Page:South Africa (1878 Volume 2).djvu/202

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diamonds come to an end all together,—which one cannot but always feel to be possible,—the place will become a large town with a settled Kafir population which will fall gradually into civilized ways of life. There is no other place in South Africa where this has been done, or for many years can be done to the same extent. I mention this here because it seems to be so essentially necessary to remember that South Africa is a land not of white but of black men, and that the progress to be most desired is that which will quickest induce the Kafir to put off his savagery and live after the manner of his white brethren.

Throughout the whole country which the English and the Dutch between them have occupied as their own, the Kafirs are the superiors in numbers in much greater proportion than that stated above in reference to the town of Kimberley;—but these numbers are to be found, not in towns, but out in their own hitherto untouched districts, where they live altogether after their old ways, where the Kafirs of to-day are as were the Kafirs of fifty years ago. And even with those who have come under our dominion and who live to some degree intermixed with us, the greater proportion still follow their old customs of which idleness and dependence on the work of women for what is absolutely necessary to existence, may be said to be the most prominent. The work of civilizing as it has been carried out by simple philanthropy or by religion is terribly slow. One is tempted sometimes to say that nothing is done by religion and very little by philanthropy. But love of money works very fast. In Griqualand West, especially in the Diamond Fields, and above all at Kimberley,