9. The mother-country, on her part, has been able to provide new homes for her surplus population in a country like their own; she has secured seven-tenths of the trade of New Zealand, increasing thereby the amount of profitable employment for her workpeople; she has drawn from the colony supplies of cheap food to help fill the hungry mouths of her millions, and quite recently she has received the substantial aid of 6,000 New Zealand troops in her war in South Africa. (12) A DIFFICULT BRITISH STATE TO BUILD (South Africa). 1. The story of South Africa, since the British gained a footing there, is marked by many a dark spot of misfortune and disaster that we would gladly forget. When Britain, in 1806, took possession of the Cape, the country was occupied by Boers, Hottentots, and Kaffirs. The building up of a British state, with such conflicting elements, has been a work of extreme difficulty, which has put the best qualities of the British race to a severe test, and much of the work still remains to be done. 2. The Home Government, for many years, only valued the Cape as a military post and naval station, occupying a commanding position on the waterway to India. They shrank, accordingly, from extending British rule in South Africa beyond the narrowest limits, and for many years made no attempt to colonize the country. It was not until 1820 that a body of picked emigrants, numbering 5,000, were landed at Algoa Bay, and, having been taken 100 miles inland, were put in possession of farms of 100 acres each. 3. The first three years were years of blight which killed the growing grain, and then came a flood which washed away their cottages and gardens. Many of the emigrants were good artisans but bad farmers. They had been set out like so many plants, in well-ordered rows, and told to grow where they were placed. But the experiment was bound to fail. Before long many of the men deserted their farms and found work as artisans, whilst those who were fitted for farm-work added the derelict farms to their own, and thus in time each one found himself in the sphere for which he was best adapted.