Tamul and other Dravidian races of South India and partly to coast tribes from Western India, mostly professing the Khoja faith. The Khojas are in a far-off way Muhammadans. The inhabitants of Natal have with great inaccuracy taken to calling these West Coast Indians “Arabs.” This Indian element—already about 150,000 in number—is likely to have its effect on the history of Natal. It is strongly unpopular amongst the white colonists for selfish reasons. On the whole, it is not unpopular among the blacks, but the idea of an eventual fusion between Negro and Indian is not an agreeable one to contemplate from the colonist’s point of view, as it would create a race strong both mentally and physically, far outnumbering the whites, and likely to make a dangerous struggle for supremacy. On the other hand, from the Imperial point of view,—from what may be called the policy of the Black, White, and Yellow—it seems unjust that the King-Emperor’s Indian subjects should not be allowed to circulate as freely as those of his lieges who can claim European descent. Perhaps on the whole the solution which has been initiated in the British protectorates north of the Zambezi is the best—namely, that Indian immigration should be drawn rather to those countries which are administered on the same lines as India, than to the temperate regions south of the Zambezi, where the white man might be allowed to expand without let or hindrance. The first railway worked in South Africa is said to have been a line connecting the town of Durban with the landing-place of its harbour, which was opened in 1860. But soon afterwards a railway began to start northwards from Cape Town to Paarl; and this was directed, with many zigzags and with a seeming aimlessness, towards the Karoo. The discovery of the diamond fields gave railway extension an objective, and Kimberley became the goal which was finally reached in 1885[152]. In 1872 the Cape Government by Act of Parliament took over the existing railways in Cape Colony, which then only consisted of a total length of 64 miles. Soon afterwards an expenditure on railway extension of £5,000,000 was authorized. In Natal a Government railway was commenced in 1876 connecting Durban with the capital, Pietermaritzburg. This line now traverses the Colony to the Transvaal border and in another direction enters the Orange Free State.