Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  There is need of some little care lest we drive the wild birds altogether away from the neighbourhood of the towns. They are still plentiful, but, if over-shot, they change their quarters; and people complain that whereas five years ago they could get excellent shooting within three miles of their door, they have now to content themselves with a few stragglers. It is for the owners of land to see that its denizens are properly protected, for the disappearance of big game is an awful warning not to presume on present abundance. Some day we may hope to see the country farmer as eager to preserve his game as he is now to destroy it. There needs but the pinch of scarcity and the growth of a market value for shooting to turn the present free-and-easy ways into a perhaps too rigorous protective system.

  There remain two sports which are still in their infancy in the country and deserve serious development — the keeping of harriers and angling. I say harriers advisedly, for though it would be better to stick to drafts from foxhound packs because of the greater strength and hardiness of the hounds, yet the sport can never fairly be dignified by the name of fox-hunting. The quarries will be the hare, the small buck, and in certain districts the jackal. The veld in parts is a fine natural hunting-ground, and the hazards, which will be wanting in the shape of hedges and banks, will exist very really in ant-bear holes and dongas. As the fencing laws take effect there will be wire to go over for those who have Australian nerves. The Afrikander pony is an animal born for the work, and once harrier packs were established there is every reason to believe that the Dutch farmers would join in the sport. The only two reasons I have ever heard urged against the proposal are — first, that hounds when brought out to South Africa lose their noses; and, second, that it would be hard to get a good scent in the dry air of the veld. The first is true in a sense, but only because a draft brought out from home is usually set to work at once and not acclimatised gradually to the change of air. There is no inherent impossibility in keeping a dog’s nose good, as is shown by the many excellent setters and pointers that have been imported. In any case, if the master of harriers breeds carefully he ought in a few years to get together a thoroughly acclimatised pack. As for the matter of scent, there is no denying that it would not lie on the ordinary hot dry day, but this only means that it will not be possible to hunt all the year round. I can imagine no better weather than the cool moist days which are common on the high veld in autumn and early spring, and even in summer the mornings up to ten o’clock are cool enough for the purpose. South African hunts must follow the Indian fashion, and when they cannot get whole days for their sport make the best of the early hours.

  Fishing, I am afraid, has been in the past a neglected sport. The Boer left it to the Kaffir, and the uitlander had better things to think about. Had the land possessed any native fish of the type of the American brook-trout or the land-locked salmon, perhaps it would have been different; but in the high-veld streams the only notable fish are two species of carp, known as yellow-fish and white-fish, which run from 2 lb. to 6 lb., and the barbel, which may weigh anything up to 30 lb. There are also eels, which may be disregarded. I do not think these South African fish are to be despised, for though they may be dead-hearted compared with a trout or a salmon, they give better sport than English coarse fish, and the barbel is quite as good as a pike. The ordinary bait is mealie-meal paste, a locust or any kind of small animal, a phantom minnow, and even a piece of bright rag. I have known both kinds of carp take a brightly coloured sea-trout fly, and give the angler a very good run for his pains. But the great South African fish is the tiger-fish, confined, unhappily, to sub-tropical rivers and malarial country. He is not unlike a trout in appearance, save for his fierce head, which suggests the Salmo ferox. In any of the eastern rivers — Limpopo, Letaba, Olifants, Sabi, Crocodile, Komati, Usutu, Umpilusi — he is the chief — indeed, so far as I could judge, the only — fish, and he is one of the most spirited of his tribe. He will readily take an artificial minnow, and also, I am told, a large salmon fly, but the tackle must be at least as strong as for pike, for his formidable teeth will shear through any ordinary casting line. His average weight is perhaps about 10 lb., though he has been caught up to 30 lb., but it is not his size so much as his extraordinary fierceness and dash which makes him attractive. When hooked he leaps from the water like a clean salmon, and for an hour or more he may lead the perspiring fisherman as pretty a dance as he could desire. If any one is inclined to think angling a tame sport, I can recommend this experiment. Let him go out on some river like the Komati on a stifling December day, when the sky is brass above and not a breath of air breaks the stillness, in one of the leaky and crazy cobles of those parts. Let him hook and land a tiger-fish of 20 lb., at the imminent risk of capsizing and joining the company of the engaging crocodiles, or, when he has grassed the fish, of having a finger bitten off by his iron teeth, and then, I think, he will admit, so far as his scanty breath will allow him, that an hour’s fishing may afford all the excitement which an average man can support.

