It is a strange anomaly that the Boers, a pastoral people exclusively, should have settled in a section of the earth where Nature has two of her richest storehouses. Both the Kimberley diamond mines and the Witwatersrandt gold mines, each the richest deposit of its kind discovered thus far, were found where the Boers were accustomed to graze their herds and flocks. It would seem as if Nature had influenced the Boers to settle above her treasures, and protect them from the attacks of nations and men who are not satisfied with the products of the earth’s surface, but must delve below. This circumstance has been both fortunate and unfortunate for the Boer people. It has laid them open to the attacks of covetous nations, which have not been conducive to a restful existence, but it has made their country what it is to-day--the source from which all the other South African states draw their means of support. The Transvaal is the main wheel in the South African machinery. Whenever the Transvaal is disturbed, Cape Colony, Natal, and the Orange Free State are similarly affected, because they are dependent upon the Boer country for almost their breath of life. When the Transvaal flourishes, South Africa flourishes, and when the Transvaal suffers, then the rest of the country is in dire straits. Before the diamond and gold mines were discovered, South Africa was practically a cipher in the commercial world. The country exported nothing, because it produced no more than was needed for home consumption, and it could import nothing because it was too poor to pay for imported goods. The discovery of the diamond mines twenty-five years ago caused the country to be in a flourishing condition for several years, but the formation of the De Beers syndicate ended it by monopolizing the industry, and consequently starving the individual miners. The country was about to relapse into its former condition when the Transvaal mines were unearthed. No syndicate having been strong enough to consolidate all the mines and monopolize the industry, as was done at Kimberley, and the Boers having resisted all efforts to defraud them out of the valuable part of their country, as had happened to the Orange Free State Boers, the Transvaal soon attained the paramount position in the country, and has retained it since. Until Lobengula, the mighty native chief of the regions west of the Transvaal, was subdued and his country taken from him, the British empire builders were limited in their field of endeavour, because the Transvaal was the only pass through which an entry could be made into the vast Central African region. When Lobengula’s power yielded to British arms, the Transvaal became useless as the key to Central Africa, but, by means of its great mineral wealth, became of so much greater and more practical importance that it really was the entire South Africa.