The first and most important point in the improvement of the native races is the matter of education. To be really effective it must take the form of an organized system with plenty of pliability and machinery; and there should be a fair number of Europeans in the general community to prevent the native children, after they have once been trained and taught, from relapsing by degrees into the barbarism of their natural associates and older relatives. For this reason little has been done in Natal to educate the Kaffirs; although there are some seventy-three native schools and the natives appear to be improving in general character and even in willingness to perform mild sorts of intermittent labor. Nothing of importance has been achieved in the purely native territories except such isolated teaching as the missionaries can manage. Nothing has been even attempted in the two Republics. But in Cape Colony very successful results have followed the labors of many men during a number of years--assisted by special provision made through the Government for purposes of native education. Sir Langham Dale, Superintendent-General of Education, reported in 1883 that there were 396 mission schools in the Colony, with an attendance of 44,307 pupils; 226 aborigines' schools, with 13,817 pupils; and 21 boarding and trade schools, with 2,519 pupils. About one-third of the annual Education Grant, which amounted in 1866 to $110,000, and in 1889 to $425,000, and in 1897 to nearly a million dollars, was appropriated to these purposes. In the latter year, it may be added, the number of mission schools had risen to 551, and the aborigines' schools to 420. Of the various native schools, or institutions, that at Lovedale is the most important. In 1883 there were 300 pupils in attendance, and it had a yearly revenue of $125,000. Native clergy and teachers are trained in its College department; young men are taught book-binding, printing and other trades in its workshops; young women are instructed in sewing and laundress work, and there is also an elementary school for children. [Illustration: A MATABELE CHIEF. A KAFFIR CHIEF. PRESIDENT STEYN, ORANGE FREE STATE. SIR W. HALY-HUTCHINSON. GOVERNOR OF NATAL. ENGLISH, DUTCH AND NATIVE TYPES, SOUTH AFRICA] [Illustration: A DERVISH CHARGE, SOUDAN WAR. A battle of the Soudan in which Sir Herbert Kitchener avenged the massacre of Hicks Pasha and his 12,000 men; also the death of the heroic Gordon which occurred a year later.] [Sidenote: Progress of the Natives]