gain
the position was the same as when Kimberley began. Accordingly he made
a great fortune, and to-day the Aitken Proprietary Mine is one of the
most famous in the country. But Aitken did more than mine diamonds,
for he had not forgotten the lesson we had learned together in the work
of resettlement. He laid down a big fund for the education and
amelioration of the native races, and the first fruit of it was the
establishment at Blaauwildebeestefontein itself of a great native
training college. It was no factory for making missionaries and black
teachers, but an institution for giving the Kaffirs the kind of
training which fits them to be good citizens of the state. There you
will find every kind of technical workshop, and the finest experimental
farms, where the blacks are taught modern agriculture. They have
proved themselves apt pupils, and to-day you will see in the glens of
the Berg and in the plains Kaffir tillage which is as scientific as any
in Africa. They have created a huge export trade in tobacco and fruit;
the cotton promises well; and there is talk of a new fibre which will
do wonders. Also along the river bottoms the india-rubber business is
prospering.

There are playing-fields and baths and reading-rooms and libraries just
as in a school at home. In front of the great hall of the college a
statue stands, the figure of a black man shading his eyes with his
hands and looking far over the plains to the Rooirand. On the pedestal
it is lettered 'Prester John,' but the face is the face of Laputa. So
the last of the kings of Africa does not lack his monument.

Of this institution Mr Wardlaw is the head. He writes to me weekly,
for I am one of the governors, as well as an old friend, and from a
recent letter I take this passage:--

'I often cast my mind back to the afternoon when you and I sat on the
stoep of the schoolhouse, and talked of the Kaffirs and our future. I
had about a dozen pupils then, and now I have nearly three thousand;
and in place of a tin-roofed shanty and a yard, I have a whole
countryside. You laughed at me for my keenness, Davie, but I've seen
it justified. I was never a man of war like you, and so I had to bide
at home while you and your like were straightening out the troubles.
But when it was all over my job began, for I could do what you couldn't
do--I was the physician to heal wounds. You mind how nervous I was
when I heard the drums beat. I hear them every eveni