wide 
 148
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 and sympathetic knowledge expected. In 
 their individual capacities the men who form 
 this combination may be the best models of 
 the citizens of the world, but it is not as 
 private citizens or individual homogeneities 
 they have to be judged. 
 
 In the train of this triple-headed giant 
 there have come great numbers of the 
 representatives of that peculiar product of 
 our time which I have sketched in a pre- 
 ceding letter. Is it difficult to trace on the 
 chart of the future South Africa the direction 
 to which the forces and the teaching I have 
 touched upon are tending? Those people 
 who have had the longest experience in 
 dealing with the native races are the most 
 in doubt about the future. They see the 
 danger, but it is easier to foresee than to 
 avert. Nevertheless, amid the clouds on 
 the horizon of South Africa there is a distinct 
 ray of good hope in the early provision made 
 by the wisdom of successive Governments in 
 the Cape Colony for the education, elevation, 
 and political advancement of the black races. 
 Natal preferred to follow their old methods, 
 and she is to-day gathering some of the fruits 
 149
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 of that preference. A conflict between police 
 and a small body of natives about taxes is 
 followed by martial law, executions by courts 
 martial, burning of kraals, devastation of 
 country, cattle captures, and the rest of it. 
 It would probably be within the truth to say 
 that the poll-tax will cost Natal twenty 
 pounds for every pound that she collects. 
 
 But a still deeper question lies in all this 
 trouble. Moving through it, or alongside it, 
 as a shadow, signs have appeared which 
 cannot be ignored. I have alluded in these 
 letters to certain side currents in the labour 
 question. "Constructive coercion," "the 
 necessity of making the black men indus- 
 trious fellow-citizens," such things have 
 taken the place of homilies upon the dig- 
 nity of labour, about which a great deal used 
 to be said. What if, aiming at the object 
 of obliging the native to seek the mines, 
 there has been a policy quietly set on foot 
 of eventually removing him from the land, 
 making him by the force of his necessities 
 a labourer below the surface ? I have heard 
 the ruling powers in Johannesburg described 
 as " men whose mental horizon covered only
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 the limits of their pockets," but that pocket 
 resembles a fixed beam. It reaches a long 
 way in one direction, although the remainder 
 of the horizon is all dark night to it. Zulu- 
 land is said to be exceptionally rich in 
 minerals of many kinds, and gold has 
 been already found there in rich deposits. 
 In the autumn of 1878 I remember a staff 
 officer of high position in South Africa 
 coming to see me in London. " How are 
 they getting on out there ? " I asked him. 
 "When I left," he replied, "the difficulty 
 was to poke Cetewayo up to fighting." 
 Four or five months later came the news 
 of Isandula. 
 
 I will close this letter with two short 
 utterances of some note which lately came 
 to my notice. Tengo Jabavu, the editor of 
 a Kaffir newspaper, recently told a meeting 
 of his countrymen to " remember that their 
 votes were now their guns." Could the wise 
 policy which the Cape Colony has followed 
 have been better put? Disarmament by 
 franchise. Now for the other view, this 
 time a white man's. The speaker was a 
 Colonial Militia officer, the scene a railway
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 station platform in Natal. " Hullo, old 
 man," called out a friend from the window 
 of a passing train, " what are you doing in 
 that get-up ? " "I've been mobilized, and 
 I'm out after the natives," answered the 
 man in uniform. Then in a confidential 
 tone he added, "It's a deal better than 
 farming, I can tell you." With the black 
 man in the Cape Colony the vote supersedes 
 the gun. With the white man in Natal the 
 sword supplants the spade, and meanwhile 
 the yellow man from Asia is edging in upon 
 this strange chessboard of Black and White. 
 
 CAPE COLONY, 
 May, 1906. 
 
 152
 
 XIII 
 
 1 LANDED at St. Helena a fortnight 
 ago and have been dwelling in a 
 world of ninety years ago ever since. 
 All the existing travail of the sub-continent 
 appears temporary beside the memory of 
 the eternal tragedy which this lonely rock 
 witnessed these long years past. 
 
 ' Art thou still alive, old Earth ? " asked 
 Shelley when the news of May 5th, 1821, 
 reached Europe, and the old Earth might 
 have answered : "I live, and while I live, 
 he does not die." 
 
 Longwood the Tomb the grey mists 
 drifting in from the enormous outspread 
 ocean the gloomy lava-chasms which im- 
 prison the inner prison, as the ocean 
 imprisons all, the moan of the winds through 
 ragged pine-tops, the sense of a solitude 
 which can be felt, and of a distance which 
 can be seen, all combine to give to St. 
 Helena a physical character and a mental 
 153
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 meaning which no other spot in the 
 world can equal. Geographically, the island 
 belongs to Africa but all the earth's circle 
 lays claim to it with reason. While every- 
 thing seems impossibly strange here, nobody 
 can possibly be a stranger here. 
 
 A bust of Napoleon stands on a pedestal 
 at the spot in the little room at Longwood 
 where he expired. "When the Boer 
 prisoners were on the island," said the 
 custodian to me, " they never tired of com- 
 ing to look at that bust." And the world 
 never tires of hearing told and retold the 
 life-story of the man the cast of whose 
 face was taken as he lay dead in this narrow 
 room at Longwood, eighty-five years ago 
 not three generations back and yet his 
 best haters are now his tribute bearers. 
 " The greatest of all great men," the first 
 of our living soldiers calls him. I open an 
 old Annual Register of a year in the middle 
 of the captivity, and I read that " Buona- 
 parte is already forgotten." I turn over a 
 page in the long misery, and I come upon 
 some sententious sentence in which Lieut- 
 General Sir Hudson Lowe, K.C.B., tells his 
 154
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 subordinate that it is specially his function, 
 at the desire of the English Ministers, that 
 " General Bonaparte " is not to have any 
 intercourse with the outside world. I turn 
 again to what the English Ministers did say, 
 and this is what I find Prime Minister 
 Liverpool writing on the 2ist July, 1815 
 
 " I wish that Louis (the Eighteenth) 
 would shoot or hang Bonaparte, but as that 
 cannot (now) be done, he must be sent 
 to St. Helena, where he will very soon be 
 forgotten." Seventy or eighty years pass, 
 and another English Prime Minister cannot 
 better employ his time than in studying the 
 last chapters of that extraordinary life, and 
 adding his mite to the world's knowledge of 
 the captivity in St. Helena. But we must 
 go back to our South Africa. This rock in 
 the Atlantic is not a bad point from which 
 to get that most unfortunate land into our 
 focus. 
 
 During the war in South Africa the Prince 
 and Princess of Wales made a tour round 
 the Colonial Empire, visiting the Cape in 
 that journey. His Royal Highness brought 
 back a remarkable message to the people 
 155
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 of the United Kingdom. It was conveyed 
 in two words, "Wake up." " England must 
 wake up," he said. Well, the nation ac- 
 cepted, I think, that reveille call. It woke 
 up out of the sleep into which it had been 
 cast under the spell of certain persons, and 
 the general election of this year marked the 
 disappearance of the last of the " forty 
 winks " into which about the same sug- 
 gestive number of agile-tongued hypnotizers 
 had cast her. 
 
 The Prince of Wales has recently re- 
 turned from an extensive tour in India, and 
 he has brought back a message of similar 
 significance and importance. This time it 
 is contained in a single word. It is 
 " Sympathy." I will take these two mes- 
 sages. We have wakened up. We have 
 realized the profound mistake of the war, 
 but that awakening is not enough. The 
 keynote of the future lies in the second 
 message. We must have the courage of 
 our convictions, and tell the truth. We 
 must not allow the Devil to have all the 
 good music, as the bishop said in the 
 Church Council when it was proposed to 
 
 156
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 abolish Church choirs. Surely the people 
 whose convictions are those of conscience 
 should have as good courage as they whose 
 convictions are of the police-constable kind. 
 Doth conscience in the first sense really 
 "make cowards of us all " ? If the Liberal 
 Party had only half as much courage in 
 office as they have conscience when they 
 are out of orifice, the world would be ever 
 so much better and happier to-day. Are 
 we afraid to show sympathy with the Dutch 
 in South Africa ? They want no preference. 
 They only seek for even-handed justice the 
 justice that Sir George Grey gave them, 
 that Mr. Froude advocated, and that all the 
 wise men who had the good of South Africa 
 at heart always laboured for. 
 
 No man knew South Africa better than 
 Mr. Froude. When he first went there he 
 imagined, as many others imagined before 
 and after him, that the problem of South 
 Africa was to be solved 4 by a coup de main. 
 Confederation, he thought, could be forced 
 upon the various Colonies. The complete 
 failure of his missions in 1874-75 opened his 
 eyes. He saw that South Africa was not 
 157
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 to be carried by assault, or by siege, or by 
 hostile measures of any kind. It was to be 
 won by justice, by patience, by wise policy. 
 He had two examples before him Ireland 
 and Canada : the how not to do and the 
 how to do. " The history of Ireland is 
 repeating itself here," he wrote in 1885. 
 "As if Ireland was not enough." Even ten 
 years earlier he had foreseen, with extra- 
 ordinary power of prescience, what was 
 likely to happen, and this is the manner in 
 which he then forecast the future of that 
 unhappy land. Speaking at that time in 
 Port Elizabeth, he said : " There are three 
 courses possible to us by which you may 
 proceed 
 
 " First, there is open force. 
 
 " Second, there is the policy of fastening 
 upon the soil of the Free States, involving 
 yourselves with them in small and irritating 
 disputes, advancing one claim here and 
 another there continuing a series of pro- 
 vocations until you irritate them into violent 
 language, or some precipitate action that 
 would be a pretext for attacking them, and 
 proceed upon the plea that they had 
 
 58
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 themselves begun the quarrel. But re- 
 member," he went on in deeply impressive 
 language, "that all this will come back upon 
 you, and that you will have to meet to the 
 last cent, with interest, and with compound 
 interest, the price and the punishment of 
 such a policy. 
 
 "And the third course is conciliation, and 
 that is the course which you should follow." 
 
 Ten years later he wrote again in 
 Oceana : " South Africa can only be ruled 
 constitutionally, by conciliating the Dutch 
 people there ; and we have persisted from 
 the beginning, and are still persisting, in 
 affronting them and irritating them. The 
 Boers have been so systematically abused 
 and misrepresented that the English scarcely 
 regarded them as human beings to whom 
 they owed any moral consideration." 
 
 Reading words such as these one begins 
 to think that the world would have gone 
 just as well, or as ill, if never a book 
 had been written or a thought of truth 
 expressed. 
 
 Let us hear how Mr. Froude describes the 
 views of that veteran Colonial Governor and 
 159
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 great administrator, Sir George Grey. Grey 
 is speaking : "He had gone to the Cape 
 with the prejudice against them (the Boers) 
 generally entertained in England, and he 
 had found the Boer of the English news- 
 papers and platform speeches a creature of 
 the imagination, which had no existence in 
 'space or time.' . . . They were a quiet, 
 orderly, industrious, hard-working people, 
 hurting no one if let alone, but resentful of 
 injuries, and especially of calumnies against 
 their character. Our interference alone had 
 created all the troubles in South Africa. 
 But for us the Dutch and English inhabi- 
 tants could live peaceably and happily to- 
 gether without a word of difference. All 
 that we had to do was to leave them the 
 same liberties which we do not think of 
 refusing to the Australians and Canadians. 
 They were a people who could never be 
 driven, but if treated frankly and generously 
 they would be found among the very best 
 Colonists in all the British dominions." 
 
 " Sir George," continues Mr. Froude, 
 ' spoke sadly and wistfully. Were he to 
 return as Governor to Cape Town and 
 1 60
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 allowed to act on his own judgment, he 
 knew well that there would be no more 
 trouble there. He knew, also, that it was 
 impossible for him to go in that capacity ; 
 but though seventy-three years old, and 
 with failing health, he was still thinking of 
 going there as a private individual and of 
 trying what he could do out of pure love 
 for his own country, and disgust at the 
 follies in which some fatality compelled us 
 to persist." I know of nothing sadder in our 
 recent history than what this conversation 
 reveals. 
 
 At the moment when these two men 
 the one the most brilliant historical writer 
 of his day, the other the highest type of 
 the Colonial Governor and man of action 
 our modern Empire has known were thus 
 tracing in clearest characters upon the chart 
 of our Colonial system the true course of 
 Imperial Government, a sinister figure was 
 already emerging out of the mists of the 
 financial intrigues, sordid emulations, and 
 mean rivalries of South African com- 
 mercialism. 1885-95 : ten short years saw 
 all the wise counsels flouted, the sound 
 161 M
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 precepts violated, the gloomy prophetic 
 instincts realized. " The series of provo- 
 cations " were in full swing. The pretexts 
 for attacking the Boers were readily found 
 "one claim was advanced here, another 
 there." The whole sequence ran as easily 
 as though it had been contrived and calcu- 
 lated from the very words which Mr. Froude 
 had used in warning and reprehension and 
 then destruction, desolation, murder, famine, 
 rapine, and ruin were carried wholesale into 
 South Africa. And now another decade 
 has passed ; the day of retribution has 
 already dawned ; the first price has been 
 partly paid, but the last cent and the com- 
 pound interest have still to be extracted. 
 The punishment of the fatal policy is not 
 yet begun. 
 
 " Thefts never enrich ; " " Murder will 
 speak out of stone walls ; " " Treat men as 
 pawns and ninepins and you shall suffer as 
 well as they ;" "Crime and punishment grow 
 out of one stem ; " "If you put a chain 
 around the neck of a slave, the other end 
 fastens itself around your own." Was it 
 not all foretold to us and written down for 
 162
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 us in a thousand sentences long before 
 Froude wrote or Grey laboured ? 
 
 Emerson might just as well have flicked 
 bread-crumbs at the wall of his study as 
 have written these things. What he called 
 " the slaughter-house style of thinking " was 
 to have its little day. " Pooh-pooh ! " and 
 Cocksure were to force their old chargers to 
 the front again the new " Chassepot " must 
 be let off, and the new " Long Toms " and 
 the rest of them. And lo ! "Pooh-pooh!" 
 and dear old Cocksure go off their horses 
 too ; and all the stocks and shares, the bonds 
 and bills that were to run up so high, are 
 down lower than they have ever been. 
 
 And one great contriver is dead, and 
 another "Empire-builder" is retired, and 
 a third has become, like the globe, "flat- 
 tened at the poles ; " and so on and so on, 
 while the old earth rolls its course, smooth- 
 ing out the graves on the veld, levelling 
 the block-houses, and gradually undoing the 
 action of the "slaughter-house school of 
 thought," and all the wreck and ruin it 
 occasioned in South Africa. 
 
 Even this ocean rock which had its share 
 163
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 in the great gold shower which the war 
 cast upon South Africa is now on the brink 
 of financial ruin, and dreading that the with- 
 drawal of the last remaining hundred soldiers 
 of the garrison will be the final straw in the 
 balance of its misfortune. 
 
 During the war there were five or six 
 thousand Boer prisoners on the island, and 
 from every person one hears the same story : 
 " No quieter or more easily managed men 
 were ever here." " There were some fifty 
 or sixty ' uitlanders ' among them, and they 
 gave all the trouble." How often has the 
 truth to be repeated before people at home 
 will listen to it? When I was in Pretoria 
 recently the police officers told me that the 
 Dutch people of the town gave only a 
 seventh of the police prisoners ; the remain- 
 ing population gave six-sevenths. Yet the 
 Dutch inhabitants were half of the whole. 
 In the country districts there is no crime 
 whatever. In the four years which have fol- 
 lowed the termination of the war there has 
 not been one case of outrage by the Dutch 
 in the annexed Republics after a war of two 
 and a half years' duration, which saw every 
 164
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 Boer homestead destroyed, all stock killed 
 or stolen, and even the Boer Bibles carried 
 off. No stealings of cattle or horses have 
 been reported; no " rapparrees," no "tories," 
 have appeared. As the war was entirely 
 phenomenal in its character, in the nature 
 of the resistance made, and in the vast 
 disparity between the forces engaged upon 
 either side, so has the peace which followed 
 it been wholly unprecedented in the manner 
 in which the conquered people have behaved 
 since the cessation of hostilities. 
 