  So much for the fish of the country. But Central South Africa affords a magnificent field for the introduction and acclimatisation of the greatest of sporting fish. Ceylon and New Zealand have already shown what can be done with the trout in new waters, and in Cape Colony and Natal the same experiment has been made with much success. The high veld is only less good than New Zealand as a home for trout. To be sure, there is no snow-water, but there is the next best thing in water whose temperature varies very little all the year round. The ordinary sluggish spruits are of course unsuitable, but the mountain burns in the east and north are perfect natural trout-streams, with clear cold water, abundant fall, gravel bottoms, and all the feeding which the most gluttonous of fish could desire. The Transvaal Trout Acclimatisation Society, founded in Johannesburg in 1902, has established a hatchery on the Mooi River above Potchefstroom, and is making the most praiseworthy efforts, by the creation of local committees, to excite a general interest in the work throughout the country. It will still be some years before any trout-stream can be stocked and thrown open to anglers; but there is no reason why in time there should not be one in most districts. The Mooi and the Klip rivers near Johannesburg, the Magalies and the Hex rivers in Rustenburg, the Upper Malmani in Lichtenburg, every stream in Magatoland and the Wood Bush, the torrents which fall from Lydenburg into the flats, and all the many mountain streams which run into Swaziland from the high veld, may yet be as good trout-waters as any in Lochaber. The rainbow and the Lochleven trout will be the staple importation; but in some of the larger streams experiments might be made with the American ouananiche and the Danubian huchen. It is difficult to exaggerate the service which might thus be rendered to the country. If in the dams and streams within easy distance of the towns a sound form of sport can be provided at reasonable cost, the first and greatest of the amenities of life will have been introduced. At present on the Rand there are no proper modes of relaxation: most men work till they drop, and then take their jaded holiday in Europe. Yet how many, if they had the chance, would go off from Saturday to Monday with their rods, and find by the stream-side the old healing quiet of nature?

  There is a future for South African sport if South Africa is alive to her opportunity. It is a country of sportsmen, and sport with the better sort of man is a sound basis of friendship. Game Preservation Societies are being started in many districts, and when we find the two races united in a common purpose, which touches not politics or dogma but the primitive instincts of humankind, something will have been done towards unity. The matter is equally important from the standpoint of game protection. The private landowner can do more than the land company, and the land company can do more than the Government, towards ensuring the future of sport. Many Dutch farmers have preserved in the past, and a general extension of this spirit would work wonders in a few years. Vanishing species would be saved, banished game would return, and our conscience would be clear of one of the most heinous sins of civilisation. As an instance of what can be done by
private effort, there is a farm not sixty miles from a capital city where at this moment there are impala, rooi hartebeest, koodoo, and wild ostrich.

  There are few countries in the world where sport can be enjoyed in more delectable surroundings. The cold fresh mornings, when the mist is creeping from the grey hills and the vigour of dawn is in the blood; the warm sun-steeped spaces at noonday; the purple dusk, when the veld becomes a kind of Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon, full of fairy lights and mysterious shadows; the bitter night, when the southern constellations blaze in the profound sky, — he who has once seen them must carry the memory for ever. It is such things, and not hunger and thirst and weariness, which remain in a man’s mind. For the lover of nature and wild things (which is to say the true sportsman) it is little wonder if, after these, home and ambition and a comfortable life seem degrees of the infinitely small. And the others, who are only brief visitors, will carry away unforgettable pictures to tantalise them at work and put them out of all patience with an indoor world — the bivouac under the stars on the high veld, or some secret glen of the Wood Bush, or the long lines of hill which huddle behind Lydenburg into the sunset.

