and that the true interests of both races are
in the long run the same.

Although the facts we have been considering suggest the view that the
white population of South Africa will be very small when compared with
that of the North American or Australasian Colonies, they also suggest
that the whites will in South Africa hold the position of an
aristocracy, and may draw from that position some of the advantages
which belong to those who are occupied only on the higher kinds of work,
and have fuller opportunities for intellectual cultivation than the mass
of manual labourers enjoy. A large part of the whites will lead a
country life, directing the field work or the ranching of their
servants. Those who dwell in the towns will be merchants or employers of
labour or highly skilled artisans, corresponding generally to the upper
and middle strata of society in North America or Australia, but probably
with a smaller percentage of exceptionally wealthy men. There is, of
course, the danger that a class may spring up composed of men unfit for
the higher kinds of work, and yet too lazy or too proud to work with
their hands; and some observers already discover signs of the appearance
of such a class. If its growth can be averted the conditions for the
progress and happiness of the white race in South Africa seem
favourable; and we are approaching an age of the world when the quality
of a population will be more important than its quantity.

In this forecast I have said nothing of the gold mines, because they
will not be a permanent factor. The present gold fever is a fleeting
episode in South African history. Gold has, no doubt, played a great
part in that history. It was the hope of getting gold that made the
Portuguese fix their first post at Sofala in 1505, and that carried the
English pioneers to Mashonaland in 1890. It was the discovery of the
_banket_ gold beds on the Witwatersrand in 1885 that finally settled
the question whether South Africa was to be an English or a Dutch
country. Yet gold mining will pass away in a few decades, for the
methods which the engineer now commands will enable him within that time
to extract from the rocks all the wealth now stored up in them. A day
will come when nothing will be left to tell the traveller of the
industry which drew hundreds of thousands of men to a barren ridge,
except the heaps of refuse whose ugliness few shrubs will, in that dry
land, spring up to cover. But South Africa w