 ST. HELENA, 
 
 June^ 1906. 
 
 165
 
 XIV 
 
 WELL! What is to be done now? 
 Is not this tranquillity a proof 
 that the Boers are contented? 
 I hear some people ask. No greater fallacy 
 could be imagined. To believe that will 
 be to repeat the old errors, to build again 
 upon the old rotten foundations, to prepare 
 the road of the future for interminable 
 troubles. We must take advantage of this 
 season of calm to recast our policy, and 
 to undo some of the worst aspects of recent 
 conflict. There are many ways in which 
 reparation can be made. The old Bibles 
 taken from the farmhouses can be restored 
 the books which had the records of the 
 births and deaths of the forefathers of these 
 farmers and of the births and deaths of their 
 children could be collected and returned to 
 their original owners or their relatives. 
 Surely Bible-loving Britain might fittingly 
 begin the work of reparation in that manner. 
 1 66
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 In all the falsehood which is still sent from 
 South Africa for home consumption you may 
 be sure of one fact : It is that in this seem- 
 ing peace Dutch South Africa has still a 
 bleeding heart. She does not weep with 
 her eyes, but her heart bleeds. If the skies 
 above her could only weep as her heart 
 bleeds, her arid soil and stony kopjes would 
 be deep in grass and flowers to-day. But 
 for all her sorrow her eyes are dry as her 
 hilltops, and they will remain dry. If she 
 could weep she might forget. She can 
 never forget. She may forgive. You do 
 not know in England the tenth part of what 
 she knows. 
 
 You will never know it she will always 
 know it. It was the womb of the nation 
 that was struck. The victims were the 
 mother and the child, sister, wife, widow. 
 Never in any modern war did the womb 
 of a people so suffer. If it be true that 
 the hand which rocks the cradle rules the 
 world, think how impossible it will be for 
 South Africa to tear out that page from her 
 memory. Nevertheless if the wounds were 
 cruel the glory was great. If the leaf cannot 
 167
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 be torn out it can be pasted over, and the 
 paste will be the glory which you and your 
 sons must accord to her. Give her the 
 entire truth of that glory. Write it large 
 in your own history, too, for it is also 
 necessary to you. You cannot deny it, and 
 explain the war. Anything from 40 to 
 400 millions of people against 250,000 men, 
 women, and children all told ! Two and a 
 half years' war; 250 millions of money; 
 500,000 horses and mules dead ; 480,000 
 soldiers all these against the population 
 whose numbers were those of a city of the 
 second or third rank in England. If this 
 handful was not heroic, what, then, was the 
 gigantic other side ? Her own glory and 
 your sympathy. These are the gateways 
 through which you can move into better 
 days in South Africa. Every little act will 
 tell. Many of them, like the Bibles, will 
 cost you very little, and you will have 
 another satisfaction in doing acts of sym- 
 pathetic reparation, inasmuch as they need 
 not open the door to dishonest dealings 
 among your own servants. For instance, the 
 old Boer officials might be given employment 
 168
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 or pensions under Government. They 
 would work for half the salaries, and bring 
 double knowledge of their duties to the 
 labour of their departments. Many of these 
 old servants of the late Governments are 
 not far removed from destitution. Fortu- 
 nately they can live on little, and their 
 brethren who have been less unfortunate 
 are generous in the extreme. 
 
 I was informed by a gentleman who has 
 been, and is, anti- Dutch in his sympathies, 
 that he knew of Boer families who are living 
 in Kaffir kraals, working for Kaffirs, and 
 who were being wholly supported by what 
 they earned from Kaffirs. He had been 
 himself a witness of this state of things on 
 his own farms. The destitution is extreme 
 in the northern part of the Transvaal. 
 When I visited Middleburg, a party of 
 Boers about a hundred men, women, and 
 children had gone into the bush country 
 to the north of that place to find food and 
 gather the wild peaches which are there 
 plentiful. Fever suddenly broke out among 
 them, and some fifty or sixty perished in 
 a few weeks one entire family had died. 
 
 169
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 At the same station I met with an old Boer 
 who was employed by our Engineer Depart- 
 ment in planting trees. He had fought in 
 the war. His father had been a " Voor- 
 trekker." The well-known passage over the 
 Vaal River known as " Viljoen's Drift " had 
 been named after him. Toil, heat, age, 
 hardship were written in every line of this 
 man's head and face. He would have made 
 a splendid study for a Rembrandt " Head 
 of an Old Peasant." The deep furrows in 
 his neck and face, the tangled grey hair, the 
 sun-bronzed features, the look of tired labour 
 in his deep-set eyes, all were there. I asked 
 him about his life. " If I thought," he said, 
 "that my children were to go through what 
 I have gone through, and be in their old 
 age as I am now in mine, I would pray the 
 Almighty this night that when He takes me 
 He will take them." In this old Boer's mind 
 the lot of the twenty odd thousand women 
 and children dead in the concentration camps 
 had not been the worst one. 
 
 I once remember, when the news of the 
 mortality among the women and children 
 in these death camps first reached England, 
 170
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 the war journals had been eloquent in 
 praising the wisdom and humanity of this 
 new method of modern warfare, which per- 
 mitted a country to be "cleared" while at 
 the same time it took steps to prevent the 
 full ravages of war from falling upon the 
 more helpless members of the enemy's com- 
 munity. I think they pointed out, too, that 
 these camps could be utilized for the purposes 
 of education infant-school teaching and 
 other meritorious works of benevolence and 
 instruction. We know what happened. It 
 was among these unfortunate helpless ones 
 that Death reaped his largest harvest. We 
 have heard a good deal about "methods 
 of barbarism " in the last few years. It 
 seems to me that we have got a little bit 
 mixed over our metaphors, and that it might 
 do us a lot of good if we were to study bar- 
 barism more closely. I find a barbarian of 
 the fourteenth century who was called in 
 his day "the thunderbolt of war" telling 
 his soldiers and captains " that they were 
 never to forget, no matter in what country 
 they might be making war" (the italics are not 
 in the original), " that Churchmen, women, 
 171
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 children, and the poor were not their 
 enemies." Then six or seven hundred years 
 earlier, I find it recorded of one "Clovis " by 
 name, that he hanged one of his soldiers 
 because the man had stolen a bundle of hay 
 from the cottage of a peasant somewhere on 
 the Loire. A war captain of the name of 
 Genseric, who is supposed to have known 
 something of the methods of Vandalism, is 
 reported by Gibbon to have preserved Rome 
 from fire, and to have left untouched in the 
 churches of the city the sacred vessels of 
 gold and silver. Clearly these eminent bar- 
 barian soldiers were a long way behind the 
 ages in which they lived their education in 
 methods of barbarism had manifestly been 
 neglected. 
 
 But when all of the past has been said, 
 the question of what has now to be done 
 still remains. I will come to it later. First 
 let us bear in mind that we have had to 
 sail this sea of conciliation before, and that 
 we have some excellent charts of it existing. 
 Lord Durham went to Canada in 1838 when 
 that country had been a prey to dissension and 
 civil war or rebellion during many preceding 
 172
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 years. Lord Durham's first dispatch is 
 dated "Castle of St. Louis, May 3ist, 
 1838," his last dispatch bears date October 
 3ist of the same year. In those six months 
 he had done more in the making of Canada 
 in laying the foundation of her present 
 state of prosperity and happiness than had 
 been achieved by all the Governors and 
 Governments of seventy years before him. 
 "Justice, mildness, and vigour" were his 
 watchwords of policy. 
 
 He would " merge the odious animosities 
 of origin in the feelings of a nobler and 
 more comprehensive nationality." "It is 
 proposed," he writes, "either to place the 
 legislative authority in a Governor with a 
 council formed of the heads of the British 
 party, or to contrive some scheme of repre- 
 sentation by which a minority, with the forms 
 of representation, is to deprive a majority of 
 all voice in the management of its own 
 affairs." "It is not in North America," he 
 continues, " that men can be cheated by an 
 unreal semblance of representative Govern- 
 ment, or persuaded that they are out-voted 
 when in fact they are disfranchised." As 
 173
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 usual, these words fell upon dull or unwilling 
 ears, and another decade had to pass before 
 the light of common sense was to break 
 upon " this ,unhappy country," as Durham in 
 despair calls Canada. When the descendant 
 of Robert Bruce came out as Governor- 
 General a few years later, the bad boys of 
 " Our Lady of the Snows " greeted him with 
 missiles harder than snowballs, and finally 
 they burnt the Houses of Parliament almost 
 over his head. They would have killed him 
 if they could. He repaid his cowardly 
 assailants by making them the freest and 
 most happily governed people in the world. 
 
 Fifty-six years later a similar condition of 
 affairs had to be treated in another con- 
 tinent, the rival parties this time being 
 British and Dutch but there was neither a 
 Durham nor an Elgin at hand, and with that 
 strange impishness of irony which fate seems 
 sometimes to love, the chair of Bruce was 
 filled by a disciple of Balliol. All the world 
 knows what followed. The flood gates of 
 war were opened, and a torrent of destruc- 
 tion let loose upon the unfortunate land. 
 Never had any country presented a more 
 
 174
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 favourable social soil, or more promising 
 political and religious conditions for the 
 growth of the principle of what has recently 
 been called "peaceful penetration." We 
 had only to sit still, to turn a deaf but 
 seemingly attentive ear to our own bad boys 
 to keep the true "Imperial" powers well 
 above the toil and moil and mercenary 
 clamour of the syndicator, the speculator, and 
 all the varied assortment of beings so aptly 
 described by the great American as "not 
 men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and 
 appetites walking." 
 
 The old men were dying out, the new 
 ones were coming to us. The " dopper " 
 was disappearing. Education, railways, 
 intermarriage, community of interests, space 
 for all, these things must tell in the long 
 run on the growth of a united South Africa. 
 But what were these in the catalogue of 
 the moment, in the view of the man who 
 was in a hurry of the men who had 
 mercenary objects to gain of others who 
 cherished schemes of national aggrandize- 
 ment, and of some who had more question- 
 able ambitions to realize or ends to serve ? 
 
 175
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 "In South Africa," wrote Mr. Froude, 
 "there is always a pretext for interference 
 from home, and thus the unlucky country 
 has been the prey of well-intentioned philan- 
 thropists, of Colonial Secretaries ambitious 
 of distinguishing themselves, and of internal 
 factions fed by the hope of English support." 
 In an earlier letter I have alluded to the 
 influence which a mosquito is supposed to 
 exercise upon the selection of the human 
 species in South Africa. Is it possible that 
 there is also there another insect which has 
 some similar effect upon the moral or mental 
 nature of the new-comer into the sub-con- 
 tinent ? They keep in the museum at Cape 
 Town a spider whose record as an accelera- 
 tor of time is probably without parallel. 
 The twelve o'clock mid-day gun is there 
 fired by electricity when the sun reaches the 
 meridian. The gun fired as usual one day, 
 but all the inhabitants who possessed 
 watches found that their time was about five 
 and twenty minutes slow. The people who 
 had no watches went home to find their 
 mid-day meal still cooking. It was dis- 
 covered later that people had been too 
 176
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 previous. The cause of it all was that 
 spider which is now in the bottle in the 
 museum. He had managed, in the course of 
 web-making operations, to drop himself 
 exactly upon the extremely fine instrument 
 which set free the electric current. The 
 gun had fired about half an hour before its 
 proper time. Cape Town had put the hands 
 of its clocks forward, only to put them back 
 again. Meanwhile, the spider was put into 
 the bottle. Was he only one, or did he 
 belong to a species which inoculates new- 
 comers with the virus of that "hunger, 
 thirst, and fever," making of them what the 
 philosopher called "appetites walking"? 
 
 ST. HELENA, 
 June, 1906. 
 
 177 N
 
 XV 
 
 BEFORE any lasting basis of future 
 contentment is possible in South 
 Africa much will have to be done. 
 
 1. Our just debts and obligations acknow- 
 ledged over the signatures of our own 
 officers will have to be paid. 
 
 2. The seat of Imperial Government and 
 authority should be moved back to Cape 
 Town. 
 
 3. The raiders should be removed from 
 positions of high place and prominent Im- 
 perial administrative power in South Africa. 
 In a great empire it should always be 
 possible to find lucrative positions and fields 
 of harmless activity for persons whose ex- 
 cellent intentions "when carried into places 
 where it is not due " have proved hurtful 
 to the national interests. 
 
 4. When these obvious and fundamental 
 initial necessities have been carried out, the
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 work of reconstructing the ruined fabric of 
 confidence and belief in the honesty of our 
 intentions will have become possible, but 
 it will inevitably be a slow and lengthy 
 labour. 
 
 The ruin done in a week may take years 
 to rebuild. As I have said, the Dutch know 
 more about the war and the manner in 
 which it was engineered against them than 
 the people of England know ; for the people 
 of England the real people have never 
 been allowed to hear one-tenth of the truth 
 of that time. The great sin committed 
 against England and South Africa lay in 
 the purchase of the Press in order to 
 calumniate and vilify the Dutch people in 
 South Africa. To buy the sword is nothing 
 that has always been possible ; but to 
 seduce the scribe, to induce the preacher to 
 prostitute his pulpit that has been, and is, 
 a crime of the first magnitude. 
 
 5. Responsible government based upon a 
 full, free, just, and equitable franchise system 
 may be trusted to deal with the many 
 internal abuses the patent nepotisms and 
 corruptions which grew so rapidly under the 
 179
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 system of irregular civil government which 
 succeeded martial law in the conquered 
 Colonies. 
 
 The time-honoured custom of " blooding 
 the noses of their own hounds " had, of 
 course, to be followed. The pack was an 
 unusually large one, and swarms of officials 
 soon settled upon the cities of the Republics, 
 more destructive even than the locust- 
 swarms which have since devastated the 
 country districts. To-day the unfortunate 
 Transvaal is compelled to pay for a Civil 
 List out of all proportion to its needs or 
 revenue. It pays .108,000 in salaries and 
 travelling expenses to the officers engaged 
 in public works. Its Health Bill in salaries 
 is .50,000 a year, native affairs personnel 
 cost ; 1 04,000, Customs ditto .44,000, 
 agriculture figures at .56,000, patents appear 
 for the modest sum of .6000. Fifty-four 
 officials draw salaries of ,1000 a year or 
 over that sum. It has been publicly stated 
 that there are more officials in receipt of 
 ;iooo a year salaries than in any other 
 Colony in the Empire. 
 
 In the department of agriculture we find 
 1 80
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 "Directors," "Assistant Directors," "Horti- 
 culturists," " Entomologists," " Botanists," 
 " Foresters," " Bacteriologists," " Serumists," 
 " Seed and Plant Introducers," " Stock In- 
 spectors," " Veterinary Surgeons," " Con- 
 servators," " Publicationists," etc., etc. The 
 majority of this formidable list might have 
 been truthfully designated under the single 
 heading " Locusts." But had any sense of, 
 humour existed in the minds of the govern- 
 ing powers at the moment they instituted 
 this colossal suction-scheme, they could not 
 have persisted in it. One can imagine the 
 feelings of some Boer who had come back 
 from the war to find even his peach-trees cut 
 down and his homestead a shapeless ruin, 
 when he was being lectured upon the theory 
 of tree-planting by an Assistant Forester, 
 or was the recipient of a leaflet from the 
 Bacteriological Department dealing with 
 the methods by which " schizomycetes " 
 might be successfully eliminated from his 
 farm, where some bleaching bones of once 
 numerous flocks alone testified to the pre- 
 existence of animal life upon the wind-swept 
 waste which his forefathers had reclaimed 
 181
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 from the wilderness a few generations 
 earlier. 
 
