t. Ten acres
of irrigable land in the Mooi or Klip river valleys, with
Johannesburg in the full tide of prosperity, will yield as good a
rent as forty acres with Johannesburg in decay."

And the prosperity of the mines is not only essential in the present:
it is to be the instrument for the development of the permanent
resources of the Transvaal:

[Sidenote: Economic importance of Rand.]

"The mineral wealth of the Transvaal is extra-ordinarily great,
but it is exhaustible, some say within a space of fifty years,
others within a space of one hundred years. It would be a
disaster indeed for the country if none of this wealth were
devoted to the development of its agriculture. Agricultural
development is slow, but it is permanent, and knows of no
exhaustion. If the companies working the gold, coal, and diamond
mines were by decree compelled to devote a percentage of their
gains to the execution of irrigation works on lines laid down by
the Government, they would assist in the permanent development of
the country and would be investing in works which, though slow to
give a remuneration, would, at any rate, be absolutely permanent.
It would thus happen, that when the mineral wealth of the country
had disappeared, its agricultural wealth would have been put on
such a solid basis that the country would not have to fall from
the height of prosperity to the depth of poverty."

These were conclusions of so fundamental a nature that no statesman
could afford to overlook them; and, in point of fact, Lord Milner kept
them steadily in sight from first to last in all that he did for the
administrative and economic reconstruction of the new colonies.

Another effort of the civil administration which was carried on
successfully during the war was the teaching of the Boer children in
the refugee camps. The narrative of the circumstances in which the
camp schools were first organised, of the manner in which teachers
came forward from all parts of the empire to offer their services, and
of the complete success which attended their efforts, was told three
years later by Mr. E. B. Sargant, the Education Adviser to the
Administration. The report in which the story appears not only affords
a record unique in the annals of educational effort, but adds a
pleasing and significant page to what is otherwise a gloomy chapter of
the war.[305] Mr. Sar