I take these and the other recent figures from a report by
Mr. Hammond to the Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa Company.]

[Footnote 61: A little French book (_L'Industrie Miniere au Transvaal_,
published in 1897), which presents a careful examination of these
questions, calculated at about thirty per cent. of the expenditure the
savings in production which better legislation and administration might
render possible.]

[Footnote 62: There are towns in England where the rate is only 13 per
thousand.]

[Footnote 63: There are some mines of gold and coal in other parts,
mostly on the east side of the country, with a small industrial
population consisting chiefly of recent immigrants.]

CHAPTER XIX

THE ORANGE FREE STATE

In the last preceding chapter I have carried the reader into the
Transvaal through Natal, because this is the most interesting route. But
most travellers in fact enter _via_ Cape Colony and the Orange Free
State, that State lying between the north-eastern frontier of the Colony
and the south-eastern frontier of the Transvaal. Of the Free State there
is not much to say; but that little needs to be said, because this
Republic is a very important factor in South African politics, and
before coming to its politics the reader ought to know something of its
population. I have already (Chapter V) summarized its physical features
and have referred (Chapter XI) to the main incidents in its history.
Physically, there is little to distinguish it from the regions that
bound it to the east, north, and west. Like them, it is level or
undulating, dry, and bare--in the main a land of pasture. One
considerable diamond mine is worked in the west, (at Jagersfontein) and
along the banks of the Caledon River there lies one rich agricultural
district. But the land under cultivation is less than one per cent, of
the whole area. There are no manufactures, and of course very little
trade; so the scanty population increases slowly. It is a country of
great grassy plains, brilliantly green and fresh after rain has fallen,
parched and dusty at other times, but able to support great numbers of
cattle and sheep. Rare farmhouses and still rarer villages are scattered
over this wide expanse, which, in the north-east, toward Natal, rises
into a mountainous region. The natives (most of them of Bechuana stock)
are nearly twice as numerous as the whites. Some live on a large
Barolong reservation, where they till the soi