 Responsible government may also be 
 trusted to put an end to the abortive but 
 expensive schemes of land settlement, forced 
 colonization, servant-girl introduction, etc., 
 etc., nearly all of which have proved failures 
 very harmful to the unfortunate people who 
 have embarked in them, and of benefit only 
 to the personnel employed in their adminis- 
 tration. For the rest, the best service we 
 can do South Africa will be to leave her 
 alone. All seem to be now agreed upon 
 that point. Even the men who seven or 
 eight years ago were said to be desirous 
 of seeing some striking example of British 
 power, are now in most instances ruefully 
 regarding the result of the experiment. 
 The devil is sick and sorry to-day in South 
 Africa, but his sorrow is for himself. It 
 does not extend to others. That would 
 be expecting too much. When the devil 
 can be sorry for others he will be what he 
 once was an angel. Nevertheless, the 
 present would be a good time for the 
 Christian bodies generally in England to 
 182
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 have another try at him. Some of them 
 might perhaps find it difficult to answer 
 if he were disposed to question them as to 
 their attitude before and during the war, 
 but he is so sick that it is improbable he 
 would say many unpleasant things, and a few 
 Colonial bishoprics, established, say, some- 
 where on the Zambesi, would soon silence 
 him. You meet few persons in South 
 Africa who will tell you that the country 
 has seen the last of her troubles. Ninety- 
 nine in a hundred think she has changed 
 one set of misfortunes for another even if 
 she has done that. 
 
 For my own part I believe that we might 
 end all our difficulties much more easily than 
 people imagine. We have only to do what 
 Sir George Grey, Mr. Froude, and many 
 others advised us to do long ago leave her 
 alone. Let her hammer out her future, as 
 Canada and Australia have done, upon a 
 fair field and with no favour. No matter 
 in what fashion Downing-street may attempt 
 to make her bed, South Africa will lie on it 
 only as she likes in the long run. 
 
 The war had scarcely ceased ere there 
 '83
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 arose among our own people in Johannes- 
 burg a strong reaction against us. That 
 feeling is gaining strength still. If nothing 
 succeeds like success, so nothing fails like 
 failure. Hundreds of our own people in 
 the Transvaal will tell you to-day that they 
 much preferred the old days under " Oom 
 Paul " to the regime under which they are 
 now living. Our rulers have imagined that, 
 like Mercator and his "projection," they could 
 square the circle of South Africa. One 
 after the other they have failed in these 
 academic labours, and they are astonished 
 at finding themselves and their " projec- 
 tions " back in the inevitable globe circle 
 again, their efforts having only resulted in 
 making it a "vicious" one. In South 
 Africa English and Dutch have already 
 combined on one point. It is to laugh at 
 our failures, and when once the dress circle 
 and the pit are united upon that score, it is 
 not far from having to quit the stage and 
 let the curtain down. 
 
 I fully realize the importance of the native 
 question. I think I understand something 
 about the Labour problem and of the many 
 184
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 grave difficulties which South Africa has to 
 face, now and in the future, but I firmly 
 believe that the perpetual presence of the 
 Imperial power is the strongest incentive to 
 aggression upon the natives on the part of 
 the whites, and that our interference, no 
 matter how well-intentioned it may be, will 
 result, as it has resulted in the past, in 
 friction, failure, and misfortune. 
 
 The Cape Colony only learnt wisdom and 
 justice in its dealings with the native races 
 when it had to pay the cost of its own wars. 
 It was precisely similar in the case of New 
 Zealand forty years ago. 
 
 "Chinese Labour," "One Vote One 
 Value," the pernicious influence of De 
 Beers, the intrigues of the Rand magnates, 
 the Labour question, the Rhodes Trust 
 all these things will have their day and run 
 their several courses ; but when once the 
 people have been given a just, full, and 
 free representative system, and when " the 
 mind of the (Imperial) ruling" is "favour- 
 able " to all and fair to all, then we may 
 look for a South Africa in which the name 
 ' Good Hope " will have ceased to be an 
 
 85
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 absurdity. The path is easy to follow if 
 we wish to follow it. It has been " blazed " 
 for us by the warnings of our best as well 
 as by the windy wordings of our worst. 
 
 Opening " David Copperfield " on board 
 the ship which carried me here, I came 
 upon this sentence : " If we fail to hold 
 our own . . . every object in this world 
 will slip from us. No ; ride on, rough-shod 
 if need be, smooth-shod if that will do ; but 
 ride on, ride on over all the obstacles and 
 win the race." "Win what race?" said I. 
 " The race that one has started on," said he. 
 " Ride on ! " We know the shipwreck in 
 which that rough-shod ride ended. South 
 Africa is a poor country about which to 
 prophesy, and he must be a bold man who 
 would venture to ply that trade there. 
 
 I met in a railway carriage in Natal a 
 gentlemen who kept a native store in 
 Tembuland. He was proceeding there with 
 his wife and child. The man had fought in 
 the old Zulu War, two of his sons had 
 fought for us in the Boer War ; the third, 
 now travelling with his parents, was a boy 
 about twelve years old. Speaking of the 
 186
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 Boer War, the mother said that it was their 
 family custom at home to pray every night 
 for the safety of the two absent boys, and 
 for the dead who had fallen in the war. 
 One evening when the prayers were finished, 
 the boy, then a child of six years, asked, 
 " Have the dead Boers any one to pray for 
 them, mother ? " "I don't know," she 
 answered; "but I don't think they have, 
 because they don't pray for the dead." 
 " Then I'll pray for them," said the boy. 
 "And every night after we had prayed for 
 our dead, he " pointing to the boy (who was 
 asleep on the carriage seat) "said a prayer 
 for the Boer dead, and we joined in the 
 prayer." 
 
 A small beginning, no doubt, but when a 
 grave is being filled in the first handfuls 
 are not large. 
 
 ST. HELENA, 
 June, 1906. 
 
 I8 7
 
 XVI 
 
 LOOKING back only seven years to 
 those palatial days of early '99, when 
 " our Mr. John " was being hurried 
 to the depleting post amid a host of jocund 
 patriots, sympathetic contractors, and cosmo- 
 politan Empire-builders, all of whom were 
 unwearied in their assurances of the easy 
 and economic accomplishment of great archi- 
 tectural designs, one cannot help pausing 
 a moment to reflect upon the physical 
 machinery by which such colossal depletions 
 were subsequently achieved. Unquestion- 
 ably, the cable stands in the forefront of the 
 engine-house ; nothing in the political or 
 social machinery of the time played such an 
 effective part in the preparatory ceremonies 
 of the sacrifice. Without the ocean cable 
 it is difficult to see how it could have been 
 done. It is only when one has watched 
 the working of a great ocean telegraph at 
 both its extremities that one can comprehend 
 1 88
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 how facile has become the accomplishment 
 of great designs. 
 
 I forget who it was who said that ten 
 minutes was a sufficient start for any men- 
 dacity. Think, then, what twenty days must 
 mean. Besides, a message by cable is vastly 
 more important than anything a penny 
 stamp can carry. Life has not enough 
 leisure now for a letter "the wire's the 
 thing by which you catch the conscience 
 of King " Demos. When all the causes of 
 the late war have been weighed and analyzed, 
 the cable cause stands as the driving wheel 
 of the entire machine plant. 
 
 I have been watching the working of our 
 Colonial systems for nearly half a century, 
 and it has been borne in upon me more and 
 more that we are seriously misusing our 
 cables. If you write a dispatch for direction, 
 or for popular consumption, at some point 
 which is twenty days' distant from the seat 
 of Empire, the cable gives you the inestim- 
 able advantage of having nineteen days and 
 some hours, with as many nights thrown in, 
 for thinking and sleeping over your office 
 copy. The simple word " don't " cabled on 
 189
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 the morning of the twentieth day can save 
 the situation. But when you reverse the 
 process, and cable your orders for action, the 
 apple-cart is liable to be upset without any 
 chance of subsequent readjustment. I have 
 been told that the outbreak of a general war 
 would probably be signalized by a general 
 cutting of all the ocean cables. Would it 
 be an unmitigated misfortune if the advanced 
 posts of Empire had to revert to old-time 
 tactics intent only upon looking outwards, 
 and, what is of equal importance, hearing 
 outwards ? You cannot easily have one ear 
 on the home telephone and the other on the 
 other side of the enemy's hill. You may be 
 sure Puck was full of mischief when he laid, 
 in imagination, the first cable. Even now 
 he gets into the wires occasionally. I think 
 I am correct in saying that on the memor- 
 able occasion of the Jameson Raid both the 
 African cables that on the east coast as 
 well as that on the west were out of action 
 at the supreme moment, and remained out 
 of action with Puckish persistency for many 
 hours. 
 
 I remember having heard another strange 
 190
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 electric story of that time. It had been 
 suggested to the old Transvaal Government 
 that they should instal an electric lighting 
 plant in their new arsenal at Pretoria. 
 It was safer and more easily managed, 
 they were told. It would show, too, that 
 they were up to date. Matters were soon 
 arranged a tender was accepted, the work 
 was quickly completed, and the arsenal at 
 Pretoria was duly "installed" some weeks 
 prior to the date in December, 1895, which 
 had been fixed for the raid from Mafeking 
 and the rising in Johannesburg. " The 
 installation was arranged," said the narrator, 
 so that by simply turning a button you could 
 plunge the whole arsenal into darkness, and 
 by an equally simple movement with another 
 button the bare and open space which sur- 
 rounded the building became flooded with 
 light. It had been settled between the 
 " risers " and the " raiders " that the arsenal 
 at Pretoria was to be surprised and captured 
 by the first-named body of " Reformers," 
 moving at night upon Pretoria from a base 
 midway between that place and Johannes- 
 burg and that when the seizure of the 
 191
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 arms and ammunition had been effected, 
 the buttons would be worked in the simple 
 manner described, so that while the risers 
 (who had in anticipation possessed them- 
 selves of the arsenal) would be lying hidden 
 in impenetrable darkness, the aroused Boers 
 (who, by this time it was supposed, would 
 have been advancing to the attack) would 
 suddenly have found themselves in a blaze 
 of electric light, as they crossed the open 
 ground to attempt the recovery of their 
 lost possession. Under such circumstances 
 it was easy to foresee the result every 
 bullet fired from the darkened fortress must 
 have found a Boer billet not even the latest 
 tap-room recruit from Johannesburg could 
 have missed such an easy target. "Would 
 you believe it?" went on the tale of 
 disappointed ambition. "It was found at 
 the last moment that the infernal buttons 
 wouldn't work ; the whole beastly apparatus 
 had got out of order. Was there ever such 
 luck ? " By this time the bystanders had 
 been wrought to a high pitch of excitement 
 and expectation. The denouement of the 
 story left them silent. At last one of them 
 192
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 asked as will often happen on such occa- 
 sions a very foolish question : " Who paid 
 for the job ? " he inquired. For a moment 
 the original narrator regarded the questioner 
 with a look of surprise and almost of pity, 
 natural to the simplicity of mind revealed by 
 the query. " Of course, old Kruger paid," 
 he said gruffly. I have sometimes thought 
 that had Paul Kruger lived a few years 
 longer, he and the English taxpayer would 
 have become true friends. 
 
 It was by the electric wire, too, that 
 during these jocund days of early '99 the 
 highest flights of realistic imagination were 
 evolved out of nothing. I recall the 
 manner in which a small body of very inde- 
 pendent citizens, acting in a remote part of 
 the sub-continent, were able to impress the 
 governing minds of the moment with a lively 
 sense of what " the white man's burden " 
 really means in Africa. The telegraph an- 
 nounced one morning that the shops, or 
 stores, of two Indian traders had been 
 wrecked, the persons of the obnoxious 
 intruders seized, their property divided 
 among the citizens, and themselves forcibly 
 193 o
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 conveyed over the border into Portuguese 
 territory. A further telegram arrived later 
 reporting that the members of the Volunteer 
 corps of the town had possessed themselves 
 of the arms in the arsenal, and that they 
 had stoutly refused to deliver up the said 
 arms when called upon to do so by properly 
 constituted authority. But the crowning 
 news came still later. It reported that the 
 members of the Chamber of Commerce had 
 passed a series of resolutions entirely endors- 
 ing the action taken by the other bodies in 
 the town, and expressing complete sympathy 
 with the aims of the reformers in their laud- 
 able and patriotic efforts to exclude the 
 undesirable alien from that portion of the 
 African continent. 
 
 Here was an array of reported facts from 
 which some very pretty headlines could 
 have been made up for the London morning 
 papers. The commercial and trading in- 
 terests in this flourishing Zambesian com- 
 munity had expressed opinions upon the 
 fiscal and free trade questions in terms of 
 unmistakable strength, the trained bands of 
 the town had taken equally prompt measures 
 194
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 for safeguarding the citizen against " the 
 return of the native," but still more serious, 
 the greybeards of the municipality assembled 
 in their Chamber of Commerce had placed 
 on record their entire sympathy with the 
 movement, and their complete concurrence 
 in the aims and objects of the younger and 
 more active sections of the community. The 
 " Chamber of Commerce " touch was the 
 work of genius. Doubtless the edifice had 
 solemnity about it, steps, pillars, a portico. 
 One could cope with the plunder part of the 
 business. One could even fire into the 
 mutineers if they refused after the fifth or 
 sixth summons to lay down our rifles ; but it 
 was quite another matter when the slaughter 
 of these grave and reverent seniors had to 
 be contemplated. 
 
 The following day, however, the outlook 
 brightened. It was found that the white 
 raiders, the Volunteers, and the greybeards 
 of the Chamber of Commerce were all one 
 and the same body of persons ; that their 
 collective numbers were about one dozen, 
 and that the arsenal and the Chamber of 
 Commerce were not separate buildings in 
 195
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 the city, nor had they any importance, archi- 
 tectural or otherwise, beyond what they 
 might derive from being in direct connection 
 with the "hotel" forming parts, in fact, of 
 that corrugated-iron establishment. 
 
 The essence of the error which we have 
 been always making in Africa, an error 
 which working by cable only intensifies, is 
 our imagining that the Dark Continent will 
 either receive our message or transmit its 
 own in the same sense or meaning which we 
 are wont to apply to words. The words may 
 be the same, but their meanings are different. 
 Her methods of thought are not ours. The 
 great gold-mine which she discovered twenty 
 years ago on the Witwatersrand is not a 
 gold - mine in the sense that mines in 
 America or Australia have been gold-mines. 
 It has changed its nature, and become a 
 bottomless pit, a gigantic suction-hole for the 
 reception and detention of English and other 
 gold pieces. When our ship arrived at Cape- 
 town some six months ago, an old resident, 
 returning to his native shores, was greeted 
 affectionately by a compatriot with, " Well, 
 old man, I suppose you have come out again 
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 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 to float off some more of your paper 
 
 upon these at home." " Can the 
 
 Ethiopian change his skin, and the leopard 
 his spots ? " asked Jeremiah of old. To which 
 I would reply, " That depends entirely upon 
 circumstances." I see every prospect of the 
 Ethiopian knocking the spots off the leopard 
 in a not remote future if the cable continues 
 to be the chief medium of communication 
 between them. 
 
