My African Journey

Colonists' Association on every occasion. Truly a respectable and impressive policy; but one which seems, at first sight, rather difficul

ing climate, become a white man's country? Never, certainly, in the sense that Canada, or, indeed, the United Kingdom, are white men'

t were such a solution possible, it would be almost the last thing in the world desired by those who clamour for "a white man's country." For observe it is not against the black aboriginal that the prejudices and interests of the white settler or trader are arrayed. The African, it is conceded, is welcome to stay in his own country. No economic competition has yet arisen or is likely to arise between him and the

g therefrom. But what of the second storey? If there is to be any kind of white society dwelling together year after year within the standards of life and comfort to which Europeans have universally been accustomed to aspire, and largely to attain, this middle stage in the economic system must provide that white society with the means of earning-as professional men, as planters, merchants, traders, farmers, bankers, overseers, contractors, builders, engineers, accountants, clerks-a living for themselves and their families. And here

e middle class. Room is left only for the capitalist pure and simple-if one may so describe him. A vast army of African labourers, officered by educated Indians or Chinese, and directed by a few individuals of divers

up the first slender means of communication. It was by Indian labour that the one vital railway on which everything else depends was constructed. It is the Indian banker who supplies perhaps the larger part of the capital yet available for business and enterprise, and to whom the white settlers have not hesitated to recur for financial aid. The Indian was here long before the first British official. He may point to as many generations of useful industry on the coast and inland as the white settlers-especiall

pire unfolds. They erect themselves upon a field almost wholly unstudied, and familiar only by the prejudices which in every direction obstruct movement and view. The entry of the Asiatic as labourer, trader, and capitalist into competition in industry and enterprise not only with, but in, the Western world is a new fact of first import

ds of living laboriously achieved or long obstinately battled for among Europeans. Superadded to these we must foresee the confusion of blood, of manners, of morals, amounting, where operative upon any extensive scale, almost to the disintegration of the existing order of society. And behind-very close behind-lie the appeals to force, by mobs or Empires, to decide in a brutal fashion the brutal question which of two sets of irreconcilable interests sha

ered harvests which can never be garnered, without his active co-operation. There are roads and railways and reservoirs which only he can make. There are mines and forests which will slumber for ever without his aid. The mighty continent of tropical

rica territorially; is it beyond the wit of man to divide it economically? The co-operation of many different kinds of men is needed for the cultivation of such a noble estate. Is it impossible to regulate in full and intricate detail the conditions under which that co-operation shall take place? Here white men can live and

the entry of large numbers of Asiatics, and to preserve themselves from the racial chaos and economic disturbance inseparable from such immigration, cannot be denied, although its exercise ought no doubt to be governed by various prudential and other considerations. But these colonies differ markedly from those where the mass of the pop

terprise and colonizing capacity of Hindustan. And, as I have written, these countries are big enough for all. There is no reason why those Highland areas which promise the white man a home and a career, and where alone he can live in comfort, should not, as a matter of practical administration, be in the main reserved for him. Nor, on the other hand, why the Asiatic, if only he does not tea

aced by their delicious air, listening to the music of their streams, and feasting the eye upon their natural wealth and beauty, a sense of bewilderment overcomes the mind. How is it they have never become the home of some superior race, prosperous, healthy, and free? Why is it that, now a railway has opened the door and so much has been published about them, there has not been one

I have learned what the sensation of land-hunger is like. We may repress, but we cannot escape, the desire to peg out one of these fair and wide estates, with all the rewards they offer to industry and inventiveness in the open air. Y

ustralia. I had prospered in New Zealand. I knew South Africa. I thought at last I had struck 'God's own country.' I wrote letters to all my friends urging them to come. I wrote a series of articles in the newspapers praising the splendours of its scenery and the excellence of its climate. Before the last of

he temperate zones; still less that he can breed and rear families through several generations. The exhilaration of the air must not lead people to forget that an altitude of from five to eight thousand feet above the sea-level is an unusual condition, producing results, not yet ascertained, upon the nervous system, the brain, and the heart. Its coolness can never remove the fact that we are upon the Equator. Although the skies look so familiar and kindly with their white fleecy clouds and passing showers, the direct ray of the sun-almost vertical at all

o another, will be arrested, and controlled by a proper system of wire-fencing and quarantine. Remedies will be discovered against the various diseases which attack sheep or horses. Zebra, rhinoceros, buffalo, and other picturesque and fascinating nuisances will be driven from or exterminated within the settled areas, and confined to the ample reserves of uninhabited land. The slow but steady growth of a white population will create a market for local agricultural produce. The powerfully equipped Scientific Departments, the Veterinary and Forestry Departments, and the Departm

you think we meant?" And here we run into another herd of rhinoceros questions-awkward, thick-skinned, and horned, with a short sight, an evil temper, and a tendency to rush blindly up wind upon any alarm. Is the native idle? Does he not keep himself and pay his taxes? Or does he loll at his ease while his three or four wives till the soil, bear the burden, and earn his living? And if idle, has he a right to remain idle-a naked and unconscious philosopher, living "the simple life," without cares or wants,-a gentleman of leisure in a panting world? Is that to be the last word? Is civilization to say definitely that when the African native has kept himself, or made his

tes the lives of so many poor people in England and Scotland, is to feel the ground tremble under foot. "It would never do to have a lot of 'mean whites' in this country," I heard one day a gentleman say. "It would destroy the respect of the native for the white man, if he saw what miserable people we have got a

iers of the King's African Rifles, or with the smart sailors of the Uganda Marine, and it seems wonderful to contrast them with the population from which they have emerged. How strong, how good-natured, how clever they are! How proud their white officers are of them! What pains they take to please the travellers whom they escort; how frankly they are delighted by a word of praise or thanks! Just and honourable discipline, careful education, sympathetic comprehension, are a

study the model when the whole engine is at hand, it is because on the smaller scale we can see more clearly, and because in East Africa and Uganda the future is still uncompromised. The British Government has it in its hands to shape the development and destiny of these new countries and their varied peoples with an authority and from