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Memoir Respecting the Kaffers, Hottentots, and Bosjemans, of South Africa
Memoir Respecting the Kaffers Hottentots and Bosjemans of South Africa Author:John Sutherland Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: From Lieut.-Colonel Sutherland, To the Honorable John Montagu, Colonial Secretary. I do not know whether it occurred to His Excellency the Governor, durin... more »g his late journey through the Frontier Districts, that it would be an immense advantage to England to relinquish them all; for t am rightly informed, it has already cost our country about three millions sterling to conquer and defend them. That they can never, or at all events not for a veiy long period, perhaps 100 or 200 years, be turned to advantage, is quite apparent; the nature of the soil, and of the climate, from the scarcity of rain, reducing the inhabitants to a pastoral, and in many instances to the nomadic pastoral condition ; or, when they are agricultural, every family producing little more than is necessary for its own subsistence. The population does not, accordingly, amount to two, if so much, to the square mile; and the emigrants from the mother country to the colony hardly exceed, apparently, a few hundred per annum. In this condition of things there can be no doubt that most of the districts must continue a burthen to England ; which, as I understand, at present expends £200,000 a year upon them. The latitude and longitude alone render it, I fear, almost certain that neither wine, sugar, cotton, spices,nor any of the great staples of commerce can ever be produced in any of the districts of the colony, did even the scanty population render it possible that they could compete with other countries of the world in its great markets. 2. It really appears, therefore, as if we might withdraw, with advantage to our subjects of pure or of mixed blood, and to ourselves, from ten of the districts, reserving only the Cape, Stellenbosch, and Swellendam districts ! with any other ports or places valuable, or like...« less