 I remember once on the Upper Nile, at 
 the time the British force were being 
 withdrawn from Dongola for the purpose, 
 it was said, of going to war somewhere on 
 the .Amur Daria, a telegram arriving at the 
 frontier stations of Merawi declaring the 
 desire of his Majesty's Ministers that 
 " settled government " should be established 
 in the Sudan before the withdrawal of the 
 troops. All the orders for evacuation had 
 already been issued we were to move in 
 two or three days' time. There were about 
 forty-eight hours in which "settled govern- 
 ment " could be established. The order was 
 a large one, but the area of its action was 
 still more extensive. I sent at once for the 
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 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 head man of the neighbouring Arab village. 
 " Who was the last Shagghieh king of this 
 country before the Turks came ? " I asked an 
 old man when he arrived at the military post. 
 "It was the Malek el Bookera" (that was 
 not the exact name, but it will suffice), he 
 replied. " Are there any of his descendants 
 now living?" was my next question. "Yes, 
 Allah be praised ! A descendant of El 
 Bookera dwelt at a spot about six hours by 
 camel from Merawi." " Send for him at 
 once." The following day the lineal descen- 
 dant of the last king of the Shagghieh Arabs 
 appeared with a small following of camel 
 retainers at the post. Conversation began. 
 I put as succinctly as I could before this 
 grandson of El Bookera (he was also, I 
 think, a descendant of the Prophet) what I 
 thought were the wishes of her Majesty's 
 Government on this question of settled 
 government in the Sudan. The varying 
 expressions which crossed the Malek's face 
 told me that the interpreter was certainly 
 translating the mind of her Majesty's Minis- 
 ters into some very striking word-pictures. 
 Every now and then the Malek's eyes were 
 198
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 reverentially raised towards the roof of 
 the mud hut in which the interview was 
 being held. A single ejaculation of appeal 
 or praise to Allah came occasionally from 
 his lips. 
 
 There was a pause when the interpreter 
 ceased speaking, during which the beads 
 which the Malek held in his hand dropped 
 down their little white thread. 
 
 Then he spoke at considerable length. 
 When he had finished I asked the inter- 
 preter what had been said. 
 
 ''He said," went on that functionary, 
 " that he has quite understood all the matters 
 that your Excellency has explained, and that 
 he is ready to undertake the duties which 
 your Excellency orders." 
 
 I felt surprised and relieved. " But he 
 
 said a good deal more than that," I remarked 
 
 for the Malek had spoken for some 
 
 minutes, while the interpreter's version had 
 
 only occupied a few seconds. 
 
 " He said, your Excellency, that in the 
 old days his grandfather had cut heads in 
 this country, and that still further off his 
 great-grandfather had cut heads, and that, 
 
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 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 although his father had not cut heads, he 
 himself the present El Bookera was pre- 
 pared now to begin cutting heads, and to go 
 on cutting heads, and governing the country 
 in the way all their Excellencies wished 
 should be done." 
 
 We marched next morning. 
 
 LONDON, 
 July, 1906. 
 
 200
 
 XVII 
 
 1HAVE been asked by some persons 
 who were good enough to read the 
 letters I have written upon South 
 African affairs why I have not been an 
 advocate of a closer and more continued 
 interference on the part of the Imperial 
 Government in the internal affairs of the 
 sub-continent. I will endeavour to explain 
 my reasons at greater length. 
 
 The secret of our success with all the 
 other Colonies of the Empire has been 
 non-interference. The cause of our trouble 
 in South Africa has been interference. 
 Canada doctored from Downing-street fifty 
 years ago was precisely what South Africa 
 is to-day, a perpetual trouble, a prolonged 
 failure. There is not a Colony of ours on 
 the globe in which stories of the errors 
 which are inevitable when government is 
 attempted by the man "off the spot" are 
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 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 not as plentiful as blackberries on briers. 
 The story of the War Office order which 
 directed the military chaplain who read 
 morning prayers at Fort Napier, in Natal, 
 to give service at some place near King 
 Williamstown (five hundred miles away in 
 Cape Colony) in the evening, is still as 
 fresh, and seemingly as refreshing, to the 
 South African mind, as I found it a 
 generation ago. 
 
 Nor, when we turn from the field of 
 geography to that of history, is the prospect 
 more promising. 
 
 " Every day that I am here," wrote Talley- 
 rand to Louis XVIII. from the Congress of 
 Vienna, " I grow more and more astonished 
 at all that the English don't know." Paul 
 Kruger made a profound mistake in import- 
 ing Hollanders into the Transvaal. We 
 have made a similar error in filling the 
 country with our people. Kruger could 
 have got better men from the Dutch people 
 in the old Colony. We could have done 
 the same among our people here. Our 
 youthful University importations have not 
 been a success. That young administrative 
 202
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 aspirant, who is said to have declared to 
 some old-time English settler, " Haw haw. 
 We are going to run this country with 
 gentlemen and by proclamations," is not 
 exactly the type of Government official best 
 suited to " run " anything, except, perhaps, 
 a cricket-ball. You will have to visit South 
 Africa many times ere its roads become 
 familiar to you. Better still, you should 
 be born there if you are to have business 
 or administrative dealings with it. Even 
 Sir George Grey could sometimes make 
 mistakes in South Africa. Travelling up 
 country, he stopped one morning for an 
 early cup of tea at a wayside inn. The bill 
 for half a dozen boiled eggs and the same 
 number of cups of tea was two pounds ten 
 shillings. As the party were taking their 
 seats in the Cape cart again, Sir George 
 observed to mine host that " eggs must be 
 scarce on that line." "Your Excellency," 
 observed the innkeeper, " eggs is plentiful. 
 It is Governors that is scarce on this 
 road." 
 
 If South Africa is to be ruled from 
 England, let our young statesmen at least 
 
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 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 be sent there after they leave college not 
 to "do it" as Mr. Phineas Fogg did 
 the world, but to do it as our grandfathers 
 " coached " Europe one hundred and fifty 
 years ago. We know what a short visit 
 to the "Illimitable" did for a celebrated 
 old statesman. What dreams of foreign 
 Empire it shattered, what nightmares of 
 home policy it conjured up! Would it not 
 be better to put our statesmen into this 
 extraordinary Veld-School in their recep- 
 tive days rather than in the deceptive stages 
 of later life ? 
 
 When the preliminary arrangements for 
 the recent war in South Africa were being 
 made in England in the early 'nineties, the 
 first step taken by the " builders " was to 
 lay the foundation-stone of the edifice. It 
 was very appropriately laid in paper scrip 
 shares bonds. All England rushed 
 hungrily at this paper. It could not be 
 taken fast enough. People fought to get 
 it. Still, after all, it was only paper 
 promises to pay. Then came the next 
 move. It was first whispered, then spoken, 
 and finally shouted that if old Kruger could 
 204
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 be got out of the way all this mass of paper- 
 promise would become gold real live gold. 
 It was thus that the road to ruin in South 
 Africa was paved. When everybody had 
 surrendered their purses to the various 
 Turpins of the times, and had got in return 
 these little bits of paper with Rand, Rho- 
 desian, and Transvaal names written upon 
 them, they were told : " Clear out old 
 Kruger, and your bits of paper will turn 
 into bags of gold." 
 
 It was thought at first that " the Raid/' 
 as it was called, would suffice for the expul- 
 sion of the man and the transmutation of 
 the metal ; but the Raid failed, the slump 
 followed, and the abortive inquiry closed the 
 first act. The great central conception, how- 
 ever that of wealth out of war was not 
 abandoned. War was only postponed it 
 was to be brought about " constitutionally " 
 this time. 
 
 A select band of "constitutional" pro- 
 vokers was imported into South Africa. 
 "We have failed this time," one of them 
 is reported to have said to a Dutch 
 lady as they parted at the door of the 
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 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 committee- room where the inquiry had 
 been held ; " but never mind, we will still 
 goad you into war." 
 
 I was reminded of all this and a good 
 deal more when I read a few days ago a 
 manifesto issued by the latest body of the 
 pro-aggressive party in Johannesburg, warn- 
 ing England in the old solemn tones of the 
 abysses of trouble and misfortune before her 
 if she ventured upon the policy of being fair 
 to all. It is the old story over again. The 
 tone to-day is slightly changed, but the tale 
 is the same. Persuade England by bogey, 
 and govern the Transvaal by the stick. 
 "The key of English supremacy in South 
 Africa is to gerrymander the constituencies 
 in the Transvaal " that is what you are 
 told. '* You must keep the stick over the 
 Dutchman," one of the most noted of the 
 pro - aggressives remarked to me a few 
 months ago : " The industry must be main- 
 tained at all costs." " Concessions are only 
 signs of weakness." " A strong majority for 
 the Liberals in England will be ominous 
 for South Africa." This and much more of 
 the same. I listened in silence. There is 
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 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 little use in speaking to people who will talk 
 thus, at this time of day. No use in quoting 
 history, or in pointing to Ireland, Canada, 
 Dutch traditions or English precedents. 
 The late Lord Salisbury defined England's 
 policy in the Far East by a happy phrase : 
 It was " the policy of the open door." The 
 pro-aggressive programme in South Africa 
 is equally easy of definition. It is "the 
 policy of the open sore." The Healing Art 
 is tabooed. Continue the blister. "In 
 order to be strong you must be unjust. If 
 you find yourself entering upon quicksands 
 and quagmires, do not turn back." Of course 
 the men who speak or write in this fashion 
 are not fools they are very far removed 
 from that catalogue. They are only 
 gamblers players of bridge. The thing 
 that used to be called statesmanship is with 
 them a game. You must not lose the 
 "trick." It is a happy expression the 
 card that is on the table at the moment must 
 be beaten, no matter how terrible may be 
 the cost the day after to-morrow. Another 
 cigar, and the next generation may look 
 out for itself. Posterity has not dealt us 
 207
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 any cards. No ! but it may possibly have 
 an interest in our games. A " bridge " is 
 sometimes a short cut. The absent-minded 
 beggar was supposed to have played an 
 important part in the late war. He has put 
 on some of his clothes and got back a little 
 of his mind since, but he is still largely on 
 horseback both in England and in South 
 Africa, and this "bridge "business may take 
 him to his time-honoured destination sooner 
 than he supposes. 
 
 Six or seven months ago, when I reached 
 South Africa, the situation was a very 
 interesting one. The pro-aggressive party 
 was preparing to move into the strongly 
 entrenched position which had been prepared 
 months before, in anticipation of the defeat 
 of their friends at the coming general 
 election in England. All the administrative 
 blockhouses in the land, from Table Moun- 
 tain to the Limpopo, were already occupied. 
 The most aggressive stalwarts held the chief 
 strategic points on the map of Government. 
 The shelter-trenches of racial animosity had 
 already been dug, and it only remained for 
 the field army to move in and take possession 
 208
 
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 of the position, from which the coming 
 Liberal Government was to find itself 
 attacked checkmated, confused, and con- 
 founded in its new-born efforts at liberty 
 and conciliation. At first no quarter was 
 to be given. The extreme mood did not 
 last. Signs of blandishment appeared Het 
 Volk was approached. He was taken up to 
 the top of the Corner House and shown the 
 wonderful mountains of the magnates and 
 the golden vales that lie among them. It 
 was thought that he would fall down and 
 worship the great calf. But he didn't. In 
 spite of the predictions of the most trusted 
 leader of the pro -aggressive party, Het Volk 
 was not to be caught. " Het Volk," had 
 said this great leader, " will not save you 
 from mammon." That was only a few 
 months ago, and Het Volk is still at large. 
 
 Then the mode of the aggressives changed 
 again. It was decided to send this deputa- 
 tion to England. I have read its prospectus 
 or programme with some of the interest of 
 old times. The light of other days still 
 shines through it, but a note more of sorrow 
 than of anger also pervades it. Were 
 209 P
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 the oceans of blood and the mints of 
 money to be spilt and spent in vain ? it 
 asked. I glanced through the list of names 
 in an appendix to the document. The 
 birthplaces and professions of these gentle- 
 men were given in separate columns. 
 " Auctioneer," " Barrister-at-law," " Finan- 
 cier," " Mining Engineer," " Agent," 
 " Baker," " Contractor," " Medico," and at 
 last " Speculator." What! only two "specu- 
 lators " among twenty-seven candidates for 
 parliamentary fame on the Rand ! 
 
 It was quite like old times. One re- 
 membered the tale of the laughter which 
 used to shake the festive board in the 
 mansion near Cape Town in these months 
 in early '99 when the telegrams were being 
 prepared at these pleasant Sunday evening 
 reunions for transmission to the London 
 newspapers. This document was for home 
 consumption too. It used to be said of the 
 Egyptian Delta that if you tickled it with 
 a hoe it would laugh into a harvest ; but on 
 the Rand we do better. There you tickle 
 with a telegram and you laugh into un- 
 limited liabilities. If the crash comes and 
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 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 I can see no prospect of avoiding it "the 
 South Sea Bubble will have every chance 
 of being repeated here " that was one of 
 the last observations made to me in Johan- 
 nesburg. Whatever the present Govern- 
 ment may do or not do, they will be blamed. 
 They have had no more to say to the exist- 
 ing conditions of economic depression on 
 the Rand or to the general chaos of life 
 there than the man in the moon, but they 
 will be blamed by the lunatics all the same. 
 
 Give South Africa the most favourable 
 mind of your ruling, but after you have 
 secured the safety of the fundamental facts 
 upon which the Empire stands to-day. 
 When you have made safe those principles 
 of Free Labour, Equal Justice, and Equal 
 Rights which have done more, and are 
 doing more, for the acceptance of our sove- 
 reignty than all the armies and fleets at our 
 command then leave her alone. " Men," 
 wrote Burke, one hundred and fifty years 
 ago, " do not live upon blotted paper : the 
 favourable or the unfavourable mind of the 
 ruling is of more consequence to a nation 
 than the black letter of any statute." 
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 But the ruling must be wholly and entirely 
 true. No gerrymandering ; no tongue in 
 cheek ; no old raiders in command or in 
 Council; above all no "stick." And as for 
 the painter, you may make your minds quite 
 easy. An old Boer recently gave a friend of 
 mine the following message : " Tell them in 
 England," he said, " that if those chaps up in 
 Jo'burg want to cut the painter, we'll not ask 
 England to send us out any rifles. Send us 
 a shipload of shamboks, and we'll answer for 
 the painter." 
 
 These are some of the reasons why, I 
 think, South Africa wants little legislation 
 from us. She has been in the seething-pot 
 a long while. Her imported "statesmen" 
 would never let her out of it if they could. 
 That is one of the many methods by which 
 they flourish. If the financial barometer 
 only rose they would have a poor time of it. 
 When it falls they rake in the harvest all 
 the faster. They can make it rise when it 
 suits them. 
 
 And there are other reasons. The longer 
 I watch the world the more convinced I am 
 that the Devil gets the first of everything. 
 212
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 " I was conceived in iniquity," says David. 
 The Devil got away with a good start when 
 gold and diamonds were discovered in South 
 Africa, and another long lead when the 
 cable was laid. For quite twenty years he 
 has had the course almost to himself. The 
 wheels of God grind more slowly in South 
 Africa than elsewhere. But I think I can 
 discern signs that the term of this long 
 possession is nearing its end. The under- 
 pillars of the great Temple of Mammon are 
 being taken away one by one. You cannot 
 continue the " oxygen process " for ever. 
 You will have to come back to the normal 
 and healthy respirations of free and honest 
 labour. Servile labour, forced labour, cruel 
 treatment of natives these moral cancers 
 can be cured by the Rontgen rays of a free 
 Press and by the strength of the honest vote 
 that is in South Africa. 
 