  PART III. THE POLITICAL PROBLEM

  CHAPTER XII. THE ECONOMIC FACTOR.

  After a three years’ war, and at the cost of over 200 millions, Britain has secured for her own children the indisputable possession of the new colonies. In earlier chapters an attempt has been made to sketch roughly the historical influences which may help to shape the future and to describe the actual features of the land which charm and perplex the beholder. We have now to face the direct problems into which the situation can be resolved, and in particular that question of material wellbeing which is the most insistent, because the most easily realised, for both statesman and people. The economic factor in the politics of a country is always a difficult matter to discuss, for it is made up of infinite details, some of them purely speculative, all of them hard to disentangle. If a business man were to do what he never does, and sit down to analyse calmly his position, he would have to go far beyond balance-sheets and statements of profit and loss. He would be compelled to look into the social and economic conditions under which he lived; he would have to estimate rival activities and forecast their development; the money market, rates of exchange, the nature of the labour supply, the effect of political and social movements, even such matters as his own bodily and mental health, and his standing among his fellows, would properly make part of the inquiry. With the private individual the analysis would be ridiculous, because the component parts are too minute to realise; but with a nation, where the lines are broader, some stock-taking of this kind is periodically desirable. But in spite of, or because of, the complexity of the inquiry, the human mind is apt to complicate it needlessly by running after side-issues and losing sight of the main features of the problem. The economic position of a country embraces in a sense almost every detail of human life; but there is no reason why the mass of detail should be allowed to get out of focus and obscure the synthesis of the survey. Provided we remember that the economic factor is not correctly estimated by looking only at revenue and expenditure, imports and exports, and fiscal provisions, we may safely devote our energies to steering clear of the labyrinth of secondary detail in which the ordinary statistician would seek to involve us.

  In the following pages it is proposed to confine the survey to what appear to be the main features of a complex question. It would be vain to embark on speculations as to the payable ore in the ground, market forecasts, suggestions for new industries, and the many hints towards a reformed fiscal system with which local and European papers have been crowded. It is sufficient to note the existence of such questions; the materials for a true understanding of the South African economy are not to be found in them. In particular it is proposed to avoid needless statistics, which, apart from the fact that they are often inaccurate and partisan, are the buttress of that particularist logic which is the foe of true reason. Two questions may be taken as the general heads of our inquiry: first, Wherein consists the wealth of the land, actual and potential? and, secondly, How best may that wealth be maintained and developed for the national good?

  I.

  The cardinal economic fact is the existence of gold — gold as it is found in no other country, not in casual pockets and reefs, but in quantities which can for the most part be accurately mapped out and valued months and years before it is worked; gold which is mined not as an adventure, but as an organised and stable industry. The Main Reef formation extends for sixty-two miles, from Randfontein to Holfontein, but three-fourths of the gold mined has been produced in the central section, which is only some twelve miles long. In 1886 the district was proclaimed a public gold-field, and since that day ore worth nearly 100 millions sterling has been extracted. The development took place in spite of difficulties which vastly increased the working costs. The dynamite and railway monopolies, the heavy expense of the transit of machinery from the coast, the absence of subsidiary local industries to feed the gold industry, forced the work into the hands of a small circle of rich firms who could provide the large capital and face the heavy risks of a new enterprise. It is clear, therefore, that mining on the Rand, while a notable enterprise, has necessarily been a slow one, since the two natural factors, the amount of gold in the soil and the labour of working it, have been complicated by many artificial hindrances. The past is not the true basis for estimating the future of the industry; the proper premises for a forecast are the two natural factors — the quantity of gold in the earth and the normal cost of winning it. It is the first that concerns us at present.

