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Through South Africa, by Henry M. Stanley, MP, DCL.

PREFACE

If, from my point of judgment, I differ in any way from other writers, all I care to urge is, that I have had some experience of my own in several new lands like the South African interior, and I have lived long enough to have seen the effects of what was good and what was bad policy in them. I prefer peaceful relations between England and the Boers of South Africa, if possible; I love what is just, fair, and best to and for both Britons and Boers. I naturally admire large-minded enterprise. I pity narrow-mindedness, and dislike to see a people refusing to advance, when all the world is so sympathetic and helpfully inclined towards them. These explanations, I think, will enable anyone to understand the spirit of these letters.

A curious thing occurred in connection with my sudden departure for South Africa. In the latter part of September, 1897, I was debating with my family, at a seaside hotel near Dieppe, as to the place we should visit after the adjournment of Parliament in 1898. After discussing the merits of many suggestions, it was finally determined that we should all try South Africa, because it was said to have such a divine climate; the country was, moreover, so interesting politically, and as it loomed so much in public interest it would be worth while to obtain some personal knowledge of South Africans at home. We had scarcely arrived at this conclusion, when the postman brought to us a telegram, which, to our intense surprise, was a request from the Bulawayo Festivities Committee that I would go to Bulawayo to attend the celebration of the arrival of the Great Peninsular Railway at the Capital of Matabele Land. We regarded it as a strange coincidence.

This opportunity to visit Bulawayo I considered rather premature, as towards the end of autumn many engagements crowd upon one, but after another animated family council it was resolved that I should accept the invitation were it only to qualify myself as a pioneer for the ladies.

From the Boers and Afrikanders I heard not one favourable remark about England, but all indulged in banter and irony, to prove that argument with them was of no avail. So extreme was their dislike that they even said "English servants and clerks are of no use, and they are most unreliable, as for instance," and here followed incidents to prove what they said. While the English were false and could not be trusted, it was said that the Germans were "good" in the colonial sense, and made the best citizens. They were industrious and thrifty, and their improved condition did not alter their habits. The indenturing of the Bechuana rebels was a subject upon which much was said on both sides. But a Boer's way of putting it was characteristic. "England, you say, considers it illegal. Ah, well, the English know nothing of the matter, and what they say don't count. Rose-Innes, however, ought to have known better. Had he been asked by a Cape farmer whether, to keep the rebels from starving, we should give them work to do for wages, Rose-Innes would have said, `It is a good thing, and the best that can be done for them;' but with the view of forming a party against the Government, of course, he denounces indenturing as illegal and iniquitous." I have cited these extracts to show the process of how we became initiated into South African politics.

The treatment of natives by the Rhodesian Government was, according to the general opinion of Cape people, more liberal than they deserved, and such as any white colonist of no matter what country would approve. It was said, "Why, if we were to be governed by what these sentimental English societies--referring to the A.P.S.--think is right, we should have to abandon Africa altogether, for neither our lives nor property would be safe. Law-abiding men and lawless natives cannot live together unless one or the other is compelled to, and as we have taken the country and intend to live in it, common sense tells us that the natives must submit to the same law under which we must live."

The greatest majority by far denounced the Raid, and yet everyone spoke kindly of the personality of Dr Jameson. A gentleman from the Eastern Province informed me that the Jameson family has suffered greatly in public estimation. One of the brothers who lived at King Williamstown had felt himself obliged to leave the Province and return to England, and if the Doctor succeeded in being elected to the Cape Parliament, it was said he would be certain to meet with much unpleasantness.

The inconveniences arising from an overcrowded steamer are too many to be disposed of in a paragraph, but it is enough to say that I was uncommonly glad when the voyage was ended, and I was free to seek a hotel.

It must impress anyone who takes a sympathetic interest in what he sees in South Africa, that in some things the country is far behind New Zealand, Tasmania, or any of the Australian Colonies. It is more backward than any of them in its hotels. There are, within my knowledge, only three hotels in all South Africa to which I would venture to recommend a lady to go. South Africans, of course, are able to endure anything, and as the Veld is comparatively but a step from most towns, any place that offers a decent lodging must be regarded by the men at least as infinitely superior to an ox-wagon, a zinc hut, or a farm shed. But I am thinking more of the effect such hotels as those of Cape Town must have on people from Europe. This city, which is the capital of Cape Colony, contains a population of about 52,000, exclusive of the suburbs, but it does not possess a single hotel that would bear comparison with those of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Auckland, Christchurch or Dunedin. The very best is only just suited for commercial travellers, who must needs be satisfied with whatever may offer. The suburbs, however, which are peopled by about 32,000--and it is well that invalids and tourists should remember it--contain hotels where rest and quiet may be found, in the midst of oak and fir groves and scenes of surpassing beauty. No city that I know of in our colonies possesses superior suburbs. They are simply lovely. They are stretched along the base of Table Mountain, and an entire day's carriage-drive would not exhaust the exquisite beauty for which the suburbs of Cape Town are famed.

Cape Colony possesses three valuable assets, which seem to me to have received scant attention. A traveller who has visited Southern California and Arizona will understand immediately he visits South Africa what fortunes might be made of the waste land, the rainfall, and the glorious climate with which Nature has blessed it. The land is unworthily despised, the rainfall is allowed to waste itself in thirsty sands deep down beneath the level of hungry plains, while the climate does not seem to have suggested to any capitalist that a revenue superior to that obtained from the Main Reef at Johannesburg might be drawn from it. The leaders of South African enterprise appear all absorbed in diamonds, gold mines, or dynamite.

If I were to follow the authorities of Worsfold in his "South Africa," pages 126, 127, I should have to admit that this indifference to the land, the rainfall and climate, is due to the Boers. Captain Percival, in 1796, a hundred years ago, wrote:--

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