 For twenty years you have been cultivat- 
 ing the weeds ; let the flowers have a chance 
 at last. The natural strength of the patient's 
 constitution is superb. How she has stood 
 the successive waves of bounderism which 
 have been flung upon her is the greatest 
 
 213
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 wonder I have ever known. There must be 
 a future in store for a people who have been 
 able to maintain their moral equilibrium 
 amid such a social deluge, and please bear in 
 mind that there are many unobtrusive ways 
 and kindly methods by means of which you 
 may get into the hearts of these people 
 again. A gracious and courageous English 
 lady is at this moment doing more in Johan- 
 nesburg to undo some of the most terrible 
 effects of the recent war than all the huge 
 machinery of the bacteriologist and the 
 serumist can ever compass.* 
 
 To get into the hearts of the people of 
 South Africa the real people you will have 
 to face many things the abuse of the privi- 
 leged, the hatred of the unlawful possessor, the 
 calumny of the monopolist, the envy of the 
 unjust, even the ridicule of the hired songster. 
 Never mind the recompense will be worth 
 it all. It will be the one bit of legitimate and 
 lasting Empire-building which you will have 
 achieved since the creation of Canada. 
 
 IRELAND, 
 
 2nd August, 1906. 
 
 Miss Hobhouse. 
 214
 
 XVIII 
 
 TO summarize conclusions arrived at 
 during a recent survey of South 
 African affairs is not an easy task. 
 Like the JEgean Sea, where every island is 
 said to have its own particular wind, so in 
 South Africa every Colony has its own sepa- 
 rate and particular difficulty, political, terri- 
 torial, and economic. The Black difficulty 
 is alone common to all, but even it varies in 
 intensity, according to locality. 
 
 I shall in this letter attempt to tie into 
 one bundle the most pressing among these 
 incongruous troubles. 
 
 Chinese labour should never have been 
 introduced into the Transvaal. Of all places 
 on the globe, South Africa is the very last 
 spot upon which experiments should be tried. 
 "It is a moral volcano," said an old and 
 very experienced Consul-General to me. 
 " England should keep a political seismo- 
 graph on the top of Table Mountain, and 
 215
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 she should send out her best seismographic 
 statesman to take charge of it." 
 
 I have said that the Chinese coolie in the 
 Rand mines was " as oxygen to a sick man. 
 Stop it and he sinks." This is true of the 
 moment. We administer oxygen only as a 
 temporary stimulant pending the application 
 of lasting relief. You cannot go on with 
 this temporary artificial gas-bag for ever 
 attached to your head. What permanent 
 remedy, then, is to be tried? In order to 
 propound the cure we must understand the 
 disease. The disease is over-capitalization, 
 over-speculation, over-gambling, over every- 
 thing ; and Chinese labour is the direct 
 result of this plethora of insensate Eiffel- 
 towerism. Before you will get the machine 
 into running order you will have to reduce 
 the top hamper. You must, in fact, un- 
 inflate. In this Chinese experiment you are 
 only flinging good money after bad. The 
 bag of oxygen will burst in the end, and you 
 will be worse off than you were before. In 
 fact, it has burst already if the truth about it 
 were allowed to be told. The whole of the 
 mobile portion of the Transvaal and Orange 
 216
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 River Colony Constabulary engaged in 
 watching the Chinese coolies on the Rand, 
 and the whole of the inhabitants in the sur- 
 rounding districts lying down in terror of 
 their lives every night that is a high price 
 to pay even for oxygen. 
 
 Let me describe one experience. While 
 motoring in March last from Johannesburg 
 to Pretoria night fell upon us about ten 
 miles out from the former place. The track 
 was lost ; at last we saw a farmhouse, and 
 stopped to inquire the road. There was 
 much rumbling of the inmates inside, and it 
 was some time before a door was opened 
 preparations were being made against the 
 dreaded Celestial marauders. An hour later 
 we were compelled to halt for the night in 
 the open veld. " You might leave the lamps 
 burning," I said to the chauffeur. " I will 
 read the newspapers." " I dare not," he 
 replied; "the lights will show our where- 
 abouts to the Chinamen." People get tired 
 of living under conditions such as these. 
 
 Nor has this Chinese experiment been 
 even an economic success. The yellow 
 labour is admittedly more expensive than 
 217
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 the black. Of course, with the addition of 
 forty or fifty thousand more hands, the out- 
 put of gold is greater than it used to be ; 
 but it is produced at a relatively higher cost. 
 " There is more labour, less profit " as the 
 depth increases, so naturally does the cost 
 of working. All that I have explained in a 
 previous letter. But there is a point which 
 I have not touched upon. The effort of the 
 mine manager must naturally be to show 
 profits ; that of the director must equally be 
 to pay dividends. These things can only 
 be done by getting the gold out of the rock, 
 and delivering it in England at the lowest 
 cost. Hence with this increasing depth you 
 will have increasing curtailments of the more 
 expensive forms of labour, and you will also 
 have increasing efforts on the part of the 
 mine management to get back by means of 
 shops, within and without the compounds, 
 and by other means, as much of their men's 
 wages as possible. 
 
 Now, the interest of commercial Johannes- 
 burg is the opposite of this. Roughly speak- 
 ing, the wage-bill of the mines cannot be less 
 than from ^"10,000 to .15,000 a day. That 
 218
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 is part of the harvest of which South Africa 
 expects to get its share. Hence will come 
 the tug-of-war between town and magnate, 
 and between white and yellow. If the town 
 is not to have its share, then, so far as the 
 shopkeeper is concerned, the mines might 
 just as well be in Peru, and so, too, as far 
 as South Africa is concerned. 
 
 Of course, free labour would kill all these 
 undergrowths and "trucks," which are the 
 results of semi-slavery. Can free labour be 
 achieved? I believe it to be perfectly 
 possible. I believe that village colonies can 
 be started for natives in the neighbourhood 
 of the mines. These might be of two kinds 
 (a) villages wherein families would settle 
 permanently ; (b) locations into which men 
 would come for certain stated periods, and to 
 which their wives could also come. These 
 settlements might be situated at points 
 within ten miles of the mines the men 
 coming to and returning from their work by 
 train and the work might further be estab- 
 lished on the day-onand day-off shift system, 
 which would alone probably suffice to reduce 
 the now terribly high death-rate by fifty per 
 219
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 cent. That is an item of which little is said 
 when this labour problem is written about. 
 Yet from the workman's point of view it 
 means a good deal. 
 
 The official records show that out of 
 some 90,000 "boys," 33 died above ground, 
 against 296 below ground, in a stated period, 
 the mortality below being nine times larger 
 than [that above. Is it any wonder, then, 
 that the native should not be particularly 
 keen to go down into these death caverns, 
 or that he should desire to make the term 
 of his labour contract as short as possible ? 
 I have consulted a great many persons upon 
 this labour question, and I believe that South 
 Africa can supply its own labour wants from 
 its own people but to do this the market 
 must be cultivated in a different fashion from 
 that which has hitherto been followed. Con- 
 structive coercion must cease. To get to 
 the mines and to return from them must be 
 made an easier and a safer process than it 
 is at present. To reach the mines now the 
 "boy " has many troubles to encounter, and 
 he often arrives at his destination thin, tired, 
 and broken. His return journey is subject 
 220
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 to even harder conditions. He has his 
 savings about him. The prey is richer ; the 
 harpy and the "friend "are more assiduous. 
 And another point the maimed of the mines 
 must not be cast adrift without some com- 
 pensation for their injuries. 
 
 I repeat, the introduction of Chinese labour 
 is directly due to the over-capitalization of 
 mines and to the dram-drinking of specula- 
 tion. Not content with the present, Johan- 
 nesburg has dealt prodigiously with the 
 future. Unable to find employment for a 
 considerable part of its present inhabitants, 
 it has nevertheless bought and laid out 
 prospective townships for miles and miles 
 beyond its suburbs. It began early to dis- 
 count and to forestall that population of two 
 millions, which one of its most trusted 
 prophets, at the conclusion of the war, 
 assured the world it was to possess. As 
 you travel now through " the illimitable " 
 you are reminded of these great expectations 
 by wooden boards more or less decayed 
 (imaginary streets) bearing upon them the 
 names of some prophet much honoured in 
 his own country, out of whose confident and 
 221
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 colossal predictions not one solitary gleam of 
 truth has yet been evolved. 
 
 To keep level with the intellectual con- 
 dition produced by prophecy, speculations, 
 booms, and flotations are resorted to. 
 Hopes of dividends deferred have to be 
 kept alive by endless experiments you 
 have to be eternally "looping the loop." 
 If you stop, the loop might perhaps loop you, 
 but so long as the booms continue it is all 
 easy going. Let me explain things a little. 
 
 The mines of the Witwatersrand are now 
 under what is called the group system. A 
 group consists of, say, eight mines. We 
 will call them A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H 
 all these subsidiary or sectional mines are 
 directed and controlled by one central body. 
 They are nominally separate and distinct 
 entities so far as the outside shareholder is 
 concerned, but internally they are collectively 
 directed. The central body gives the general 
 law to all. It orders machinery for any mine 
 it pleases. It can develop A, B, and C of 
 the group, retard the development of D, E, 
 and F, or hold in reserve G and H. It 
 somewhat resembles that great army corps 
 222
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 conception of which we heard so much a few 
 years ago ; or for the benefit of those who 
 are less intellectually endowed, it might be 
 compared to the old game of the pea under 
 the thimble, played with millions in place of 
 peas, and with the general public for audience, 
 standing seven thousand miles away from the 
 table. It needs but little expert knowledge 
 to see, in some degree at least, the advan- 
 tages which this group system confers upon 
 the central or controlling body. Labour can 
 be allotted here and withheld there ; money 
 spent or curtailed. The goods as it were 
 may be withdrawn from three of the windows, 
 and put into the other five. That is where 
 duplication of directors has its advantages. 
 As for the general public they are absent, 
 and from time immemorial the absent have 
 been in the wrong. They have always 
 believed that they knew under what par- 
 ticular thimble the pea was, but that is 
 precisely what they didn't know, even when 
 they stood quite close to the table. At 
 last at long last the general public "stand 
 out," as it is called, from this gigantic 
 Johannesburg table from pure satiety of 
 223
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 disaster. Then begin the various experi- 
 mental devices of which Chinese labour 
 was the most notable. 
 
 What is to happen ? 
 
 Perhaps the easiest, and certainly the 
 quickest, solution would be to write off, let 
 us say, one hundred millions of over capital, 
 and come down to true values. That would 
 put the vessel on a level keel at once ; 
 but even in that case the mischief would 
 probably begin again, and the public would 
 flock to the table with the old results. The 
 most pressing requirement seems to me to 
 be the establishment on the Witwatersrand 
 of some absolutely trustworthy and entirely 
 independent body of officials, who would, as 
 it were, stamp these concerns with a sort 
 of hall-mark of official approval. Proprietors 
 of hidden treasure, no matter how patriotic 
 may be their motives, should not be left to 
 determine, unaided, the values of the various 
 properties on the Rand which they are good 
 enough to offer to share with British and 
 other investors of course, for a consideration. 
 
 Up to the present the British public have 
 been content to pay the pipers and to forego 
 224
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 their claim to the tune. The pipers have 
 played some very lively airs, and the public 
 danced some remarkable measures, which on 
 the whole have left them, say, a hundred 
 millions of pounds to the bad. And not the 
 least curious thing about the matter is that 
 the pipers are still unsatisfied. 
 
 "Seamen," said Swift, "have a custom 
 when, they meet a whale, to fling out an 
 empty tub by way of amusement to divert 
 him from laying violent hands upon the 
 ship." The past twenty years have seen a 
 good many tubs thrown out by the navigators 
 of South Sea finance for the amusement of 
 whales and others in those parts. It is a 
 practice which would seem to be worthy of 
 some watching on the part of the others. It 
 would be a wise precaution, I think, to 
 establish on this ridge of the white waters 
 an Inspectorship of Tubs, just to ascertain 
 the soundness of the staves and the proper 
 flotation strength of the completed vessels. 
 
 The sooner Johannesburg gets down to 
 
 its natural labour level to its true economic 
 
 basis the earlier will be its recrudescence 
 
 to real prosperity. The subjoined little 
 
 225 Q
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 
 3rd Oct., 1899. 
 
 2oth Oct., 1899 
 
 Rand Mines 
 
 .. 27| .. 
 
 3 8 J 
 
 Goldfields 
 
 .. sl .. 
 
 7* 
 
 Modders ... 
 
 7 
 
 ioi 
 
 East Rand... 
 
 4| 
 
 7l 
 
 Chartered ... 
 
 2A .. 
 
 3*. 
 
 table of values and "booms" tells its own 
 story a very sad story when everything is 
 remembered. The week before the war, 
 the week after the war began, and to-day 
 Exchange quotations for the five under-men- 
 tioned stocks stood and stand as follows : 
 
 3* 
 
 There are sermons in stocks as well as in 
 stones. 
 
 The common law of life in the world has 
 been that they who fail should fall back. 
 No men have ever failed more conspicuously 
 than they who essayed to steer England 
 through " the white waters " of the Trans- 
 vaal. Into what a sewer of mud and filth 
 has she not been led ! And they would still 
 claim to hold the helm ! 
 
 But these things are only details in that 
 great native question which dominates all 
 South Africa. I could write many letters on 
 
 * The original shares of this mine have been subdivided 
 since 1899, so the price quoted to-day does not represent 
 actual value. 
 
 226
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 this question. Once for all, you may take 
 it from me that the native in Natal and 
 elsewhere has many and grievous causes 
 and reasons for discontent, and that these 
 causes are daily becoming more acute. You 
 may also take it as certain that there is a 
 considerable portion among the white popu- 
 lation to whom a war with the natives would 
 have many attractions. These persons would 
 be quite ready to repeat the policy of the 
 "goad," to which I have referred in an 
 earlier letter as that which was pursued after 
 the failure of the Raid towards the Dutch. 
 
 It seems as though South Africa must 
 always have some particular form of cruci- 
 fixion going on within its limits. " The 
 English protect us only to eat us," was a 
 saying common among the Kaffirs forty 
 years ago. 
 
 A man and a magnate, but a man of 
 perspicacity and a magnate of the widest 
 experience, said to me in Pretoria the words 
 which I give below 
 
 "There is trouble ahead in South Africa 
 with the natives, to which the Boer war was 
 child's play. I have known the natives for 
 227
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 nearly forty years. At the present moment 
 I employ some three thousand of them 
 directly, and perhaps thirty thousand in- 
 directly. I have always got on well with 
 the natives. Men whom I employed thirty 
 years ago still send their children and grand- 
 children to work for me. The war has been 
 a bad lesson to the natives. It put thoughts 
 into their heads such as they never knew 
 before. It was all thieving and cheating. 
 Ten years at the outside will bring this crash." 
 I wrote down the words after the con- 
 versation took place, and I give them now 
 as they were then written. " What should 
 be done?" I asked. "You should send out 
 a Commission," he replied, "of some four 
 or five good men not a Commission in 
 a hurry, but one that would go through 
 the land Colony by Colony seeing for 
 themselves the natives. Then, when they 
 have done this, let them meet a couple of 
 representatives from each Colony, and let 
 them all decide upon the native policy 
 which should be adopted for South Africa 
 a simple, just, and firm policy. Remember 
 the blacks are moving rapidly. They are 
 228
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 no longer children, and fast as they have 
 been moving during the last ten years, they 
 will go still faster in the coming decade." 
 
 It is sometimes strange to discover how 
 very old in the world are the things which 
 we imagine belong only to our own time. 
 Take this question of Black and White 
 labour, as I have spoken of it in Natal, in 
 a recent letter. Here is an extract from a 
 letter written by a Governor of St. Helena 
 to his directors, under date May, 1717 
 
 " Some blacks we have taught to lay 
 stones, but joynery or carpentery we cannot 
 have them taught, the Europeans will not 
 show them ; they talk among themselves 
 that teaching a black is a hindrance to their 
 trades, and that they shall be less depended 
 on if they show the blacks their art." 
 