  All estimates must be merely conjectural, and can be used only with the greatest caution. But in the multitude of conjectures there may be such a consensus of opinion as to ensure us a fair certainty that this or that is the view of those who are best fitted to judge. Mr Bleloch, in a calculation based on the report of the most eminent engineers, values the amount of gold still in the Rand at 2871 millions sterling, showing a profit to the companies concerned of over 975 millions. If we put the life of the Rand at one hundred years, which is a mean between conflicting estimates, we shall have an average, allowing for reserve funds, of 8 millions to be paid yearly in dividends to shareholders. In 1898 twenty-six companies paid dividends amounting to over 4 millions: therefore, on Mr Bleloch’s figures, we can promise at least one hundred years to the Rand of twice the prosperity of 1898. These figures include the deep levels, but do not take into account any of the Rand extensions, in which the Main Reef has been traced for over 300 miles. It is certain that in the direction of Heidelberg and Greylingstad gold in payable quantities exists for not less than seventy miles, and it is at least probable that a similar extension exists in the Potchefstroom and Klerksdorp districts in the west. So much for the peculiar “banket” formation of the Rand, which must remain the type of stable gold-mining, — stable, because the element of uncertainty over any group of properties is reduced to a minimum, and the high organisation necessary and the large initial outlay produce a community less of rivals than of fellow-workers. Quartz reefs and alluvial deposits are found in many parts of the country. In Lydenburg and Barberton, where the earliest gold mines were sunk, several producing companies are at work; and this type of mining will develop equally with the Rand under a system which abolishes monopolies and assists instead of discouraging enterprise. In the northern districts, around the Wood Bush and the Zoutpansberg ranges, there are quartz and alluvial mining, and indications of “banket” formation, and in the all but unknown region adjoining Portuguese territory, if tales be true, there may be gold in quantities still undreamed of.

  No figures are reliable, all estimates are disputed, but from the very contradictions one fact emerges — that there is gold enough to give employment to a greatly increased mining population for at least fifty years, and to decentralise the industry and create large industrial belts instead of one industrial city. Nor is gold the only m
ineral. From Pretoria to Piet Retief run coal-beds, many of them of great richness and good quality, covering an area of more than 10,000 square miles. It has been calculated that 60,000 million tons are available. The quality of the coal in the undeveloped beds lying to the south of Middelburg is, in the opinion of experts, equal to the best British product. Iron-ore is abundant in many parts, particularly in the coal-bearing regions of the east. Lead has been worked near Zeerust, and there are good grounds for believing that copper in large quantities exists in Waterberg and in the tract between Pietersburg and the Limpopo. Diamond pipes are found in several places in the region due east of Pretoria, where the new Premier Mine seems to promise a richness not equalled by Kimberley; and it is probable that places like the Springbok Flats and the western parts of Christiana are highly diamondiferous. Sapphires have been found in the west, and diamonds and spinels are reported from the northern mountains. Few countries have a soil more amply mineralised; but the sparse population, mainly absorbed in the quest of one mineral, has done little to exploit its wealth. Mining, save for gold and coal, is still in the Transvaal a thing of the future. The agricultural and pastoral wealth is dealt with in another chapter. But we may note an asset, which is wholly undeveloped, in the cultivation and protection of the natural wood of the north and east, and the planting of imported trees. Timber in an inland mining country is a valuable product, and on the soil of the high veld new plantations spring up like mushrooms. Ten feet a-year is the common rate of growth for gums, and in the warmer tracts it is nearer twenty. Many indigenous South African trees, which a few years ago, under an unwise system of timber concessions, were disappearing from most places save a few sequestered glens in the north, might under proper care become a lucrative branch of forestry. Current estimates, rough and inaccurate as they must be, are the fruit of a very general conviction, which on the broadest basis is amply supported by facts. There is sufficient natural wealth — mineral, pastoral, and agricultural — to provide a sound industrial foundation for the new States. It is only on the details of its exploitation that experts differ.