| Average annual
Value | From value.
United States L9,000,000 | 1700 to 1859 L 2,000,000
Australasia 8,000,000 | 1850 to 1875 25,000,000
South Africa 7,000,000 | 1875 to 1890 20,000,000
Russia (1892) 4,000,000 | 1894 (one year only) 36,000,000

Of the stimulus given to railway construction by the establishment
of the gold industry Mr. Worsfold speaks with authority. He says,
"To-day, Johannesburg--built on land which in 1886 was part of an
absolutely barren waste--is approached by three distinct lines,
which connect it directly with the four chief ports of South
Africa--Delagoa Bay, Durban, Port Elizabeth, and Cape Town. Of these
lines the earliest, which traverses the Free State from end to end,
and links the Randt with the Cape Colony, was not opened until July
1892. The Pretoria-Delagoa Bay line was completed in the autumn of
1894; and the extension of the Randt railway to Charlestown, the
connecting-point with the Natal line, was not effected until the
following year. These, together with some subsidiary lines,
represent a total of 1000 miles of railway constructed mainly under
the stimulus of the gold industry in the Transvaal. To this total
two considerable pieces of railway construction, accomplished in the
interest of the gold industry in the Chartered Company's
territories, must be added. Of these, the first extended the main
trunk line of Africa from Kimberley successively to Vryburg and
Mafeking, in 1890 and 1894, and then finally to Buluwayo in 1897,
and the second, the Beira line, by securing a rapid passage through
the 'fly country,' brought Salisbury into easy communication with
the East Coast of Africa at the port so named. Taken together, they
measure 930 miles. It should be added also that arrangements are
already in progress for the extension of the trunk line from
Buluwayo to Tanganyika--a distance of about 750 miles. This will
form a new and important link in Mr. Rhodes' great scheme of
connecting Cape Town with Cairo."

The telegraph advanced more speedily even than railroads, and the
population has kept pace with wire and rail. Johannesburg has a
population of 120,800 souls, and Buluwayo, a savage desert not long
ago, has now an European society of over 5000 persons. It is
therefore somewhat questionable if Mr. Froude is justified in his
opinion that diamond