 Old Natal has been writing to me signify- 
 ing its general approval of what I have 
 been saying in these letters, but telling me 
 at the same time that young Natal does not 
 see eye to eye with me on many questions. 
 I had not hoped for universal acquiescence. 
 I remembered a little story related to me 
 in Durban a few months ago. "Who is 
 229
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 that old chap ? " young Natal inquired of 
 another youngster as they stood on the 
 steps of the palatial edifice the Town Hall 
 of the city. 
 
 The venerable gentleman referred to was 
 one of Natal's oldest and most respected 
 Colonists a member of the Upper House 
 of Legislature, a municipal councillor of the 
 first order, a man whose name had been, 
 and is still, associated with philanthropy and 
 progress in the land. "That," said young 
 Natal, as his eyes followed the direction of 
 his questioner's glance, "That old bloke is, 
 I think, Charley Sanderson's father." And 
 old Natal, who told me the story with some- 
 thing of that " tear and smile in the eye " 
 which is supposed to be peculiar to the 
 Celtic temperament, descended the remain- 
 ing steps of the palace which had been the 
 theatre of his life-labour, and went his way, 
 doubting whether he would not have done 
 more to hand his name down to futurity 
 if he had devoted himself (like Charley) 
 exclusively to football. 
 
 IRELAND, 
 
 August, 1907. 
 
 230
 
 XIX 
 
 THE life of man must always lie 
 between two nights the night of 
 the past, which darkens slowly 
 backwards from his yesterdays into com- 
 plete oblivion, and that still more im- 
 penetrable darkness of the future, which 
 has scarcely a moment's dawn to herald 
 the sunrise of its to-morrows. The bit 
 of daylight at which man can catch has 
 a good deal of artificial light now mixed 
 with its smoke and fog, but day by day the 
 pace becomes more rapid there is less time 
 to note the signboards or watch the road- 
 turns. The steering that used to be called 
 statesmanship becomes more haphazard, 
 forecast grows rarer, recollection has become 
 well-nigh impossible. The moment is gone 
 before its lesson can be laid to heart 
 right and wrong quickly lose their relative 
 perspectives, and get mixed together in 
 unresolvable proportions ; long before the 
 231
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 public can adjust their glasses the track- 
 coverers have swept the course. The pieces 
 are no longer in position. "It is all old 
 history," you will be told ; "it is no use 
 looking back. See, there are other heads 
 already coming up out of the East." 
 
 Nevertheless "old history " has disagree- 
 able ways of repeating itself when its lessons 
 have been ignored, or its dead too hastily 
 interred. The heads coming up in the sun- 
 rise would sometimes seem to have tails that 
 connect strangely with graves upon which 
 the sun has set. Let us exhume a little. 
 
 In a phrase famous at the time of its 
 utterance, but which has long been relegated 
 to the convenient limbo in which it is 
 hoped political falsities may be forgotten, the 
 late Lord Salisbury declared that England 
 wanted neither new goldfields nor additional 
 territory. Everybody was struck with the 
 profound truth of this statement. Men 
 believed it not only because of the man 
 who made it, or of the important occasion 
 upon which it was uttered, but still more 
 because of the inherent common sense and 
 truth which appeared to be in it. England 
 232
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 had already accumulated more gold than she 
 seemed to be able to commercially digest 
 and she possessed larger territories than she 
 could conveniently administer. Her Govern- 
 ment could get about a hundred and five 
 golden sovereigns for a bit of paper upon 
 which they had written a promise to pay 
 at some future time one hundred pounds 
 sterling. As to territory, her Press, pulpits, 
 and platforms were constantly resounding 
 with dissertations upon what was called 
 "the white man's burden." "The load 
 was more," they said, "than man could 
 carry." 
 
 There is nothing strange in politics or 
 diplomacy in the fact that statements, so 
 deliberately made, and so widely believed, 
 should, within a few months, have been 
 falsified and discredited. The strangeness 
 of the thing lay in the after-part as usual 
 the pith was in the postscript, the moral at 
 the end of the fable. It is just seven years 
 since this famous declaration was made. 
 We will see how the gold side of the account 
 stands to-day. The bit of paper then worth 
 a hundred and five pieces of gold is now 
 233
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 worth eighty-five ; yet that measure of depre- 
 ciated value is far from representing the fall 
 in other securities. I have recently heard it 
 stated that the estate of the late Mr. Beit, now 
 valued at ,7,000,000, would have realized 
 ^13,000,000 sterling in October, 1899. 
 
 These are useful straws to pick out of the 
 stream and lay by for future guidance, before 
 the teaching of these seven disastrous years 
 has been entirely washed from the national 
 memory. A great student of history has 
 told us that the tax-collector was the best 
 schoolmaster, and as that functionary is 
 likely to hold his chair of philosophy in 
 the national university for some years to 
 come, it is possible that the political char- 
 woman and the track-coverer will find it 
 difficult in the next septennial to entirely 
 obliterate the lesson. Even make-believe 
 must have limits. 
 
 Little by little England is learning some- 
 thing about the real motives and objects of 
 the small knot of persons who pushed, or 
 dragged her into war seven years ago. 
 Commissions and Committees, sometimes in 
 spite of themselves, have lifted some portion 
 234
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 of the curtain upon the secret stage of that 
 time. Many of the chief actors have dis- 
 appeared. Others have been caught ere 
 they could reach the slips ; a few are still 
 happily left before the footlights. 
 
 The important fact to note is that South 
 Africa knows more about the secret history 
 of her war than England knows or can ever 
 know. South Africa has had a keen eye for 
 noting both absences and presences. She 
 noted, for instance, years ago, that neither 
 of the two most potent of the human factors 
 in the production of her war was called 
 before the Royal Commission on that war. 
 She will tell you, too, of some curious 
 appearances or coincidences in connection 
 with her Raid, which more distant spectators 
 of that notorious incident possibly missed. 
 She will tell you of the strange appearance 
 of two additional battalions of infantry in 
 her ports during the precise week of the 
 Jameson Raid, one regiment coming from 
 the Far East, the other from an almost 
 equally remote West strange birds of 
 passage, whose fortuitous flights must have 
 begun many weeks before. 
 235
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 In England we dwell too near the moun- 
 tains of administration to be able to see the 
 summits. You have to get six or seven 
 thousand miles away in order to realize the 
 Himalayan altitudes to which the ambitions 
 of some of the Babel-builders of recent years 
 attained. 
 
 What annexations and partitions ! what 
 disappearances from the map of South- 
 Eastern Africa were to follow upon the 
 supposed facile conquest of the two small 
 Dutch Republics ! the general smashing 
 of European furniture consequent upon the 
 menace of manner-mending made about 
 the time when the war was prematurely said 
 to be " over." 
 
 These things are past, but it is well for 
 us to bear in mind, not what our next gene- 
 ration will know, but rather what the present 
 generation in South Africa already knows ; 
 for it is in that knowledge that the crux of 
 our difficulty in the future government of 
 the country will lie. There is, in fact, no 
 equal plane of knowledge between the two 
 peoples, and there never has been any such 
 equality of knowledge between them. Good 
 236
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 care was taken to prevent the attainment 
 of that equal level. 
 
 I repeat that the possibility of making our 
 Dutch fellow-subjects in South Africa forgive 
 is altogether a matter of our own policy 
 and statesmanship in the immediate future. 
 Something will have to be done beyond a 
 mere avowal of wrong. Such confessions 
 are good so far as they go, but more will 
 be necessary before the foundation of a 
 true system of conciliation can be laid. 
 Remember, you are not dealing with a 
 cowed or broken race. The Boer of South 
 Africa has made himself a name second 
 to none, now or in the past. He has beaten 
 or equalled the old records, and if he was 
 conquered in the end, it was after two and 
 a half years of incessant fighting, when it 
 required half a million men and 300 millions 
 of money to vanquish his forty or fifty 
 thousand farmer-folk. And do not imagine 
 that you are going to change the nature 
 of such men by any new system of school- 
 teaching which you may try to introduce 
 among them. You might better strive to 
 alter the iron features of this vast wilderness 
 
 237
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 uproot those million redstone kopjes, and 
 overturn the colossal Table Mountains of 
 the land. 
 
 " Nature goes her own gait, and puts 
 the wisest in the wrong," wrote the great 
 American. Assuredly the men who coun- 
 selled or cajoled England into that miserable 
 war were not the wise ones. These Boer 
 leaders will hold a place in history when a 
 thousand prominent persons of to-day will 
 be only remembered for their failures, or 
 forgotten in their follies. 
 
 " Remember Milo's end, 
 Wedged in that timber which he strove to rend." 
 
 All that these eminent persons have been 
 able to effect has been to strengthen and 
 solidify the Boer character. He knows now 
 what he can do. Previous to the war he 
 did not dream of his own capacity. They 
 who imagined themselves the architects of 
 a great dominion of Mammon in South 
 Africa have found they were merely the 
 accoucheurs destined to bring forth from a 
 hitherto barren womb soldiers, and states- 
 men, whose names the world cannot let die. 
 In that half desert-land, where the fountains 
 238
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 well at long intervals and the great rocks 
 give far-apart shade to the traveller, the old 
 world, long thirsty for the old heroisms, will 
 during many an age refresh itself and 
 grow young again in the sight or at the 
 story of that resistance. It is England that 
 may have to learn from the Boer not the 
 Boer from England. We had forgotten 
 what he remembered. Half a dozen little 
 ships sailed from Holland two or three 
 hundred years ago, and they carried to 
 these stony kopjes the seedlings of the 
 stuff that was to put a new soul into our 
 time. Is it that God sends the antidote 
 ages before the Devil breeds the poison, 
 and is that the way in which God wins in 
 the end ? 
 
 Here is a glimpse into a Boer interior 
 which has been rebuilt in some shanty 
 fashion after the war : 
 
 " Visitor : * How are you faring ? ' Boer : 
 4 Wife dead, four children dead in the camps, 
 old house burned down, cattle all taken, 
 water-dam destroyed ; but things are well. 
 God is here still.' " 
 
 We had forgotten that last bit. 
 239
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 You cannot destroy God in this wonderful 
 land. What entire waste of time it is for 
 our poor Babel-builders to try that game in 
 a country where ten thousand Tafel Kops 
 wear crowns of gold at every morning sun- 
 rise and evening sunset in the year ! It was 
 said by the wise ones during the war that 
 when the Dutch farmers lost their indepen- 
 dence they would also give up their God. 
 But the wise ones were no nearer the truth 
 in that than in a thousand other prophecies. 
 The Dutch farmers often beat our troops in 
 action, but they never beat their God in the 
 darkest hour of their own defeat. 
 
 Yes. I would make friends with these 
 people if I could. I would also give back 
 to the Cape Colony that .30,000 a year 
 which a Bond Government voted as a con- 
 tribution to the Imperial Navy in the end 
 of 1898, or early in '99. 
 
 This act of reparation might be earmarked 
 " For the exclusive benefit of the victims of 
 the war." It might be called an act of resti- 
 tution, because it was given at the time under 
 a misapprehension, and it was received 
 under simulated pretences. Such an act of 
 240
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 reparation would bear us interest in the 
 future out of all proportion to its market 
 value to-day. 
 
 Who will have the temerity, looking at 
 the past of this land, to say, What next? 
 Only this much whatever South Africa is 
 to be, its men and women will love her still. 
 Their mothers' travail will make her sons 
 and daughters cling closer to her, and the 
 sons and daughters are coming again into 
 the land. Often when I stopped at the site 
 of a once comfortable homestead in the 
 Transvaal, and a Boer and his wife came 
 to the low door of the barn or outhouse 
 which was now their dwelling, two or three 
 little heads looked out from between the 
 knees of the man, and perhaps another 
 nestled on the woman's breast; so, too, I 
 saw the same round faces tumbled among 
 the beds of some trekking waggon in 
 Northern Zululand. That was one picture. 
 Later on I saw another. I left South 
 Africa in a steamer, which called at the 
 islands, and I transhipped into a second boat 
 en route; both vessels had their steerage 
 and third-class decks filled with men of the 
 241 R
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 artisan and miner class, many of whom were 
 making their way to California, to help in 
 rebuilding San Francisco. These were of 
 the class who, in the old pre-war days, had 
 been flocking into the Transvaal, who were 
 then making from thirty to forty pounds a 
 month, who, in the language of the reformers, 
 " didn't care a fig for the franchise," but 
 who, in spite of their contentment and pros- 
 perity, were, in the diplomatic and academic 
 verbiage of the day, designated "helots." 
 Of course they are all free men now, free to 
 go where they like ; but, nevertheless, in 
 their own curt phraseology, they are "stone 
 broke." 
 
 I met, too, in the islands, some outward- 
 bound boats. The majority of the few 
 passengers on their decks were Continental 
 Jews, bound for the towns; while the 
 English workman and artisan come away 
 from South Africa, the Polish and Gallician 
 Jews flock there. And as it is with the 
 State, so it is with the Church. The new 
 English cathedral in Cape Town, the foun- 
 dation-stone of which was laid with great 
 ceremony by Royalty six years ago, is still 
 242
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 only a few feet above the ground, and work 
 is entirely stopped upon it. A couple of 
 hundred yards away a great double-towered 
 synagogue, whose foundation-stone was laid 
 only three years ago, lifts its finished build- 
 ing. In South Africa to-day the synagogue 
 is everywhere a conspicuous edifice. The 
 larger cities have two or more temples. 
 That is well ; but if in the future another 
 Shylock should desire to arrange a meeting- 
 place for his messenger, he will have to tell 
 his Tubal the name of the street, as well as 
 the synagogue. 
 
 This letter is the last I am likely to write 
 about South Africa in this place. More 
 than thirty years have passed since I first 
 saw that land, and put pen to paper in its 
 service. At that time the whole vast sub- 
 continent lay in profound peace, a condition 
 in which it had reposed for about twenty 
 years before. Two battalions of Infantry 
 sufficed for garrison neither Cavalry nor 
 Artillery were there. A few police preserved 
 order ; race animosities had almost entirely 
 died out ; Englishmen represented many 
 if not most, of the Dutch constituencies ; 
 243
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 inter-marriages between the races were of 
 constant occurrence. 
 
 The secret of this success was a simple 
 one the land and its peoples had been let 
 alone ; our rulers had forgotten their old 
 South African oar for more than a score of 
 years. All at once this mood changed, the 
 oar was got out from where it had lain in the 
 bottom of the boat. Unfortunately, like that 
 of the Picts and Scots of old, it was a 
 " hostile oar," and the sea of South African 
 politics soon "foamed" beneath its stroke. 
 Ever since that day it has been storm and 
 boiling billow in these Southern waters, and 
 fully half a dozen times in these thirty-odd 
 years South Africa has been "wet with 
 blood." At long last they seem disposed to 
 put that oar into the boat again. 
 
 LONDON, 
 
 October ; 1906. 
 
 244
 
 XX 
 
 DAWN at Glencoe junction. Cold and 
 raw, for we are more than four 
 thousand feet above sea-level, and 
 April in South Africa is as October in 
 England. The Indian (Madras) railway 
 porters and pointsmen look a yellow-green. 
 There is half an hour before the Dundee 
 train starts ; time to look around. Clos e 
 against the junction to south, Indumeni in 
 the Biggarsberg range is catching signals 
 from the sunrise ; through the range the line 
 we have come disappears into hills, going 
 south to Ladysmith twenty-five miles. 
 Looking east to the sunrise, the houses of 
 Dundee are visible seven miles away. In 
 these seven miles lay the initial mistake in 
 the war of 1899. Here at Glencoe junction 
 was the true military position, an unequalled 
 one ; small rounded hills on both sides of the 
 railway, flanks secure, direct communication 
 by road and rail straight in rear through 
 245
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 the Biggarsberg to Ladysmith. Going to 
 the end of these seven miles to Dundee, 
 instead of stopping here at Glencoe, probably 
 cost England two hundred millions sterling. 
 An initial error of the first magnitude made 
 in the opening move in war can never be 
 wholly recovered. 
 
