ill still be a pastoral and
agricultural country, and none the less happy because the gold is gone.

Neither have I said anything as to the influence of any foreign power or
people upon the South Africans, because they will to all appearance
remain affected in the way of literature and commerce, as well as of
politics, by Britain only. There is at present no land trade from
British or Boer States with the territories of Germany and the Congo
State which lie to the north; and spaces so vast, inhabited only by a
few natives, lie between that no such trade seems likely to arise for
many years to come. Continental Europe exerts little influence on South
African ideas or habits; for the Boers, from causes already explained,
have no intellectual affinity with modern Holland, and the Germans who
have settled in British territories have become quickly Anglified.
Commerce is almost exclusively with English ports. Some little traffic
between Germany and Delagoa Bay has lately sprung up, aided by the
establishment of a German line of steamers to that harbour. Vessels come
with emigrants from India to Natal, though the Government of that Colony
is now endeavouring to check the arrival of any but indentured coolies;
and there are signs that an important direct trade with the United
States, especially in cereals and agricultural machinery, may hereafter
be developed. In none of these cases, however, does it seem probable
that commercial intercourse will have any considerable influence
outside the sphere of commerce. With Australia it is different. Having
ceased, since the opening of the Suez Canal, to be the halfway house to
India, the Cape has become one of the halfway houses from Britain to
Australasia. The outgoing New Zealand steamers, as well as the steamers
of the Aberdeen Australian line, touch there; grain is imported,
although the high tariff restricts this trade, and many Australian
miners traverse Cape Colony on their way to the Witwatersrand. A feeling
of intercolonial amity is beginning to grow up, to which a happy
expression was given by the Cape Government when they offered financial
assistance to the Australian Colonies during the recent commercial
crisis.

With the other great country of the Southern hemisphere there seems to
be extremely little intercourse. Britain did not use, when she might
have legitimately used, the opportunity that was offered her early in
this century of conferring upon the temperate regions