 The sun begins to show over Talanna 
 Hill, two miles beyond Dundee, and with 
 the growing light the whole theatre of these 
 opening moves in the late war is revealed. 
 Talanna runs at right angles to the Biggars. 
 berg, a " nek " connecting the two ; then 
 Talanna dips again on the north, only to 
 rise into a bigger hill, Umpati by name ; and 
 then the Umpati circles round by the north- 
 west until its western flank comes out upon 
 the railway running northwards from Glencoe 
 to Newcastle, the whole of the hills enclosing 
 Dundee within a saucer-shaped depression 
 commanded on every side. 
 
 Train starts for Dundee down slope all 
 the way. Dundee usual little Natal town, 
 two hotels, three churches. Breakfast. Old 
 coloured man, Adam, ready with "spider" 
 trap and four horses. Start for N'Gutu at 
 246
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 nine, out over gap at south end of Talanna. 
 Adam shows battlefield. Down from nek 
 into great plain of Buffalo river and round 
 eastern end of Biggarsberg to Vant's Drift 
 twenty miles. Dine at small inn and Kaffir- 
 store combined ; civil people. Cross Buffalo 
 and enter Zululand. Another two cr three 
 hours to N'Gutu. Hot; mostly uphill all 
 the way. Begin thinking many thoughts, 
 as Adam takes his team up the long slopes 
 from Buffalo river. There, a few miles south, 
 that dark ridge marks Rorke's Drift ; there to 
 left of dark ridge rises a curious abrupt cone 
 Isandulwana by name. Every now and again 
 Adam stops his horses and turns their heads 
 round so that the cool breeze can blow into 
 their panting nostrils. 
 
 It is at these times that he points out the 
 land-marks and names them. It is all a 
 vast panorama of old wars ; wars between 
 Zulus and Dutch, between English and 
 Zulus, between Dutch and English. There 
 in the valley of the Blood river was fought 
 the great battle between the emigrant 
 Dutch from the Cape Colony and the Impis 
 of Dingaan, the Zulu king. There on the 
 247
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 right is Isandulwana, where Lord Chelms- 
 ford's army of invasion was annihilated. 
 There away to the left in the hot haze of the 
 north lies Zlobane and Kambula and Vryheid 
 Nek. Behind the Biggersberg is Lady- 
 smith with its host of later memories what 
 a story it would all make ! " From Isandul- 
 wana to Majuba, and round by Spion Kop to 
 Colenso." The man who first named the 
 land "Tormentoso" knew what he was doing. 
 We reach N'Gutu at 4.30 o'clock. The 
 sun is blazing down on the little flat table- 
 land where stands Mr. Barklies' store and 
 inn. Same story all along the road from 
 Durban to this spot. Natives wrongly 
 treated ; the promises made to them in 
 the war broken. Blank colonel of horse 
 nothing but a common cattle-raider. He 
 makes ten or twenty thousand pounds by 
 selling stolen cattle to the Commissariat. 
 His white under- raiding-captains get two or 
 three hundred each ; the natives who did 
 most of the looting get nothing. That is 
 one cause of discontent ; but there are many 
 others. Petty lawyer-folk prey like vultures 
 upon them. Trade is bad ; everybody is 
 248
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 poorer than before the war. The fortunes 
 made then were nearly all put into Johannes- 
 burg mines and lost. Jews have got every- 
 thing ; we looted the Boers, and the Jews 
 looted us. 
 
 One is struck by the number of statesmen 
 one meets everywhere in South Africa ; 
 statesmen in trains and on platforms, but 
 particularly numerous in hotels. Warriors 
 and military critics also abound. "If 
 
 General had only done so and so, things 
 
 would have been different in the war ; " or, 
 " I told Sir blank blank, ' If you will just go 
 round by the Jingo-berg, and take old 
 Joubert in the rear,"' etc., etc. Listening 
 to all this, one begins to understand how it 
 was that South America was so prolific in 
 presidents forty years ago. This southern 
 hemisphere grows tall human growths 
 naturally. The ordinary agricultural man 
 doesn't do so well. Strange country. I met 
 a man in a train last week. He has two 
 hundred thousand acres of land he has 
 splendid land but his sheep die of fatty de- 
 generation ; lost sixty-seven the week before 
 last. He has waggon-loads of fruit, but he 
 249
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 can't get it to market peaches, nectarines, 
 apricots, all rotting under the trees ; milk, 
 butter, in the same plenty, but no market. 
 Is only sixty-seven miles from Johannesburg, 
 where things are at famine prices. Contra- 
 dictions from top to bottom. The morning 
 I reached Johannesburg three inches of rain 
 fell in four hours ; no rain had fallen for 
 three months, the whole country hard as a 
 road; now the whole roads soft as rivers. 
 Twenty-four hours later dust blowing again. 
 
 Natal was a pleasant place of residence 
 in the old days before the feverish finance 
 of the mines had upset its mental equili- 
 brium. Home -life now impossible to a 
 young couple ; cheaper to send wife and 
 child to England, and to live one's self at 
 the club, or board in an hotel. 
 
 Met a man again who had been transport 
 conductor in the old Zulu war time. The 
 night before Isandulwana "the oxen," he says, 
 " wouldn't eat, kept lowing and pawing all 
 night knew the Zulu Impis were all round." 
 No one else knew it. " You did the blunder- 
 ing, we did the plundering," another man said 
 of that war. South Africa has a keen wit. 
 250
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 From the high tableland of N'Gutu the 
 traveller looks far over Zululand. Imme- 
 diately below, to the east, lies Nondweni, 
 the supposed site of gold and copper deposits. 
 Rich mines were worked there a few years 
 ago money made and lost then the reef or 
 the lode was suddenly missed. We descend 
 a long hill and reach the field ruined shafts, 
 dismantled shanties, holes and rubbish-heaps 
 on every side. It was said that the place 
 is still rich, and that the lodes and reefs 
 were lost only to be found again later on, 
 when Johannesburg thinks that the precise 
 moment has arrived. From Nondweni to 
 the place of our destination there is no track. 
 Adam steers across the undulating veld, as 
 his great ancestor and namesake might have 
 steered when he left Eden. 
 
 Numerous dongas cross our course ; but 
 while we descend and climb in and out of 
 them, Adam takes them with his four-in- 
 hand in that quiet, dextrous driving which 
 only South Africa knows. At last, from 
 the crest of a ground-wave, we look into 
 a large, bare, and shallow valley, in the 
 centre of which appears a solitary group 
 251
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 of dark trees. This speck of tree -life 
 in the bare brown wilderness marks the 
 spot where the Prince Imperial of France 
 was slain by a small band of Zulus seven- 
 and-twenty years ago. That spot has been 
 the object of this journey. Three or four 
 dongas and we are there. The clump of 
 trees fills the sharp angle of ground which 
 two dongas, meeting at this point, make. 
 These dongas are some eight feet in 
 depth, and thirty feet from one bank to 
 the other ; both are quite dry. A wall of 
 dry stones encloses the trees, which have 
 now grown to a height of about twenty 
 feet. 
 
 To the west and south the view is bounded 
 by two large and long dark hills, a mile or 
 two distant from where we stand ; cattle are 
 grazing on the slopes ; patches of mealies 
 are dotted about. Yellow grass covers the 
 ground up to the foot of the bare hills ; the 
 rounded beehive reed huts of a few Kaffir 
 kraals are visible where the grass ends and 
 the hills begin. A few natives are watching 
 us from near the kraals. All the dongas and 
 watercourses are dry ; but further off, to 
 252
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 the north, a large river-channel, nearly dry, 
 is visible, winding towards the north-east, 
 carrying the drainage of the valley to the 
 White Umfolossi River. 
 
 We get over the low wall and enter the 
 enclosure. It is of oval shape, twenty yards 
 in length by ten across. In the centre, at 
 the head of an oblong space filled with loose 
 stones, stands a stone cross. The shadows of 
 the trees make the interior of the enclosure 
 dark in comparison with the ground without. 
 The trees are oleanders, willows, jessamine, 
 and a drooping kind of cypress, which 
 chiefly gives the shade, and in the pendant 
 branches of which many weaver birds have 
 built their little grass, woven, hooded nests, 
 with the opening like that of the wren ; but 
 on the side away from the branch to which 
 it is firmly attached, and from the extreme 
 end of which it swings. Almost every 
 branch of these cypress trees has a swinging 
 nest attached to it. 
 
 An inscription cut across the arms of the 
 cross states that the body of the Prince 
 Imperial was found at this spot, on the 2nd 
 of June, 1879. He was killed here on the 
 
 253
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 afternoon of the ist of June. He was 
 twenty-three years of age. 
 
 Two other graves marked by small wooden 
 crosses are at the end of the enclosure on 
 the west side. 
 
 We go out into the open again. A few 
 Zulus have come down from the kraals on 
 the hill-sides, and they are gathered round 
 our cart ; the horses are grazing along the 
 sides of the donga. One of the Zulus, a 
 man apparently about forty, begins to speak. 
 He was a boy at the time that the young 
 chief was killed here. He was minding 
 cattle out from the kraal there to the west. 
 He saw the party of horsemen come over 
 the " nek " between the two hills, and stop 
 and offsaddle at this spot where we are now 
 standing ; other Zulus saw them too. From 
 the kraal on the hill-side to the south, a 
 party of young men crept down through the 
 tall grass till they got into the bed of the 
 river the Yootchu ; then they crept up 
 that donga to a place where there was a 
 patch of mealies, then through the mealies, 
 and then they rushed in a body across the 
 last bit of open ground fifty yards to 
 254
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 the donga at this spot. By this time the 
 Englishmen had saddled up, and were 
 getting on their horses. The Zulus were 
 about sixteen in number, and they had two 
 or three guns among them. As they rushed 
 in, the men who were already in their 
 saddles galloped away in the direction from 
 which they had come ; but there was one 
 who had not yet mounted. The men who 
 had guns fired at the men galloping away; 
 one trooper fell from his horse a little way 
 off, another dropped when he had got half 
 way up to the nek ; but the young man 
 stopped here fighting. 
 
 " And where did the Zulu scout who was 
 with the English party fall ? " I asked through 
 a companion, who spoke and understood 
 Zulu, for all the wretched particulars of that 
 fatal day had been painfully familiar to me 
 twenty-seven years earlier, gathered from 
 the lips of men who were in the camp at 
 Kopje Allien at the time, nine miles to the 
 west ; and from some who had even belonged 
 to the irregular corps which had given an 
 escort for the reconnoitring officers on that 
 day. The Zulu pointed to a mealie-patch 
 255
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 five or six hundred yards distant. " The 
 Zulu who was with the English fell there," 
 he said. " Some of our men followed, and 
 killed him with assegais." The man spoke 
 his story straight and without any hesitation, 
 and, comparing it since with the notes made 
 at that time, his relation corresponded in all 
 main particulars with the old narratives. I 
 give these old notes as they were then 
 written. 
 
 "June ioth, 1879. Funeral of Prince 
 Imperial winding down the Berea hill at 
 sunset into Durban. The ocean, the Bluff, 
 the ships, the town in mourning ; bands 
 playing the " Dead March ; " the old servant 
 (follows the bier) ; the groom tells me the 
 particulars (as we walk). He saw the body : 
 the sword-hand was clenched ; the wounds, 
 very numerous, were all in front. There 
 was a hill near (the scene of the fight), a 
 kraal, a mealie field, a donga long grass 
 
 and a spot of bare ground. rides 
 
 away (the rest save one follow), the grey 
 horse (the prince's) tries to follow (the 
 others) ; the prince catches holster as 
 he mounts, the leather breaks (tears like 
 256
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 paper), and the grey horse gallops with 
 the rest." 
 
 "August nth, 1879. , of Betting- 
 ton's Horse, tells me that the prince said 
 to him, as they were leaving camp, ' Are you 
 
 not coming?' 'No, sir.' 'Won't be 
 
 in a fright ? ' 
 
 " The body of the dead Zulu was found 
 more than a mile away, assegaied. He had 
 followed the flying escort that distance across 
 two ridges in open country. Abel, a Dane's, 
 body was found one hundred yards from 
 place of fire ; Rogers, the other man killed, 
 two hundred yards away. 
 
 "When meets the four surviving 
 
 troopers in camp, they tell him that the 
 prince and two troopers and one Zulu are 
 gone. 
 
 '"Are you not ashamed to be here?' he 
 asks. 
 
 "'Well, sir, the captain legged it, and we 
 followed,' they answer. 
 
 " M. and S. both testify to the desperate 
 
 resistance made by the prince. The boots 
 
 were full of blood, showing how long a time 
 
 he had fought standing. The ground where 
 
 257 s
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 he lay was all trampled over. The body 
 was covered with wounds, five of which were 
 mortal." 
 
 We go into the enclosure again and 
 examine it closely. There is not a deface- 
 ment visible anywhere ; not a stone in the 
 wall has been upset, not a name cut on a 
 tree or scratched upon the headstone. The 
 Zulus have scrupulously respected this lone 
 monument set in their wilderness. We begin 
 to talk to the Zulu again. He has succeeded 
 the old man who was left in charge of the 
 enclosure when the cross was erected here 
 by Queen Victoria. He is in charge now. 
 He has on an old military great-coat, and he 
 carries in his hand the usual three or four 
 knobkerries. He holds himself erect, looks 
 you full in the face, speaks without the 
 slightest hesitation, and uses action natural 
 and graceful as he speaks. 
 
 In the same old note-book in which I had 
 jotted down the rough notes above given, I 
 see other hastily entered memoranda of con- 
 versations or occurrences which may fittingly 
 find a place here, for they are not without a 
 touch of that old-world chivalry in war, 
 258
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 from which we seem to be getting farther 
 away. 
 
 " After Ulundi, Cetewayo said to his 
 people, ' You have thrown your last assegai 
 for me ; go, now, and do the best for your- 
 selves.' He sent word to his chief Somapo, 
 ' Give up to the white man all the cattle in 
 your possession which belong to me keep 
 not back a single one. Let the white man 
 
 know that Cetewayo was once a king.' 
 
 and , who were present at the capture 
 
 of Cetewayo, in the N'Gome forest, say that 
 the king came forth with dignity and majesty. 
 
 , who was also there, describes his 
 bearing as 'noble,' 'full of dignity,' ' a mag- 
 nificent - looking man.' The tears rolled 
 down his cheeks when he beheld Ulundi in 
 ashes. He waved the spectators aside, those 
 who had crowded too close upon him. At 
 times it would seem as though his feelings 
 would overcome him, and then he would 
 bend down his head. Then by a great effort 
 he would raise it again, and look around with 
 calm and quiet dignity." 
 
 And now for a glimpse at the other side. 
 
 D. L. tells me that he never saw a more 
 259
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 disgusting sight than at Ulundi after the 
 fighting was over. The volunteers (irre- 
 gulars) killed all the men who surrendered. 
 A Zulu would spring from the grass and 
 throw his hands up in token of surrender. 
 Ten or a dozen shots would be fired at him. 
 At last he would drop ; then, if the man was 
 wounded, they would fire at him as he lay. 
 
 , the correspondent of the London 
 
 deliberately got off his pony and battered in 
 the skull of a wounded Zulu with his carbine 
 clubbed. This is the scoundrel who was 
 
 with 's column. G. saw this deed, as 
 
 did L., and 'both of us abused the rascal 
 for it.' At least one hundred and fifty Zulus 
 were killed in this manner by the irregulars, 
 after the cavalry had made a circuit and cut 
 off the Zulus." " L. says the English and 
 colonial cut-throats were worse than the 
 Basuto allies." 
 
 Colonial wars are murder at the front 
 and robbery at the base. 
 
 And here is a little comment which the 
 
 experience of another generation has not 
 
 done much to contradict or change. "A 
 
 curse seems to be over this land and over 
 
 260
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 the rest of South Africa, seeming to forbid 
 peace and civilization in it. Even the 
 Church of England clergymen are quarrel- 
 ling among themselves." I met a clergy- 
 man lately who said that if Bishop 
 
 died he would refuse to bury him ! 
 
 We drove back to Nondweni and N'Gutu. 
 The store at the first-named place is kept 
 by a Frenchman, and in a Basuto hut on 
 the site of an old gold-mine we found three 
 mining engineers a Swede, a Norwegian, 
 and an Englishman all living in perfect 
 amity and friendship with the surrounding 
 natives, not a dread about a Zulu rising. 
 It is at Maritzburg, Durban, or at Dundee 
 that you find scares existing. Here every- 
 thing is peaceful. " But surely you won't go 
 into Zululand at this crisis ! " said one of the 
 ministers to me six days ago in Maritzburg. 
 
 We are fifty miles into the country now, 
 and there is profound peace everywhere. 
 Strange land of paradox and contradictions. 
 A week ago I was at the estate near 
 Richmond, to which some of the twelve 
 Zulus who were shot by sentence of Court 
 Martial three days earlier, had come. The 
 261 s 3
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 owner of that estate was entirely satisfied 
 with the conduct of his natives. "A month 
 ago," he said to me, " when the affray 
 between the police and a party of natives 
 occurred, and the panic and excitement was 
 at its height, many of the farmers left their 
 homes and sought refuge in the towns. 
 Well, all the work upon their farms went 
 on just as usual in their absence. Not a 
 stick was stolen. The cows were milked, 
 and the milk sent in to the creamery, as 
 had been done when the masters and their 
 families were present. Even the Madrassee 
 servants were not alarmed, although the 
 wildest rumours of murders and massacres 
 were flying around. On one occasion two 
 Madrassee servants, living by themselves in 
 an out-of-the-way place, asked that they 
 might be allowed to take a hay-fork with 
 them for protection at night ! That was 
 the extent of their defensive precautions." 
 "Why was Martial Law rushed into?" I 
 asked a high official. He gave one or 
 two reasons in reply. "But," I said, "the 
 Courts were sitting the King's writ ran ; 
 special commissions were possible. There 
 262
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 was no Martial Law during the old Zulu 
 War. Even Judge Jeffrey's Bloody Assize 
 was a Civil Court." Then the real answer 
 came. "It would have been difficult to 
 have brought home the killing of the police 
 officers to any particular man." 
 
 In all the sad history of South Africa few 
 things are sadder than this Zulu question. 
 Where the Zulu came no lock or key were 
 necessary. No man who knew the Zulu 
 not even the white colonist, whose rage was 
 largely the result of his being unable to get 
 servile labour from him could say that he 
 had not found the Zulu honest, truthful, 
 faithful ; that the white wife and child had 
 not been entirely safe from insult or harm 
 at the hands of this black man, or that 
 money and property were not immeasurably 
 more secure in Zulu charge than in that of 
 Europeans or Asiatics. 
 
 Here we had a people whose moral good- 
 ness scrupulous regard for honest dealing 
 and natural habits of restraint and discipline 
 fitted them for civilized teaching and training 
 in every branch of citizen and workman's 
 handicraft. 
 
 263
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 What a material was this to have worked 
 upon ! What natural qualities upon which 
 to engraft our higher knowledge ! Courage, 
 truthfulness, brain power, honesty, and 
 physical strength. What future hope for 
 all black Africa lay in this tribe, placed at 
 our doors, right in the path along which 
 civilization might have been carried into 
 the interior ! And all cast to the winds, 
 trampled out, and destroyed, for the benefit, 
 or at the bidding, of a mere handful of white 
 settlers, consumed with an endless craving 
 for the possession of the land and property 
 of others. 
 
 Of all the unnatural lusts and cravings 
 which lie at the root of human misery, the 
 thing we call "land hunger" is the worst. 
 No other lust eats so deep into human 
 welfare ; for the other inordinate cravings of 
 man there would seem to be some com- 
 pensating advantages, but this fiend of land 
 possession blights all human nature. It 
 strangles the unborn ; steals the air of 
 heaven from the able-bodied. It robs God 
 and man alike, for it waylays the best gifts 
 of the Creator to His creatures. It fills the 
 264
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 towns with moral and physical decrepitude ; 
 saps the strength of nations. All the other 
 robberies of man upon man are but petty 
 larcenies in comparison. And the wars 
 undertaken at the behests of this hunger are 
 all so barren and worthless in the end ! 
 
 Descending the ridge into Nondweni, 
 we crossed the line of Lord Chelmsford's 
 advance upon Ulundi in 1879. The gentle- 
 man who had come with me from N'Gutu 
 pointed to the sites of some of the ruined 
 forts of that war ; but the names which they 
 had originally borne had disappeared. Then 
 they bore the name of some prominent general 
 of the war. Now they were simply Forts 
 Funk. There was Fort Funk Nos. i, 2, and 
 3. This was what an expenditure of seven 
 or eight millions had led to ! Better even 
 the names which an old soldier-servant of 
 that day had given to one of these forts, 
 as told me at the time by the man's master, 
 a transport officer. 
 
 " Who is that box for, Dempsey ? " 
 asked the officer. 
 
 "It's for one of them forts up country, sir." 
 
 " Which fort, Dempsey ? " 
 265
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 " Fort Num, sir." 
 
 " There's no such place, Dempsey." 
 " Begor, it's on the box, sir ; Fort Num." 
 So it was; but the words "and Mason" 
 were also there. 
 
 Is South Africa gradually drying up ? 
 That is a question of much moment. There 
 were springs dry and wells without water 
 this year that had never been dry in the 
 memory of man before. The Karroo seems 
 to be slowly moving northwards over the 
 Orange River. The old Kaffirs will tell 
 you that the land is drying up. They point 
 to the sites of former kraals on high ground, 
 where no native would or could build his 
 dwelling now ; it is too dry. Men have 
 many explanations for this physical change 
 of old, the vast herds of game trampled 
 down the long grass upon the surface, and 
 the matted vegetation preserved the moisture 
 and prevented denudation of the soil, 
 which under the existing conditions is 
 washed away in innumerable dongas by 
 deluges following upon prolonged droughts. 
 The old forests of ebony and yellow wood 
 have been destroyed the growth of many 
 266
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 centuries and their place has been taken 
 by the quick-growing eucalyptus, the roots 
 of which drain and dry up the land. 
 
 Back over the long road again by N'Gutu 
 to the Buffalo River, and over Talanna Hill 
 into Dundee as the sun is going down, then 
 to Glencoe for the night to catch the up- 
 country train to-morrow at dawn. 
 
 A crowded conveyance it proved, for the 
 time was Easter, and football teams and 
 holiday-seekers were moving. As the train 
 wound its slow way round the base of 
 Majuba Hill, climbing to the higher levels 
 of the Transvaal plateaux, above Lang's 
 Nek, an old-timer in Natal, already known 
 to me, asked questions about that day 
 twenty-five years ago, from which so much 
 history had come. I pointed out to him 
 from the carriage window the lines of the 
 Boer advances up the steep hill. Some of 
 the holiday-seekers, hearing our conversa- 
 tion, looked out at the mountain too. It was 
 the first time they had ever heard of Majuba, 
 they said ! We soon passed out of Natal and 
 entered the Transvaal. The Biggarsberg 
 and Indumeni were below the horizon, but 
 267
 
 From Naboth's Vineyard 
 
 Majuba remained for some time in sight as 
 we rolled over the bleak plains of the new 
 possession. It was the last we saw of the 
 Garden Colony. 
 
 I remember having read a book many 
 years ago in which it was stated that the 
 earliest white inhabitant of the Terra Natalis 
 was "a penitent pirate, who in the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century had 
 sequestrated himself from his abominable 
 community, and retired there out of harm's 
 way." 
 
 Natal is still, I believe, looking for 
 colonists. It has charms of scenery and 
 climate not surpassed in the compass of 
 the empire. Perhaps some member of the 
 late Administration of old Norse lineage 
 might feel disposed in these days of his 
 superannuation, to repeat the penitential 
 programme of the earliest inhabitant, and 
 spend the remainder of his life looking at 
 Naboth's Vineyard. 
 
 THE END 
 
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 CONTENTS 
 
 PRELUDE THE SUPREME FACT OF THE UNIVERSE THE 
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 Extracts 
 
 What one lives in his invisible, thought world ive Is con- 
 tinually actualizing in his visible, matenal world. If he would 
 have any conditions different in the latter he must make the 
 necessary changes in the former. A clear realization of this 
 great fact would bring success to thousands of men and women 
 who all about us are in the depths of despair. It would bring 
 health, abounding health and strength to thousands now dis- 
 eased and suffering. It would bring peace and joy to thousands 
 now unhappy and ill at ease. . . . PAGE 145. 
 
 When apparent adversity comes, be not cast down by it, but 
 make the best of it, and always look forward for better things, 
 for conditions more prosperous. To hold yourself in this attitude 
 of mind is to set into operation subtle, silent, irresistible forces 
 that sooner or later will actualize in material form that which is 
 to-day merely an idea. But ideas have occult power, and ideas, 
 when rightly planted and rightly tended, are the seeds that 
 actualize material conditions. . . . PAGE 180. 
 
 Thoughts of strength both build strength from within and 
 attract it from without. Thoughts of weakness actualize weak- 
 ness from within and attract it from without. Courage begets 
 strength, fear begets weakness. And so courage begets success, 
 fear begets failure. . . . PAGE 144. 
 
 The only thing that any drug or any medicine can do is to 
 remove obstructions, that the life forces may have simply a 
 better chance to do their work. The real healing process must 
 be performed by the operation of the life forces within. . . . 
 There are almost countless numbers to-day, weak and suffering 
 in body, who would become strong and healthy if they would 
 only give God an opportunity to do His work. To such I 
 would say, Don't shut out the Divine inflow. Do anything else 
 rather than this. Open yourselves to it ; invite it. In the 
 degree that you open yourselves to it, its inflowing tide will 
 course through your bodies a force so vital that the old obstruc- 
 tions that are dominating them to-day will be driven out before 
 it. . . .PAGE 50. 
 
 Fear and worry and all kindred mental states are too expen- 
 sive for any person, man, woman, or child, to entertain or 
 indulge in. Fear paralyzes healthy action, worry corrodes and 
 pulls down the organism, and will finally tear it to pieces. 
 Nothing is to be gained by it, but everything to be lost : . . . 
 PACK 72.
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 
 
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 a determination to live up to Its teachings. It is so grand, so elevating, 
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 again, for It is such a help to my life. Mrs J. T. H. 
 
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 cepts, but also a brilliant contribution to our literature. The style is 
 clear and concise, and the teachings embodied in it are far more 
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 BOOKS BY R. W. TRINE continued 
 EVERY LIVING CREATURE 
 
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 The tender and humane passion in the human heart is too precious a 
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 CHARACTERxBUILDING. THOUGHT POWER 
 
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 Eve and the Law (597). 
 
 The Premier's Daughter (617). 
 
 Anna of the Plains (646). 
 
 Jennifer Pontefract (657). 
 
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 Out of the Running (683). 
 
 Lucy Gort. 
 Aubrey (Frank). 
 
 King of the Dead (485). 
 Austen (Jane). 
 
 Pride and Prejudice. Illus- 
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 Author of the 'Adventures of 
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 Four Red Night Caps (363). 
 Author of 'Collections and 
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 For Which Wife? (658;. 
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 Perpetua (189). 
 
 Barr (Amelia E.). 
 
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 Barrett (Wilson) and Oarron 
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 The Dayspring (503). 
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 Helen Adair (480). 
 
 Chinkie's Flat, &c. (543). 
 
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 Tom Gerrard (610). 
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 Arne, and the Fisher Lassie (6). 
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 A Dead Reckoning (550). 
 
 The Land of Bondage (593). 
 
 Knighthood's Flower (684). 
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 Lawful Issue (699). 
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 A Cabinet Secret (357). 
 
 The Curse of the Snake (4? 2) 
 
 The Childerbridge Mystery 
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 Uncle Joe's Legacy, <S:c. (449). 
 
 The Countess Londa (471).
 
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 The Lady of the Island (530), 
 
 An Ocean Secret (534)- 
 
 A Consummate Scoundrel (549). 
 
 A Desperate Conspiracy (581). 
 
 A Brighton Tragedy (623). 
 
 A Stolen Peer (648). 
 
 A Royal Affair, &c. (675). 
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 The White House (689). 
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 Lord Roberts, a Biography (41 6). 
 
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 The Half-hearted (350) 
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 Father Anthony (247) 
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 My Lady of the Bass (512). 
 
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 Great Battles of the World (390). 
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 The Men of the Moss-Hags (9 1 ). 
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 Her Own People (518). 
 Youngest Miss Movvbray (678). 
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 Peter's Mother (598). 
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 Knutsford Mystery (674;.
 
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 Rodney Stone, Illus. (143). 
 
 Uncle Bernac. Illus. (168). 
 
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 It Came to Pass (499). 
 
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 Priors Roothing (509). 
 
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 Nobody's Baby (516). 
 
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 World of Crime. 
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 Emma Hamilton's Miniature 
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 A Woman Against the World 
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 Men who have Made the Em- 
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 An Island Love Story (592). 
 
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 Great Weather Syndicate (667). 
 
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 Tales of a Government Official 
 
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 Winnifred's Way (596). 
 
 Agony Terrace. 
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 Tess of the D'Urbervilles (3).
 
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 Adventures of Captain Kettle. 
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 Further Adventures of Captain 
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 Dialstone Lane (578). 
 
 Jane (Fred. T.). 
 Ever Mohun (389). 
 
 Jokai (Maurus). 
 
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 Joubert (Carl). 
 
 The White Hand (651). 
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 Kernahan (Mrs. Coulson). 
 
 A Beautiful Savage (556). 
 
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 Up from the Slums (572). 
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 Russian Navy in Russo- 
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 Laver (Frank). 
 
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 Mis'ess Joy (340). 
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 The Court of Honour (399). 
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 As We Forgive Them (548). 
 Sign of the Stranger (568). 
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 Illustrious O'Hagan (688). 
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 Fortune's Cap (628). 
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 Women and the West (698). 
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 In Full Cry (279). 
 
 The Goddess (334). 
 
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 Romance of a Maid of Honour. 
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 At the Back of the World (565). 
 
 Home of Sweet Content (664). 
 
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 Meade (L. T.) and Halifax 
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 Where the Shoe Pinches (330). 
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 When Love flies out o' the 
 
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 Green Eye of Goona (577). 
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 Kate Cameron of Brux (355). 
 
 Whose was the Hand ? (392). 
 
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 The Sunless City (607). 
 Natal (Rt. Rev. Lord Bishop of). 
 
 My Diocese during the War 
 
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 For Right and England (338) 
 
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 A Colonial King (600). 
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 How to Choose a Husband (465 ) 
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 Street Dust, and other Stories 
 
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 A Breaker of Laws (347).
 
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 Sir John Constantine (690). 
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 Footfall of Fate (332). 
 
 Poor Fellow (468). 
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 Commander Leigh (473). 
 Golden Rapids of High Life 
 
 Last Traitorof Long Island(576) 
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 Princess Kate (489). 
 
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 The Warden. 
 
 Barchester Towers. 
 
 Framley Parsonage. 
 
 Dr. Thorne. 
 
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 Last Chronicle of Barset. 2 vols. 
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 Judy's Lovers (560). 
 
 Fortune's Favourite (625). 
 
 Adventures of Alicia (669). 
 
 Story of JBawn (687). 
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 Town L.idy and Country Lass 
 
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 Godfrey Merivale (444). 
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